Goodbye Santa Fe, Stalled Upper Pattern Keeps Us Wet

 After 7 days of glorious sunshine, I have returned to what has been an ugly pattern of gloom & often wet locally.  Fortunately, it's been mostly nuisance rain with little flood issues, but the NWS is keeping us in a Flood Watch Through Monday night.  Here's why.

The upper low remains over Texas with a split in the flow creating some heavy storms down over the Gulf.  What we don't want to see is those heavy storms coming our way and I don't see that happening.  In fact, storms have been weakening this afternoon as they mover inland over SE LA/MS giving us mostly light rain.

As you can see, we have no fronts around so our weather is caused by an upper trough to our west creating a SW flow of moisture that over time is slowly weakening.  WPC's 7 day rain total keeps drifting it eastward, but we remain in the 4-6"+ rain totals over the next 7 days.

What the Water Vapor image shows in the bottom view is the lack of any upper level high pressure.  Consequently, with cold air aloft, that is an unstable set up that explodes into daytime heating storms. The heaviest storms are to our east and south with only some light rain across most of NOLA.  Certainly that's no reason to go out for dinner and support our local businesses as any threat for flooding is slim to none this evening.

My opinion is to keep the rain gear handy for most of this week, but isn't that what we do most  afternoons during the summer?  Finally,

The scenery of Albuquerque & Santa Fe is spectacular and my time with my 2 older sons PRICELESS.  We will do a podcast later this week so go sign up at bobbreck.com.  Stay tuned!

Wet Wave Train Through Weekend, Bahama Upper Low, Santa Fe Sunshine

 Seeing what's happening back home, I feel a little guilty spending a week in sunshine in Albuquerque & Santa Fe.  We did see some rain over the mountains yesterday on our trip up to Taos, which is another neat town with a downtown square devoted to galleries & restaurants.  One of the special treats was going over the Mini gorge of the Rio Grande River similar to the great Royal Gorge in Colorado.

The clearness of the bright blue skies is stunning.  With humidity's less that 20%, we have no haze resulting in unlimited visibilities. Contrast that to back home in NOLA where a persistent upper trough over the Rockies is sending a moist SW upper flow with embedded disturbance.

With the nose of the surface Bermuda high extending westward over the Gulf, it's created a stalled boundary that is sending waves of energy over us.  That triggers rounds of daily rains with above normal rain coverage.  Until the upper pattern changes, we have a wet Memorial Weekend forecast that will end any drought concerns.  The WPC's 7 day rain totals have shifted southward over most of Louisiana with amounts of 5-10" possible.

You need to pay attention to the weather as these waves of storms will create short term street flooding.

Last night in Santa Fe dipped into the upper 40s with wind.  I won't feel this cold again until November!  I'm back Saturday night and I hope weather isn't an issue in our landing.  Stay tuned and stay dry!