eoe
eoe wrote:you're joking, right? Albuqueque gets alot of rain???
URL:
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/metro/367077metro06-29-05.htm
We are getting smoke from the Arizona fires in Albuqerque added to our 99 degree heat today.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Monsoons May Move In a Bit Late
By John Fleck
Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer
Don't be fooled. It's not the monsoons yet.
Another blast of thunderstorms popped up over Albuquerque Tuesday afternoon, the lingering after-effects of moisture from last week's rainstorms. But as they have been in recent days, the storms were more spit bath than soak, and forecasters say we could be a week-and-a-half away from genuine monsoons firing up across the Southwest.
Full-fledged monsoons require a stream of moisture from the south, and that might not happen until July 10, according to Charlie Liles, head of the National Weather Service's Albuquerque office.
In an average year, the monsoons reach southern New Mexico by July 3 and Albuquerque by July 7.
A ridge of high pressure is acting like a dam to the south, blocking the moisture we need. That fits with a forecast that odds favor a drier-than-average July and August across much of New Mexico.
New Mexico on average gets as much as 40 percent of its annual precipitation during the summer rains of July and August, part of a widespread phenomenon called the "North American Monsoon."
The rain begins as moist low-level air streaming north from the Gulf of California and the Gulf of Mexico. Once it gets here, thermals created by the high desert sun loft the moisture high into the atmosphere, where it congeals into the great dark summer thunderheads that are a Southwestern trademark.
In a paradox of desert life, it could be our record wet winter that leaves us dry this summer, climatologists say.
A mid-June forecast from the federal government's Climate Prediction Center in Maryland said odds favor below-normal precipitation from July to September in the Southwest.
A big reason, according to Kelly Redmond of the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, is the heavy snowpack left by a wet winter.
Research over the last decade has drawn a connection between the snowpack and rain the following summer. The likely reason, according to scientists, is that the high mountains of the Colorado Plateau act as a pump, sucking in moisture from the south as they heat up.
More snow means the high country heats up more slowly, making the pump less efficient. And that is what happened this year, according to University of New Mexico climate scientist David Gutzler.
"Definitely we've seen a big snowpack and moist ground," said Gutzler, who first identified the snowpack-monsoon link.
One sign of a coming monsoon is rain along Mexico's central mountain chain, moving from south to north during late June before it slops over into Arizona and New Mexico.
So far that is not happening, a good indicator that the monsoons will be late, Redmond acknowledged.
Humidity has also remained low across the Southwest, another sign that the monsoonal flow of moisture is not yet in place.
"It looks like the odds are better and better that it's going to be late," Redmond said.
) I want vines to take the place of the trees once they're felled. Something that needs little water. Something that's as feisty as a cactus in resisting the sun. 
