Plaincast
What the forecast actually says — NWS Area Forecast Discussions, decoded into plain English.
Plaincast decodes the National Weather Service's Area Forecast Discussion — the real forecast, written 3 to 4 times a day by the meteorologist on shift — into plain English. The discussion is where a forecaster explains their reasoning: which models disagree, what they are watching, and how confident they are. Below is the current edition for Albuquerque, with its shorthand expanded. The full experience — an AI plain-English summary beside the annotated original — loads with JavaScript, and every one of the 68 forecast offices has its own edition.
Heat continues across eastern and central New Mexico through the weekend where there is an increased risk of heat related illnesses. Temperatures could tie or exceed record highs.
Isolated to scattered storms may threaten frequent lightning, gusty winds, hail, and heavy rainfall through Sunday. A surge of rich monsoon moisture next week may increase the risk of heavy rainfall and flash flooding Monday through Thursday.
(Today through Saturday) Issued at 136 AM MDT Fri Sep 11 2026
A moist outflow boundary moving west over eastern NM has kept low level easterly flow in place with surface dewpoints in the 50s and 60s. Exceptionally dry air remains in place over central and western NM with surface dewpoints in the teens and 20s. This dry air will spread southeast into more of the region today with a 593dm H5 high drifting southeast into southern NM. Max temperatures will be very hot again with many record highs expected, including the ABQ metro. Stronger zonal flow aloft (40-60kt) will approach from the Great Basin by late this afternoon and force strong moisture advection into western NM. precipitable water are forecast to rise from near 0.25" to near 1" this evening along the NM/AZ border. CAMs show scattered showers and storms forming along the higher terrain in eastern AZ then moving swiftly east into western NM. Replacing the dry air will come at the cost of strong downburst winds along and west of the continue Divide this evening. DCAPE values are progged between 600 and 1200 J/kg with the large inverted-V profiles. A large convective outflow may surge east into the RGV between 8PM and 10PM with gusts of 35 to 45mph. Blowing dust may reduce vsbys if the boundary materializes.
Saturday will be very hot again as the H5 ridge drifts east into southeast NM. More record highs are expected. Whatever moisture was able to advect east into NM will battle drier mid and upper level air lingering on the northern edge of the upper high. CAMs show meager convection with high DCAPE still leading to gusty downburst winds. The upper high will move east into west TX Saturday night and allow 700-500mb layer follow to become more south/southwest over the region for Sunday.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Albuquerque discussion at /o/ABQ/, see what changed since the last one, or open The National Desk for where the weather is today.
Data from the National Weather Service. Translated by Claude. About · For developers & agents · Subscribe: RSS feed for this office · Source on GitHub