8/25/22 Thursday 7:15 am

I am sorry that I have not been regular with my weather updates. The truth is my recovery from my procedure was extended and I had to go back on Tuesday so I have been a bit “under the weather”. Fortunately, we have been in a boring weather pattern with largely afternoon convective showers developing daily.

It is amazing that as you get older how quickly time goes by–I guess Einstein was right. I don’t want to prompt a discussion from my Physicist friends and followers right now so save your keystrokes.

The point is, it was not long ago that I was talking about how it is difficult to know for sure when the monsoon “turns on”. Equally challenging is knowing when it turns off. The later you get into the season the easier it is for forecasters to refer to any rain as monsoonal moisture. Sometimes it just rains, and as I have said for many years, sometimes it just snows.

Just as I was not ready to declare that the monsoon started in June, I am equally apprehensive to declare it has ended for our region. But I am seeing less of a monsoonal signature with our afternoon showers lately.

The weather models have struggled a lot with their mesoscale (short-term) forecasts over the last couple of months rendering most forecaster’s predictions in the weeds. I feel like it has been a huge learning curve for me. I am not sure that I learned anything new other than there is still a lot to learn when it comes to the monsoon season.

With all of that off my chest, Thursday and Friday appear to have a better chance of more widespread showers. As has been the case for the last several weeks I have low confidence in the models’ prognostications regarding this. Overall, August has been disappointing for precipitation amounts. Yes, there have been isolated areas that have done very well but not nearly as much as the anomalously wet months of June and July.

Meteorological fall is six days away. Before long I will be talking about winter. It is still a little too early to talk about the upcoming winter season, but it should be interesting.  We are headed into our third La Nina year. The La Nina forecast shows strengthening through early winter and then transitioning to a more neutral signature before developing into an El Nino later next year.  ENSO (El Nino/La Nina)  is only one of the drivers of our winters. Many other factors come into play so it is important not to come to early conclusions at this point. The fact that is a third La Nina points to some historical past anomalies that have led to colder and slightly wetter conditions than normal, we’ll see.

The Atlantic hurricane season has been quite a bust so far this year. Things may be changing in the Gulf of Mexico in the next 7 to 14 days so my Texas followers should be aware of that as we move into September.

Thanks for following and supporting the site!