00:00Well, we're really concerned about dangerous flash flooding. A dangerous flash flood threat
00:04is emerging, and it's already in progress across New Mexico. In fact, we've already had
00:11some major problems, including the risk of a dam failure. A flash flood emergency has been issued,
00:17and we're going to be concerned about additional hazards to lives and property here, as areas that
00:22are typically dry, eastern Arizona into New Mexico, are facing some severe dangers here.
00:28And some of this, a lot of this, most of the moisture can be traced to Hurricane Pola,
00:32which made its second Mexican landfall this afternoon. Well, let's take a look at a summary
00:38graphic here, and then I'm going to get us into a bit more of the details here with the computer
00:43models. So if we were to highlight the area where we're most concerned, most concerned specifically
00:48in a restricted zone about flooding rain and extreme rainfall rates, we're looking at southwestern New
00:56Mexico areas near Silver City, up into Albuquerque, and east-northeast up into the Raton Mesa,
01:01areas like Cimarron, and up into Pueblo, Colorado, with extreme rainfall rates. Big picture, we have a
01:08deep trough across the west, and we are tracking, again, polo as it transitions from a hurricane to a
01:16tropical storm, tropical depression, then a tropical rainstorm. And this transition is going to happen
01:21somewhat swiftly here over the mountains of northwestern Mexico more quickly than would
01:25happen if this was a tropical system moving in from, say, the Atlantic to Georgia, where there's
01:30relatively flat real estate down in the southern part of the state. The mountains there in Mexico
01:34really shred these storms quickly, but the moisture is a big deal. I want to take us into a look
01:41at
01:41how this appears here. And there is an upper-level low-pressure system as well, even kind of tangential
01:47to the main storm, tangential to Polo, and that's increasing the rainfall rates as well. It's one
01:54more argument for lift. It's also one of the steering mechanisms. This trough across the west is helping
01:59to guide the storm in in a pretty decisive way. So this is going to spin and get absorbed by
02:06this
02:06interior southwestern trough in the southern branch of the jet stream. And Wednesday night to Thursday,
02:11still some rain into the desert southwest. But the handoff, maybe not a handoff, but the transition
02:17from the greatest flood risk being in the desert southwest, Arizona and New Mexico, into the southern
02:24and central plains is going to happen Wednesday night and Thursday. And eventually some of you in the
02:30northeast have been asking, are we going to see some of this really heavy rain as well? And you'll
02:36notice that overall there is a ridge that's going to divert most of the moisture north and the upper
02:41level support's going to weaken. So when the trough front rolls east into areas east of the Appalachians,
02:47it really kind of washes out Thursday, Friday. And a lot of you in areas like New York or Philadelphia
02:52may only see a tenth of an inch of rain on Friday night. But there's going to be another system
02:55that
02:55emerges to the south. The second disturbance rides along a wave. And this guy into Sunday is going
03:02to send some heavier rain. It could be a half an inch to an inch and a half in some
03:05of those areas.
03:06So the main threat here, I'm going to go to another graphic just to summarize things before we kind
03:12of dig deeper into the modeling. We have two areas. One, currently Tuesday night, Wednesday,
03:21lingering into Thursday for New Mexico, and then into parts of Nebraska too. But then the second half
03:27of the week is going to be focused more on Texas, Oklahoma, and parts of southwest Missouri as well.
03:34So that's how we kind of break this apart. And let's look at some convective parameters because
03:42there is potential for a few severe storms. We have seen some severe thunderstorms this Tuesday night.
03:46You'll notice this Tuesday afternoon. You'll notice that this in the short term, Tuesday evening,
03:52we do have some areas here with some instability. And in that kind of like mustardy greenish yellow
03:58here, we're getting closer to about almost 2,000 joules per kilogram of Cape. That's pretty good
04:03instability for eastern New Mexico. The NAM produces a little bit more of that than others. But there's
04:09been a little bit of severe thunderstorm activity embedded within this. The flash flood threat is by
04:13far the biggest concern. So what we're doing is highlighting southeast New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle,
04:19and west Texas for flash flooding. There is a risk of isolated tornadoes and damaging wind. But man,
04:25if we were to characterize the biggest concern here, it is absolutely the flash flooding. Absolutely the
04:31flash flooding here. And again, some of the biggest concerns. I'm going to just check one note here. I do
04:36want to make sure that I share this with you here. Flash flood emergency for the potential failure of the
04:42McLeod Dam in Dona Ana County, New Mexico. That's one of the more urgent flood concerns. So we do have
04:49the
04:49severe thunderstorm threat, but the flooding by far is the big deal. Desert southwest all the way to Iowa
04:53and into parts of Texas. We have some big concerns. As this spreads east, we're going to see a
04:58significant high risk to lives and property here. And one of the other storylines that's pretty
05:05fascinating. We have been so, so, so dry in Dallas and in Waco, Texas, south of Dallas on I-35
05:13and in
05:14Oklahoma City. And we're going to get in some really heavy rain in some of these areas Thursday and
05:19Friday. In fact, by the numbers, you can see the GFS is hinting at Dallas. If you take it at
05:28face value,
05:28it brings Dallas 5.1 inches of rain. There is a convective element to this. That means small scale,
05:35localized thunderstorms. And man, you can't really nail down details too specifically on who's going to see
05:41it and who won't. And to that point, the European, which is every bit as much of a valid model,
05:46produces 1.7 inches in Dallas, but it brings a lollipop of 2.9 farther south. Again, you're also
05:54going to notice potential there's Clovis, New Mexico with 3.2 inches in eastern New Mexico. So
05:59that's a big part of the storyline too. And I know I've been saying less about the Midwest,
06:04two to four inches of rain, some spots four plus. That's a big deal as well. So we need to
06:10keep a
06:10close eye on that. And in fact, our rainfall forecast here, I'm going to present this to
06:15you in a few ways here in the final seconds. Here it is. We have two areas with four to
06:20eight
06:20inches of rain, including northern Kansas, north central parts of New Mexico, four plus inches,
06:25and also near and west of Dallas. Amazingly, Dallas has only had one one hundredth of an inch of rain
06:32since August 1st. We're looking at three to six inches this week. Let's go down to Waco, Texas.
06:37We've had eleven hundredths of an inch since August 1st. We're looking at two to four inches
06:42and up into Oklahoma City, we've only had four tenths. We're looking at two to four inches of rain
06:46as well.
