Sunday, July 31, 2011

July 31 -

Scattered afternoon thunderstorms provided rain at a few places in the study region today. Evening precipitation fell in Deming, Silver City, Alamogordo, TorC, and areas in the Bootheel. The radar based accumulated precipitation product shows the highest amounts in the Gila and east of TorC in north-central Sierra County. This image was from 05:40 UTC (11:40pmMDT) and provided by College of DuPage.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

July 30 -

Disappointed with the forecasts of moisture from what was Tropical Storm Don. I still see lots of moisture from that system around Big Bend but the trajectory looks to be taking it well south of us. The 5-day QPF from this afternoon shows this clearly.
I spent the day at Elephant Butte and enjoyed the sunshine and mild temperatures out on the lake. A few isolated showers were on the east side of the lake and some thunderstorm outflow around 4 pm. The pic below was taken at the receding shoreline at Lakeshore looking east.

Friday, July 29, 2011

July 29 - Continued isolated thunderstorms

We recorded 0.23 inches this morning at the NMSU Las Cruces campus station. Most of the CoCoRaHS observations were in this range as well from last night's rain. Rainfall ranged from 0.70 inches at the Las Cruces 7.4 ESE station to 0.04 inches at the Las Cruces 6.0 NE station.
Deming received a good amount of rain with one station measuring 1.5 inches.

This morning's low temperature at NMSU was 68F which is right about the normal for this day.

The remnants of Tropical Storm Don still look to bring in some moisture at the end of the weekend, maybe on Sunday. The latest track at 1 pm looks like it is moving more northwesterly and miss most of Texas.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

July 28 - Back to the business of blogging

I took a needed break from this blog but I'm ready to keep up the daily postings. A lot has gone on but I will just dive in on what's going on instead of covering the past.

It will be interesting to keep track of Tropical Storm Don as the 5-day National Hurricane Center forecast shows it on a trajectory heading for New Mexico.
The 5-day QPF reflects this forecast with heavy rains predicted over south-central Texas.
The real-time GOES infrared from NCAR at 11:30 am PDT shows it in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico south of New Orleans.
We now have CoCoRaHS observations in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, thanks to Dr. Margez at UACJ. I hope to continue with more stations over time in Juarez and locations further west in Chihuahua.
The afternoon and evening brought more scattered thunderstorms in southern NM. They reached severe in and around El Paso with high winds and lightning. Not much in Las Cruces except for a light show from the lightning such as bolt from the photo below. This was taken at 11:23pm in Las Cruces looking southwest.
A few sprinkles started right before midnight on the east side of town. Have to see tomorrow's CoCoRaHS for other areas.