News & Updates

Next up in our new series featuring video mini-segments from the podcast.  This segment comes from the September 2014 SW Climate Podcast - and covers ENSO models and El Niño forecasts (read more)

Looking back on the 2014 monsoon, a simple characterization of the season as ‘normal’ or ‘average’ (or above or below these thresholds) is difficult, given the spatial and temporal variability of monsoon storms. The cumulative seasonal totals provide one way of characterizing the monsoon, and by those metrics, the Southwest saw an average to above-average summer rainy season, with much of Arizona and New Mexico receiving well above-average rainfall. (read more)

This post was originally published as part of the October 2014 Southwest Climate Outlook

An El Niño Watch, issued by the NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC), continues for the seventh consecutive month as signs of an emerging El Niño are just on the horizon, but not quite here yet. Another slug of warm water (also known as a Kelvin wave), has been making its way across the Pacific Ocean from west to east just below the surface and is poised to emerge and help warm sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific over the next month or so...(read more)

This post was originally published as part of the October 2014 Southwest Climate Outlook

Next up in our new series featuring video mini-segments from the podcast.  This segment comes from the September 2014 SW Climate Podcast - and covers Tropical Storm Climatology in the Southwest (read more)

September turned out to be quite a month as far as extreme monsoon season weather across Arizona. The month started out rather quiet as the monsoon ridge of high pressure weakened and a trough of low pressure to the north ushered in dry air from the west across the state. This suppressed thunderstorm activity for several days until the monsoon ridge pushed back north helping to bring low level moisture back into the region.  (read more)

How Do We Know When the Monsoon is Over?

Across the southwest United States, the start of the summer monsoon season is pretty easy to recognize once you have experienced it firsthand a few times. Typically, one week it's hot and dry, and the next week, it's hot and sticky, but hopefully raining. (read more)

We are nearing the end of the 2014 season, and while it is difficult to characterize the highly variable day-to-day storms of any monsoon as “normal,” we have had a fairly typical if not above-average monsoon season in terms of precipitation. Regional assessment is complicated by the effects of a few extreme events that amplified precipitation amounts in parts of Arizona and New Mexico and caused an entire month’s or year’s worth of precipitation to fall in a single storm. (read more)

This post was originally published as part of the September 2014 Southwest Climate Outlook

The song remains the same this month with El Niño not quite here yet, but probably soon. This is now the seventh consecutive month since the NOAA Climate Prediction Center issued an “El Niño Watch” last March. The signs are a bit stronger once again, but it is getting late in the game...(read more)

This post was originally published as part of the September 2014 Southwest Climate Outlook