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Awaiting the Inevitable Surge of Fall Air – Maybe Next Week?

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Moisture from a former tropical depression has spread north into the Southwest United States. Flash flood watches are in effect from parts of California east through Arizona and New Mexico. Even though most of the moisture and energy will remain west of Texas we have seen some activity today in Far West Texas. Folks around Kermit, Pecos, Fort Stockton, and Alpine are receiving light rain this hour. This activity is moving east but running into a wall of drier air. Generally the rain should continue to weaken and eventually dissipate this evening without making much more progress to the east. Additional rain is possible around El Paso overnight.

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Now lets chat about something that many more of you might find interesting. As we head into the fall months the northern jet stream usually will begin to dig south. That is how we end up with stronger and more potent cold fronts during the fall and winter months. Depending on the overall orientation of the jetstream the airmass over Alaska or even the northern territories of Canada can be dragged south into the United States. If its cold up there it’ll often end up cold down south as well when the jet stream moves the airmass south. For that reason we’re going to take a look at Alaska this evening. They’ve actually been experiencing below-average temperatures for the past couple of days. That colder air has been bottled up and eventually it’s going to get heavy enough to get dragged south. All we need is a good upper level trough to bring it on down south into the United States.

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The Global Forecast System (GFS) and European Weather Model (ECMWF) have been hinting at a strong cold front invading the United States in about a week. When it comes to forecasting weather you typically don’t want to go outside of 5-7 days due to simple unpredictability. However when you get a fairly large-scale pattern change those can and do occasionally show up consistently in long-range weather model guidance. We’re heading into the time of year where stronger cold fronts become more common. It certainly is possible that we end up with a decent cold front pushing into Texas towards the latter half of next week. Another possibility is the front putters out before reaching Texas or it it doesn’t happen at all. Still we eagerly watch trends to our north as the signs do point to the eventual cold front and demise of the 90s.

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David Reimer

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