Blanca Pays a Visit

Former Hurricane Blanca is "spreading her ashes" over the southwest U.S. this week, with help from a weak upper-level trough camped off the California coast.

Some interesting tidbits from this event so far:

• Several stations in SoCal reported measurable precipitation yesterday, including 0.30" at the Santa Barbara airport.  Average rainfall for the month at that location is 0.07".   They are now covered for the next four Junes.

• The dewpoint at the Boulder City municipal airport in southern Nevada peaked at 61ºF this morning and currently sits at a still muggy (by Nevada standards) 59ºF.  No word on if Las Vegas is considering extracting moisture from the atmosphere to meet future water needs...

Source: MesoWest

• But it's a dry heat in Arizona right?  Peak dewpoints so far for include 72ºF in Yuma, 70ºF at Buckey municipal airport west of Phoenix, 67ºF at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix, and 73ºF at Tucson Ryan Field.  Steamy!

• Although it is not uncommon to find high integrated water vapor levels (a.k.a., precipitable water) over the southwest during the monsoon, the value measured yesterday afternoon at Tucson (1.62", black square below) appears to be the highest in the measurement record so early in the season. 

Climatology source: NOAA/SPC

Blanca began to spread her ashes over Utah last night and there's a good chance of showers and thunderstorms statewide today.  Time will tell if she decides to leave a deposit at your place.  

Addendum @ 12:45 PM:

I just noticed on the Madweather blog that the integrated water vapor yesterday morning in Tucson was even higher than it was yesterday afternoon (latter plotted above).