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Thursday, June 25, 2009
Here Come the Rains Again
By John Fleck
Journal Staff Writer
Our summer rainy season, which has been creeping up on us since late May, appears to have arrived.
Tuesday's thunderstorms over Albuquerque were "more 'monsoonish' than anything we've seen so far," said Ed Polasko at the National Weather Service in Albuquerque.
Albuquerque and much of New Mexico have seen rainy weather for more than a month. The difference Tuesday was a slug of moist air that created isolated thundershowers capable of a quick inch of rain. That marks the difference between the gloomy, sometimes rainy weather we've been having and the onset of the monsoon season.
"That's indicative of a monsoonal moisture pattern," Polasko said Wednesday.
The North American monsoon involves summer rains in a region from the mountains of Mexico through the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. It is characterized by a shift in wind patterns, with moist air streaming up from the south to fuel summer thunderstorms.
Monsoon rains are characterized by usually short-lived, often dramatic isolated thunderstorms.
Defining the beginning of the monsoon season in Albuquerque is tricky, because it does not have a sharp starting point. But Polasko said a shift in the westerly winds and an increase in moisture are signals that this week's weather is different than the rainy weather that has been hanging around New Mexico since late May.
If the monsoon rain pattern lingers, it would be an early start. On average, the summer rains usually start in Albuquerque during the first week in July.
Monsoon seasons with an early start tend to be wetter, and Polasko noted that Albuquerque's record-setting 2006 summer rains, which brought more than 7 inches, also began in late June.
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