Rain report

Posted by Bret B on February 1, 2015, 9:03 am
187.148.42.138

Well hello rain! We have received 0.8" / 20mm since it started with a gusher around midnight, and it's still coming down moderately. Too bad about all those soggy partyers over on the Boca beach. I can hear the bass part of the music, so at least the electronics are still working for now... I was expecting a chance of rain around Monday/Tuesday, so this early start took me by surprise. It doesn't look like much on the GOES-West IR satellite loops, just some light blue streaming over us. Wide view: http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/epac/flash-avn.html Close-up on our part of Mexico (La Manz is roughly in the center of this view): http://smn.cna.gob.mx/satelite/goesE/co/loop.gif The passive microwave radiance data from the TRMM satellite shows actual rain falling, but time-delayed by a few hours. There were some light showers with some embedded thunderstorms offshore to our NW when the latest overflight happened: http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov/trmm_rain/americas/americas_3hrly_zoom.gif So what about the forecast? Well, for the first time in several days I actually think that the Weather Underground forecast is believable. (It had been predicting ridiculous amounts of rain for the last few days, with no basis in any computer models that I could find.) http://www.wunderground.com/q/locid:MXJO0760? So expect even more rain Monday (tomorrow) and Tuesday. For the weather nerds, here are a couple fairly reliable computer models showing the predicted 24-hr rainfall accumulations. The "old reliable" GFS model shows moderate-to-heavy rainfall in a swath just to our north from now through Tuesday. If this swath slides south very much we would get quite a bit more rain: http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/mike/gfs/crb_p24i_loop_12.html The Mexican SNM / CONAGUA site now carries a spiffy computer model viewer. It's a little buggy so you just have to explore it to see what's going on: http://smn.cna.gob.mx/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16&Itemid=87 You can see their view of the GFS model data is about the same as the NOAA site (link is above.) But check out their in-house modified version of the WRF model (click on "WRF-SMN"). That model shows us getting much more rainfall. The total accumulation over the next 72 hrs shows us teetering on the edge between around 500mm / 2", and a heavy area of rainfall just offshore that peaks up to 400mm / 8" !! Hopefully THAT mess won't shift over us!

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