7:45 am
Good question. As I mentioned earlier there was a tongue of dry air in Arizona making its way into the backside of the system. The NWS talked about the system retrograding back to the SW, this should have funneled the dry air west, but of course, this hasn’t happened yet. No doubt there are areas west of 550 still in the moist flow. Here is the colored water vapor, I pinned Durango on the map.
Here is WSI/WU’s surface map
The red and blue indicate the fronts are stationary.
Here is the 5 am NOAA map
Yes, it is different, and look another shortwave to the west (a new one). What does this mean? Impossible to tell. I think we should be happy with what we got and if something else redevelops it will be a gift.
There is a potentially active storm pattern coming. There are chances of storms 1/6-1/7, 1/10-1/11( this is that potential subtropical tap I mentioned a few days back, I can’t dive into it just yet), 1/14-1/15 and 1/17-1/18. Don’t mark these on your calendar by any means, but these are all dates that the models are sniffing out. Any or none could come together, but I mention it so you know that we may be in an active pattern for a while. Remember what I said about the 3/7 day pattern?
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How does NWS ID these troughs that are (apparently) invisible to others? Is an art, a science, or both?
Different organizations use different algorithms. Largely it is supercomputers with the NWS there are analysts that interpret then “draw” the maps. Often their interpretations are incorrect or more than you would think. Wunderground is owned by a company called WSI, they also own Intellicast. IBM owns WSI, I feel their algorithm tracks storms and provides a better surface map overall. They also use data from the 10’s of thousands of personal weather stations in their network.