Above Average Precip Chances for Late May? - May 11, 2026 Phoenix, Arizona Weather Discussion

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]It's the Phoenix Arizona weather discussion. This is for Monday, the 11th of May. I'm Michael Grath. If you've stepped outside this morning, you can feel it. It's going to be a very hot day today. Temperatures approaching record levels across the state. More or less the same story for tomorrow. But the ridge that's been dominating the weather around here for the last few days is starting to weaken. It will move off to the east as an area of low pressure approaches the California coast. and a brief push of moisture between those systems will set the stage for at least some isolated showers and thunderstorms across parts of the area. Who's going to see the storm action? We'll talk about that. Temperatures will continue to cool off. How low will they get? Do we have any signs of any surprises in our forecast way out there on the horizon?

[00:00:43]We'll talk about that and so much more as we dive on in and discuss. All right, let's get to it here. The Almanac from yesterday. Yeah, it was a sizzler out there. 106° the afternoon high. 75 was the morning low. 92 and 68 are the averages for this time of year. We were pretty well shy of that record high of 111°. The record for today in Phoenix, 110. We're not going to be far from that one. As we take a look outside right now, just after 9:00, sunny sky out there. And you know, this time of the year, it's going to be hot when we're already at or above 90°. That's the current temperature. at Sky Harbor. Due points at 29, relative humidity 11% wind from the eastsoutheast at 7 mph and the barometer is steady.

[00:01:32]All right, satellite picture out here across the west. Putting that in motion for you over the last 16 hours or so, and you can see what's going on here.

[00:01:42]High pressure is the dominant feature just sitting right over the southwestern United States and that's going to continue. Now, the system is sliding slowly across the region. It'll get to a position east of us by tomorrow. We'll start to see a return flow around that ridge out of the south. That'll be helped by a couple of features. One, a very weak little low snaking its way up the Baja. And another one approaching the California coast. And so we'll see a little bit of moisture streaming in here by tomorrow and especially on Wednesday.

[00:02:12]And we'll see some breezy to windy conditions, too, as the pressure gradient starts to tighten up, particularly over the Colorado River Valley. and especially tomorrow, we could see some pretty windy conditions on Wednesday also.

[00:02:25]All right, here's that watch warning map. Speaking of windy conditions and uh conditions favorable or at least uh somewhat favorable for wildfires and that's occurring across the central and northern plain states with a number of red flag warnings from Nebraska all the way up into parts of Montana, North Dakota. We have frost advisories up there as well, although those have expired by the time uh we've uh we're doing this video now. Uh but temperatures are going to be warming up.

[00:02:52]Very dry over the plain states. It's been kind of a dry spring up there, especially across the Dakotas. So again, fire danger elevated there. Now, here in the southwest, what are we talking about? An extreme heat warning for the greater Phoenix area. And that runs through tomorrow evening at 800 PM. And of course, you want to take your heat precautions. Stay indoors or at least limit your sun exposure during peak heat hours. And if you do have to be outside, of course, lightweight, light colored clothing. Uh take frequent breaks if you can. Get in that shade as much as possible. Drink plenty of water. Keep those electrolytes going, of course. Uh wear the protective gear if you've got it. A big hat. If you can use an umbrella, do that. whatever you got to do to try and stay cool out there. All right, so elsewhere across the country, things are pretty quiet at the moment.

[00:03:47]Convective outlook for today. Marginal risk of severe storms around Norland and some of the adjacent areas as well as portions of the South Atlantic coast.

[00:03:58]Here's that precipitation outlook. This is valid through next Monday morning from the WPC. Rain amounts in Phoenix, nothing. statewide. Very, very little.

[00:04:08]But we might just see enough rain to measure over parts of northern and eastern Arizona. And that will occur either tomorrow or more likely on Wednesday. And when I say more likely, I still think the chance of precipitation across the state is very, very low. But we're going to talk about it right now.

[00:04:25]See what the future may hold as we get to the models. Here's what's going on.

[00:04:28]This is the GFS. It's the 06Z run. This is valid at 5:00 this afternoon. in the upper look at 500 mibars about 18,000 ft above sea level. All right, still troughing over eastern Canada. I don't know how long we've been talking about that, but it's it's starting to weaken a bit. The pattern will be in transition eventually here, but for now, high pressure is in control out here across the West. We do have a little area of low pressure that's developing over the southern portion of Baja. There's another low way out there off the west coast that'll be approaching uh the California coast over the next 24 to 36 hours or so. But for us down at the surface for the rest of the day today, sunny and just plain old hot, maybe even very hot. High temperatures here in the lower deserts anywhere from 105 to 110 degrees. In Phoenix, we're going with a forecast high of 109. Uh but some of those spots, Bullhead City, Lake Havsu City, 110, we might see readings get just a little hotter than that over the hottest desert spots of southeast California.

[00:05:33]Uh but otherwise, it's just yeah, it's a sizzler here over the southwest. And of course, uh even across uh the northern part of the state, Flagstaff, you'll be in the low 80s today. And these again are temperatures that are anywhere from 15 to almost 20° above average statewide and not far from records. I mentioned the record high temperature in Phoenix today, 110°. We'll be right there, very, very close to it. All right, for tonight, clear sky. Overnight lows here in Phoenix generally in the mid60s to mid70s, maybe even dare I suggest upper 70s right there at the urban core. It's going to be a very warm night. And then for tomorrow, sunny, hot again. Temps might come down a degree or two. Highs here in Phoenix, we're still going with 104 to 108. And the hottest desert spots might still flirt with 110. But what's starting to happen by later tomorrow, that ridge is moving off to the east. An area of low pressure is approaching the California coast. In addition, that aformentioned very weak low over the southern Baja moves northward into Southern California. So, there is a bit of a southerntherly flow that begins to develop or a southeasterly flow even here across uh particularly southern Arizona and northern Mexico. And so, we'll start to see at least some moisture creeping into the area. These are the precipitable water values tomorrow evening at 7:00 across the area. Precipitable water, a measure of the amount of moisture through the atmosphere column.

[00:07:05]And these values for May are elevated.

[00:07:08]Now during the monsoon, these would be very very low. But for May, you know, when you see pew watt values up around 2/3, 3/4 of an inch.8 in across uh southern and southeast Arizona, that is somewhat significant. But that's really not going to be enough to produce much.

[00:07:26]Could there be a storm that pops up over southeast Arizona tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow evening? Yes. Could there be a storm over northern Mexico? Yes, but anywhere else probably not. Let's keep going. This is Wednesday and we'll see some clouds begin to move in here. Some upper level moisture and that's really where any of the moisture that we see moving into the state is going to be found. It's really going to be up at the I'd say the 600 to 500 millibar level and and and up through the column. So, we'll call it partly sunny on Wednesday.

[00:08:05]And so yeah, some clouds around and temperatures will back off. The pressure gradients tightening up thanks to that area of low pressure approaching us. The winds out of the southeast turn southerntherly and then eventually start to turn westerly as that low begins to approach Arizona and the tail end of it anyway. And so as a result, uh any moisture that's found will be confined mainly to the eastern part of the state.

[00:08:30]And so we could see some widely scattered showers and thunderstorms develop there. But storms that develop unfortunately as mentioned the the moisture down closer to the surface and really below 12,000 15,000 ft is going to be very very limited. To further highlight that point, here are the precipitable water values in the afternoon on uh Wednesday.

[00:08:56]This is at noon on Wednesday. And those values are already starting to come down again up about threequarters of an inch in southeast Arizona. But look, the the dry air is already coming into south central Arizona. Uh so the the moisture levels are just going to crash here in our part of the state. Uh but for eastern Arizona, again, a couple of showers and storms are possible, but look at those surface due points. I in the teens or even single digits here in the south central deserts and across central Arizona. I mean, yeah, obviously that we're not going to see anything out of that. Just some very high level moisture. And even that's going to decrease pretty quickly uh by late in the afternoon, but the surface levels just bone dry.

[00:09:36]So that's why we just don't see much confidence. Again, could there be some measurable rain someplace? Yeah, we got a 10% chance going for Flag Staff. Uh maybe 20% for the Grand Canyon, 10% Xolo. uh those areas I guess could see a shower, but uh don't get your hopes up for much more than that on Wednesday afternoon here in Phoenix. Yeah, high temperatures upper 90s to about 102°.

[00:10:03]Let's keep it going. This is Thursday and temperatures will continue to fall off mid 90s to about 100 thanks to the ridge weakening, the heights coming down. That low is going to pass by harmlessly. Here's Friday. the highs mid to upper 90s.

[00:10:21]Then after that, we'll start a slow warm up again as ridging builds back in across the southwest. Highs close to 100 on Saturday, maybe just a degree or three above that on Sunday.

[00:10:33]One little feature though that the GFS in a last couple of runs has started to indicate is that an area of low pressure is going to drop in out of the Great Basin and rapidly deepen here over the southwest. Let me show you this feature.

[00:10:45]This is kind of fun. a week from today.

[00:10:48]This is Monday the 18th and it's got an upper low over northern or just off the northern Baja and Southern California coast. And if that's right, there's that might get you pretty excited and that certainly raises some eyebrows. Hey, we got a low pressure there. You see that this time of the year, maybe it starts tapping into some moisture, huh? How about that?

[00:11:11]Yeah, maybe. But given the days and days of dry air that are going to be in here, uh, thanks to westerly and even northwesterly flow, uh, there's just there's no antecedent moisture over the areas. So, and and the dry air gets pushed well down into Mexico. So, it would take quite a while to start getting moisture back up here, even if this scenario were to verify. And I will tell you that's a huge if when you're talking about a closed low out here at a week away. So let's just keep going though, checking out what the GFS has for us here. This is Tuesday the 19th and that low slowly meanders east. And I will say if this happened to occur, yeah, clouds would come in, temperatures come down, breezes increase across the area. It could even get windy. And yeah, there might be some isolated showers and thunderstorms that develop over the higher terrain. And and if this low is as strong as indicated, there might even be a few storms here in the lower deserts if that's right by um next Tuesday or certainly Wednesday as this crosses the region. This is Wednesday the 20th.

[00:12:25]But here's where, you know, I'm going to rain or maybe throw sun on your parade.

[00:12:31]Um, you know, this is just one deterministic model run. Other models, other deterministic models do indicate troughing out here and somewhat lower temperatures, but in terms of sensible weather and rain chances, not so much.

[00:12:48]The GFS right now, the 06 GFS is the clear outlier. However, what are we going to do? We're going to watch model trends. We're going to see what happens.

[00:12:57]Maybe this does come to fruition.

[00:12:59]There's limited support for it, but again, it takes a lot. It takes a lot of pieces to come together to get rain into southern Arizona, especially this time of the year. There's just, you know, that monsoon moisture isn't down there in Mexico yet. Uh while sea surface temperatures are somewhat elevated off of the Baja coast and much has been written about that, they're still, you know, we're not talking about boiling hot water here. We're talking about sea surface temperatures that are still, you know, in the mid60s down there, upper 60s, uh maybe around 70.

[00:13:40]That's not really sufficient foring significant moisture up here. So, I I'm not thrilled. I'm not overly excited about that. Sure, it's an interesting scenario because let's say this happened, too. Uh temperatures would come down quite a bit. In fact, we may actually see highs below average if this were to verify. Uh but again, that's uh that's hoping for a lot right there. All right, rainfall for Phoenix. This is off the GFS Ensemble. This goes out through the 25th of May. And this is what I told you. Yeah, there's a couple of members that show some rain, but 31 members in this ensemble and like almost what 85% of them show nothing. So, there's that.

[00:14:24]Euro ensemble, 51 members. You got four, let's see, three, four, five, maybe six that try to show some measurable rain.

[00:14:35]So, that's not going to happen in all probability. And the Euro AI ensemble is the same story. The ensemble mean is basically nothing. So, we're we're not too concerned about rainfall just yet, but hey, we do these videos because we like to talk weather.

[00:14:51]We geek out on weather, and sometimes it just does what you're not expecting it to do.

[00:14:58]That's what's so fun about it. All right, temperatures off the National Blend of Models. Well, in the short term, it's Yeah, for the most part, the weather is going to do what we expected to do, and that's stay hot today, tomorrow. Cooling trend for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Temperatures will hold right around the century mark over the weekend. They may dip a little bit below what's shown here, but for the most part at or above average temperatures are the favored outcome for the next 10 days.

[00:15:27]All right, looking at the CPC outlook, speaking of for that 8 to 14 day period.

[00:15:34]And again, much is going to be discussed on part of this. Now, first, uh, temperatures probability is heavily skewed toward above average for the east and really for most of the country.

[00:15:43]Quite candidly, above average temperatures are favored across almost all the lower 48.

[00:15:49]So, uh, it's really going to feel like spring across much of the country. And for some folks, they're going to love that. uh the folks that were in the deep freeze in the northeast, in the northern plain states, and the Great Lakes, uh even the places that saw the chilly temps even as recently as a few days ago, uh even this morning in North Dakota, for example, you're going to love this. Now, the rest of us here in the Southwest, we're already we're like trying to plan for late October. We're already thinking about Halloween. Um that's and that's the reality sometimes when you get in these weather patterns.

[00:16:22]But here's the more interesting part.

[00:16:24]This is the uh 8 to 14-day precipitation outlook and probabilities are skewed toward above average across Arizona, across the entire state. Does that mean we're going to get rain? No, it doesn't.

[00:16:37]It just means probability is skewed toward above average.

[00:16:43]So, we'll watch. I mean, again, you know, one of these little upper lows doesn't take a lot to get storms over the mountains. That's for sure. rain here in the southern part of the state.

[00:16:52]That's going to take that's going to take a little bit more. We're going to have to really work on that part. And of course, uh the one of the areas that is most heavily skewed toward above average precipitation is across Texas and they could certainly use the rain over West Texas. Um very dry conditions have been prevalent for for a while.

[00:17:14]All right, that is going to do it for the Phoenix Arizona weather discussion for today. My next video is due back here tomorrow morning. And should you happen to enjoy these videos, and of course you do, why would you be here otherwise, well then be sure to subscribe, like, share, click that notification bell, leave those comments, questions, and suggestions. If you're really enjoying what we do here, you want to support the channel, click the thanks icon below the video here on YouTube, do those YouTube hypes, all that stuff. Or another way to support us is via PayPal. Gravshow atgmail.com is our PayPal address. It's G R O FF [email protected] for PayPal, our Venmo, that's also linked up down in the description below. So again, if you're liking what we do here, you want to support uh independent folks such as myself and uh just doing the weather, geeking out on weather, and uh providing this for you, well then hey, I really do appreciate that and thank you in advance for doing so. The Phoenix, Arizona Weather Discussion is powered by our friends at OnDemand Power. That's ondemandpwr.com.

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[00:19:17]Okay, maybe more like one of these May storms where it's, you know, you know, just kind of a drizzle at a time, a drop or two at a time, but you know, you got to crawl before you can walk.

[00:19:30]You got to walk before you can run, right? But still, it is unlike any other show on the internet. Please check it out in the Blind with Mike and Dan.

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[00:19:42]Eastern, 400 p.m. Pacific. once again in the blind with Mike and Dan. A show unlike any other on the internet. That much I can promise you. All right. Thank you guys so much for watching. All of your continued support. It is amazing.

[00:19:54]You guys are fantastic. You are legends.

[00:19:56]So greatly appreciated. Please, I want you to be safe though. Stay cool. Stay hydrated out there and have yourselves a delightful rest of your Monday.