Big Idea

• Not much monsoon activity expected this week
• Temperatures will be warm, into the high 90’s
• June was wetter than normal
• Prescott’s 1/41” was the 9th wettest since 1898
• Read more...

Thunderstorms can be complexes of interacting cells

A break in the monsoon this week, with mostly sunny skies except for a slight chance of showers on Tuesday, and becoming hot through the weekend.

Forecast Table:

https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/forecast/wxtables/

Navigate on the map to your location and click for a detailed local forecast.

Forecast:

Today, sunny and dry with highs in the high 80s. Tuesday, a slight chance of thunderstorms with highs in the high 80s. Wednesday through the weekend will be sunny with temperatures warming about 10 degrees, reaching high 90s to low 100s by the weekend. Thunderstorms are likely in far eastern Arizona throughout most of the week. Models are hinting at a return of monsoon moisture on Sunday.

Additional notes for the weather nuts:

June 2022 was wetter than normal. Prescott’s total of 1.41 inches (at the Sun Dog waste treatment plant) was the 9th wettest since 1898. Precipitation totals around town ranged from around 0.5 inches to over 5 inches near Crown King and around 4 inches near Groom Creek and other parts of the Bradshaws.

One MetMail subscriber recently asked about thunderstorm (TS) motion. Forecasting TS motion is difficult because TSs are not like leaves drifting down the river that merely move with the current, but can have a life of their own. Many TSs are complexes of interacting cells. Typically, the lifetime of a single cell is only of the order of about 30-60 minutes, but new cells can pop up near older ones . Often a mature TS can spawn new cells on outflow boundaries -  the outer edge of the expanding area of cold air that follows the cold precipitation downrush. Radar imagery loops reveal that there is often a general direction that most storms tend to move in response to the larger scale air flow, but on the smaller scale, new cells can trigger on outflow boundaries near the edges of mature cells and in other locations favored by solar heating, terrain effects and moisture availability. Thus, storm motion can appear rather random to a ground observer.

Happy Independence Day to you and your loved ones!

Mark.

Mark Sinclair, Ph.D.                                                               
Program Chair and Professor, Meteorology                                                                              
Department of Applied Aviation Sciences, College of Aviation                               

Met Mail is an unofficial weather discussion and forecast transmitted once or twice a week via e-mail by the Embry-Riddle Department of Meteorology (http://meteo.pr.erau.edu/). Embry-Riddle offers an undergraduate bachelor-of-science degree program in Applied Meteorology. Please spread the word to all potential qualified candidates!

Further Information:

ERAU Applied Meteorology degree program

Official National Weather Service forecast

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