Areas affected…Central/Northern NM…Southern CO
Concerning…Heavy rainfall…Flash flooding possible
Valid 032205Z – 040405Z
SUMMARY…Scattered areas of showers and thunderstorms will
continue through the early to mid-evening hours. Some flash
flooding will remain possible.
DISCUSSION…The latest GOES GeoColor satellite imagery shows
numerous convective tops expanding in coverage across a large area
of NM and stretching north up across southern CO. The shower and
thunderstorm activity over the last few hours has been most
pronounced over the higher terrain of the Sangre De Cristo
mountains from northern NM and into southern CO, and also farther
back to the west along portions of the San Juan mountains.
However, additional small scale clusters of convection have been
noted farther south as well. In fact, over the last hour, all of
these areas have been seeing some rapidly cooling convective tops
and related strong updrafts as suggested by GOES IR and Day
Convection RGB imagery.
The latest RAP shows a pool of moderate instability across areas
of eastern NM, southeast CO and the OK/TX Panhandles involving the
High Plains where boundary layer heating and elevated surface
dewpoints are focusing as much as 1500 j/kg of MLCAPE. The
low-level flow remains generally out of the east-northeast across
these areas and extending west to the eastern slopes of the higher
terrain and especially the Sangre De Cristo range.
Over the next few hours, additional areas of showers and
thunderstorms will continue to develop in response to the
favorable thermodynamic environment in conjunction with
orographics and terrain-induced circulations. Steering currents
remain weak over the region as a result of the deep layer ridge
over the Four Corners region, and this will continue to facilitate
slow-moving and locally anchored showers and thunderstorms along
and adjacent the higher terrain.
PWATs are slowly rising across the region and are expected to
reach 1.5 to 2 standard deviations above normal by 00Z, and some
of the convective cells will tend to be highly efficient given
more concentrated mid-level moisture, and also a relatively moist
low-level fetch aiming in from the southern High Plains.
Expect as much as 2 to 3 inches of rain, with locally higher
amounts going through 03Z, with convection tending to weaken by
mid-evening due to the loss of diurnal heating. Regardless, some
short-term flash flooding concerns will remain, and this will
especially be the case in and around any burn scar locations.
Orrison
…Please see www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov for graphic product…
ATTN…WFO…ABQ…EPZ…GJT…PUB…
ATTN…RFC…ABRFC…CBRFC…WGRFC…
LAT…LON 38430569 38400538 38280513 37530400 36480368
35590424 34930446 34040470 32810495 32560551
32590590 32850614 33490627 33760649 34150665
34870677 35390699 35740753 36070802 36400829
36870792 37470782 37860779 38020760 38220717
38160670 37950639 37280622 37010592 37120566
37410557 37850588 38190584