00:00Hurricane Rachel brought powerful waves and flooding to Puerto Vallarta's scenic boardwalk last Thursday.
00:05The storm followed widespread damage and flooding in parts of northern Mexico from Hurricane Polo,
00:11which was a harder hit earlier last week.
00:14So, again, we're tracking this current storm staying a little farther offshore,
00:19but still it did bring those impacts to Puerto Vallarta and parts of the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico.
00:26So a couple things to point out.
00:27By the way, look at this. NOLO has passed the international dateline and now is a typhoon.
00:34So NOLO is still on the map.
00:35Usually we wouldn't mark typhoons on this map centered on the Central and East Pacific,
00:40but you can still see it out there the way we framed the map up.
00:43Here's Hurricane Rachel, which has a very large eye, very large eye feature.
00:48It's kind of wobbly, though. It's not a perfectly symmetrical storm.
00:50And then to the east, we're watching this area south of Mexico for likely development in the days to come.
00:56So here's the latest on Rachel. Rachel's moving west, west, northwest as a hurricane.
01:01And we'll continue to watch this move in that west fashion.
01:05But look at this. It's going to basically move into a zone here where there's very weak steering flow for
01:10a time.
01:11And it may park itself Thursday into Friday, and it barely moves during that time frame.
01:16Most likely, then, additional winds from the west tied to a big trough will scoop this up
01:23and nudge it toward the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico, again, several hundred miles south of California.
01:29There is kind of a split in the fork in the road, if you will.
01:34So we'll talk about that here in a minute.
01:36It's not a done deal that it moves closer to land and may come in here as a weakening system.
01:41So water temps out this way, you can see why we have so much protection off the coast of Southern
01:46California.
01:46Look at the water temp.
01:47We often consider 79 or 80 degrees Fahrenheit as the kind of the minimum temperature
01:52to support the development and maintenance of tropical storms and hurricanes.
01:56This time of the year, 67 degrees out there.
02:00So it's much, much colder, about a dozen degrees Fahrenheit too cold.
02:03That's why storms so reliably weaken as they move north.
02:06Now, there's shallow water in the Gulf of California.
02:10This is in Mexico here.
02:11And that shallow water is well protected.
02:13That stays warm for a while, 88, 86 degree warmth.
02:16But that's a relatively small body of water as opposed to the open water of the Pacific.
02:20So here's scenario number one for Rachel.
02:23After it moves west and presses pause, this big trough that will decisively end the California heat wave
02:29is going to possibly nudge it east.
02:31And that could bring some heavy rain potential into parts of Arizona and New Mexico.
02:35Yet again, after the record wettest September in Albuquerque history.
02:39That's scenario one.
02:40This is the most likely case.
02:42Jet stream a little farther south.
02:43Moisture would be steered east, increasing flooding risk into the desert southwest.
02:47There is another scenario, though.
02:49And this would just be that it still stalls.
02:52It sits out there.
02:53This trough isn't quite deep enough to tap into the steering influences.
02:58And therefore, in this case, it would just fade offshore, never making it in.
03:03I wanted to show you future radar and clouds.
03:04You're going to probably notice two things.
03:06The nucleus of the storm will never make it into the desert southwest.
03:09Here it is Wednesday and Thursday.
03:11There's the area of widespread heavy rain near the eyewall.
03:14But I'm going to press pause at one point.
03:15When you begin to see moisture, cloud cover gets sheared east.
03:19And watch this.
03:20Even though the core of the storm is still away to the southwest, hundreds of miles offshore,
03:24that moisture may help to fuel some scattered showers and thunderstorms in the desert southwest.
03:28Even though the core of the storm is off to the west, still way offshore and hundreds of miles southwest
03:33of L.A.
03:34So we've got to keep an eye out for the potential for some showers and storms in the southwest.
03:38Regardless, we're going to be watching that.
03:39We'll also be watching for potential development off to the south of Mexico here with that other red blob.
03:45And that moisture that streams in is going to pretty decisively end.
03:50Well, that, in conjunction with the trough, should end the heat wave here in L.A.
03:56So look at this.
03:57You can see temperatures hedging downward pretty sharply.
03:59We're going to go from 103 in L.A. Tuesday to clearly the end of the heat wave.
04:0385 Saturday, 80 Sunday, 77 Monday.
04:06And the trough that could steer Rachel in to Mexico is the same trough that's going to cool us down
04:12here in Southern California.
04:13More flooding for parts of Texas over the weekend.
04:15Heavy rain caused dangerous flash flooding in Athens on Saturday, flooding roadways in the area.
04:20Anna?
