Arizona Weather Force has issued a Thunderstorm Watch that is a direct update to the forecast issued on December 15th in the Long-Range Weather Advisory.
A cutoff system that is gaining more strength is going to impact San Diego and Imperial County hard overnight tonight and into Friday. This same system will deliver a strong jet stream to Arizona on Friday and Saturday, with Friday being the worst day.
Storms moving from southwest to northeast within the tropical moisture conveyor belt will deliver lightning, hail, strong winds, torrential downpours for flooding, and even the chance of tornadoes. Given the position of this upper-level jet and available surface instability, the highest risk of a tornado would be Pinal County, Tucson forecast area, and Cochise County.
This system will vacate later Saturday.
I would say that the Southern part of Arizona across parts of Pima, Pinal, and Cochise County would have needed a Severe Thunderstorm Watch alert instead of this, but as it stands the wording for such has already been said so consider that your alert without overlapping alerts on the system.
SNOW: A couple inches on the Mogollon Rim during this period with thundersnow possible, otherwise Sunrise Resort will win with over 6-12″ at that elevation as this is a relatively warm system.
For the predicted rainfall forecast from December 17th for this event, please visit this link as it remains on the AZWF forecast – https://arizonaweatherforce.com/2023/12/17/strong-pacific-storm-to-impact-arizona-this-friday-and-saturday-flooding-expected/
– Raiden Storm –
https://www.arizonaweatherforce.com
Master General Meteorologist – is the Owner and CEO of AZWF, a consulting meteorologist with over 26 years’ experience for over 50 companies, including energy, agriculture, aviation, marine, leisure, and many more areas. He has certs from Mississippi State for broadcast met and Penn State forecasting certs MET 101, 241, 341 and 361 as a meteorologist, but before then was completely self-taught, barely learning a thing from the schools that he did not already know.
NOTE: Alerts are posted on here, be it a tornado watch, etc, and these alerts are issued from this office and nowhere else. At times, which is often, you will see an alert forecast posted on here that you do not see elsewhere.