Weekend Fcst Briefing as of Wed 02/26 & Hour - By - Hour forecast access

Welcome to this weather briefing video regarding the upcoming weekend forecast and how to access hour-by-hour forecasts available from the National Weather Service. I’m meteorologist Charlotte Dewey. Please be aware this briefing is valid thru the afternoon of Thursday, February 27th. A significant storm pattern change will take place later this week. The Pacific storm track will brush past or through the Desert Southwest beginning Thursday. Temperatures will cool from the 80-degree readings earlier in the week into the low 70s and upper 60s by the weekend. Breezy conditions will develop Thursday as the first storm passes to our north through Nevada and Utah. A much larger and moisture-rich storm will move into the area beginning late Friday and linger into the weekend, introducing rain chances for the lower Deserts and higher terrain of the forecast area. Here is a precipitation outlook provided by the Weather Prediction Center. This 24-hr precipitation forecast is valid Friday afternoon February 28th through Saturday evening March 1st. This will be the window where the bulk of the precipitation is expected to fall. Here are some desert rainfall amounts: some locations could see half an inch to just over an inch by Sunday. The foothills and higher terrain could see one inch to over 2 inches possibly. Snow levels generally remain around 6,000 feet, keeping most of the precipitation over the NWS Phoenix forecast area in the form of rain. There are a lot of outdoor events going on this weekend, including Spring Training baseball, racing at Phoenix International Raceway, marathon running, Renaissance fairing, Arizona Railway Day, visiting Joshua Tree National Park, along with several others. Some of the impacts from the weather will include (but not limited to): Slick roadways for the afternoon commute, breezy to gusty winds creating isolated blowing dust, isolated lightning strikes on Friday evening and into early Saturday morning, light snow accumulation on the higher peak mountains, and ponding of water on roadways Saturday, however given the long duration of this event, flooding is not anticipated. Want to get an hour-by-hour forecast for your event or your location this weekend? Here’s how… At the bottom of the NWS Phoenix internet homepage, there is a link for “Forecast Weather Tables” highlighted by the circle at the bottom right of the screen. Clicking this will bring you to a map interface where you can enter a specific location or click on the map to get a weather table with your point forecast. You can set your forecast interval between six, three and one hour(s). Here is a sample weather table for Yuma, Arizona. All the elements in the table are labelled along the left hand side and you can scroll right to left to adjust what forecast window you are looking at. Another way of getting an hour-by-hour forecast is through the Hourly Weather Graph. This link is down on the right hand side of the “point and click” page. Clicking on the Hourly Weather Graph link will open the hourly graphics for the forecast point you clicked on. You can adjust the period displayed by selecting a different time from the drop down menu at the top of the graphic. Stay up on the forecast. Be sure to visit our website weather.gov/phoenix for the latest forecasts and connect with us on our Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages.