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 Phoenix, 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.
An incoming weather system will begin to cool temperatures and increase rain chances today and Saturday.
Sunday and Monday will be warm and dry before a series of weather disturbances will bring occasional rain chances and cooling temperatures back to the Desert Southwest by Tuesday.
The short wave trough that will bring cooler and wetter weather to the Desert SW starting today is currently in the Eastern Pacific just off the southern CA coastline. This system will move quickly, passing through southern AZ and Northern Mexico over the course of today. precipitable water will increase to near 200% of normal, which, in conjunction with the energy from the short wave troughing feature rain chances will also increase, with chance of rain peaking (30-60%) this afternoon across south-central AZ, then into the eastern higher terrain heading into the evening hours. Most of the expected shower activity will remain relatively light, talking about a few hundredths to at most a tenth of an inch, a few isolated thunderstorms resulting in briefly heavier rainfall rates cannot be ruled out given that there will be a least a few hundredths J/KG of storm energy present.
Behind the short wave just discussed is another short wave that will quickly move in from the northwest. However this next system will remain across northern AZ. This will lead to rain chances being mostly confined to the north with the lower deserts forecasted to be dry, while the higher terrain areas could squeeze out an additional 0.05"-0.10" Saturday.
Outside of rain chances, these systems will also being in cooler temperatures as H5 heights will drop between 564-567 dam on Friday and 570-573 dam on Saturday. Afternoon highs will be in the upper 70s for Friday then as the first short wave passes temperatures will cool into the low 70s across south-central AZ while out west temperatures will remain in the mid to upper 70s. after the first system passes low temperatures will lag in response, resulting in morning lows in the mid to upper 50s starting Saturday morning.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Phoenix discussion at /o/PSR/, 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