Hint of winter to arrive in West
Snow may fall over the higher elevations of the northern Rockies later this week as a cooler pattern settles over the region.
Transcript
00:00 At this point, we should be nearly done with the effects of the North American monsoon.
00:06 But here's the thing, we haven't had too much monsoonal activity.
00:09 For those of you who have never been through the monsoon season, or really don't know too
00:13 much about it, allow me to clue you in here.
00:15 Remember, the word monsoon doesn't actually refer to heavy rain or gusty thunderstorms.
00:21 It really refers to a switch in the overarching wind pattern of a region.
00:25 We generally see that between June 15th and September 30th in the desert southwest.
00:30 And as a result from that switch in the wind pattern, you can see high pressure driving
00:34 that switch, we usually see some increased moisture and thunderstorms as overarching
00:39 impacts.
00:41 But here's the thing, this year we haven't seen much of that.
00:44 We've had some thunderstorms here and there, but more of the rain, especially across California,
00:49 has been from larger events like Hillary a few weeks ago.
00:51 Now that said, we do have low pressure moving onshore here, and that's going to drive the
00:56 forecast across the southwest and really the inner mountain west as we move into Friday
01:01 and the weekend.
01:03 And that will help to increase that monsoonal moisture.
01:06 You'll notice thunderstorms from Las Vegas out towards Cedar City, Elko, to Salt Lake
01:10 City, Grand Junction, all the way down to Phoenix.
01:13 More storms than we've seen in a little while.
01:15 We could use the rain, so it's not all bad news, but the wind gusts are bad news.
01:20 At this point we could see some short-term flooding and gusty winds driving dust storms
01:24 across the southwest as we see that monsoon flow continue.
01:28 You'll notice today we do have a thunderstorm in your active weather exclusive forecast
01:31 for Salt Lake City, as well as Las Vegas and Phoenix, looking a bit warmer in Denver with
01:36 less in the way of moisture, at least for now.
01:38 Saturday, looking at more in the way of thunderstorms in Grand Junction, Salt Lake City, Cedar City,
01:43 Las Vegas, back down toward Phoenix again as low pressure continues to hold on to the
01:47 forecast here as we move into the weekend.
01:50 Phoenix with a thunderstorm today and tomorrow, but more in the way of sunshine as that area
01:54 of low pressure loses its grip on Phoenix by the time we get to Sunday and the start
01:59 of this next week.
02:00 Thank you.
02:01 [BLANK_AUDIO]