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 Tucson, 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.
A more active day is forecast across southeast Arizona today with isolated to scattered showers and thunderstorms. Main threat from storms today will be heavy rain and localized flash flooding, especially across Santa Cruz county and southwest Cochise county. A more typical isolated to scattered coverage of storms is forecast this weekend into next week. Daily high temperatures will fluctuate between near normal and a few degrees below normal.
Broad high pressure over the desert southwest with mid-level flow turning to the southeast this afternoon and to the south tonight as the upper high moves into SW NM. Higher up around 300-200 mb, the flow will be westerly that becomes divergent along the Intl border this afternoon and evening. precipitable water range from 1.25" near AZ/NM border to 1.70" across western Pima county. SE AZ will see much more thunderstorm activity today versus yesterday with the most recent runs from the the high-res rapid-refresh model, RRFS and HREF all highlighting SW Cochise county and most of Santa Cruz county as the area for concern today from scattered to numerous thunderstorms. The main threat in this area will be very heavy rain with some of the strongest cores producing rainfall rates of 1"-2.5"/hr. HREF has this area painted with 10+% chance for 3-hour rainfall totals exceeding 3+". WPCs ERO has this area under slight risk, at least 15% chance, for excessive rain leading to flash flooding. Also, parts of eastern Santa Cruz county and SW Cochise county has seen heavy rain over the past 72 hours, so the soils are wet, and the San Pedro has had some increased flow several days ago. With that said I contemplated hoisting a small flash flood watch area between I-19 in Santa Cruz county east to Sierra Vista area. Will let day shift look at new model data in case one needs to be issued.
Saturday: Might be a down day depending how today evolves.
Sunday through Thursday: Southerly flow aloft will keep slightly above normal moisture across the area for mid-September resulting in a chance of showers and thunderstorms with day-to- day variability in areal coverage of storms, mainly across the eastern half of the forecast area.
High temperatures through Monday will be at or slightly above normal then be at or slightly below normal Tuesday through Thursday.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Tucson discussion at /o/TWC/, 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