Today I will talk a little about the Spring Fire west of Cortez and the Yellow Jacket Fire which is west of Lewis and south-southwest of Yellow Jacket.
The Spring fire interestingly enough was picked up on Satellite before the Morefield (Mesa Verde) fire. I saw it on there and since no one was talking about it online I thought it was an anomaly or just some controlled burning on a ranch. Last night I finally read about it, but it was being treated as a “new” fire. Anyway here it is, and it looks like it has been very active today. Those red dots are all new growth, or at least new activity.
The Yellow Jacket fire really blew up yesterday. So far Satellite has not picked up on new activity but that data can lag 3-6 hours.
The gusty winds today are in response to a tightening of the pressure gradient. What does that mean? It means there is a trough of very unseasonably low pressure and accompanying cold front to our northwest fighting against a warmer ridge of high pressure. Here is what that looks like. This was the Euro’s depiction of pressure thickness and precipitation as of noon today.
That 552 low you see in the circle going from Nevada to Utah as well as Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho show a possible snow level down to 8,000 feet!
Most of the cold air will pass to our north but Tuesday’s high temps should be the lowest we will see for quite a while.
As far as the weekend goes, there is no model agreement. In fact, it is not even close. The GFS shows heavy wetting rains for Sunday afternoon while the Euro shows precipitation only in the highest locations, with a dry weekend for most.
On Saturday when a few areas got rain and thunderstorms I was asked if it was Monsoon related. The answer was no, not even a little bit. The first Monsoonal signature I can see in the distant future is on the GFS around July 13th.
That is almost textbook. Notice the heavy rains from Mexico into southern Arizona? Do you see that 582mb low in western Arizona, eastern California and southern Nevada? Lows rotate counter-clockwise and channel that precipitation into the Four Corners, aided by a 1016mb surface high pressure rotating the precipitation clockwise into the region.
Does that mean that is going to happen? Not necessarily, it is two weeks away. I am simply showing you how I can tell the difference between Monsoon and Nonsoon.
Next update Tuesday afternoon, thanks for following!