8/07/26 Friday 4:00 am
The biggest surprise since my last post is that I have not gotten any emails from followers in 3 days. This tells me boring weather syndrome is in full effect. I confirmed it by looking at my page stats. After a great July when my traffic was up 85%, the first week of August is showing a 35% decline so far. The lack of emails tells me that despite the heat, followers know it is just temporary.
It is; we could be adding in a slight chance of showers by Sunday afternoon. That seems a little overconfident by the model. I was expecting that to be the case for Monday, with heavier afternoon showers expected to start on Tuesday and increase throughout the week.
This reminds me that 10 days ago, when we were tracking the pattern flip from wet to our current dry pattern, then back to wet. The models showed moisture flow returning on August 11th. I posted this on July 28th. If we do make that flip to wet, and I think we will, this would be a big win for the European model from 10 days out!
Since we had success using those parameters before, I see no reason to change our methods.
So here we go, back to the PWATs. As a reminder, PWAT refers to the amount of moisture available to fall as precipitation in any particular area. That is a loose definition, but my brain is running a little slow, so I don’t feel like getting technical.
I need to put on the brakes here before I ramble down the rabbit hole…
Here are the PWAT anomaly values starting tomorrow. The number correlates to the percentage of the average for that particular day.
Just a reminder, our wettest 3-month period of the year is August, September, October. Which means it’s more difficult to get a positive anomaly in already historically wet months.
Next up, regional dewpoint progression. We are looking for that old-school 50-degree mark. It does vary throughout the day because flow increases in the afternoon. That top right of the frame shows time and date. We are looking for the values at 00z (6 pm Mountain).
Just a reminder, the higher the elevation, the lower the dewpoint, so storms can fire up with much lower values.
I am going to skip posting on Saturday (unless something crazy shows up). I will post again on Sunday.