New Mexico Summer Monsoon Season Precipitation Mapping

Updated: 09-30-2023

The maps below are focused on capturing unique elements of the summer monsoon season across New Mexico including total precipitation, intensity, and frequency of precipitation events. Maps are updated once a day from June 15 - September 30th using gridded precipitation data (nominally 4km by 4km) provided by the National Weather Service Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service. The gridded data provide a spatial estimate of true precipitation amounts across the region and should be interpreted with caution at very fine scales. Note that radar coverage is limited across the Four Corners and precipitation amounts will be underestimated across this region. More information on how the gridded data are produced can be found here.

Companion SW Monsoon climate monitoring products:

Email Mike Crimmins with questions and/or suggestions on how to improve these plots or ideas for additional variables


Total Precip

Total precipitation: Daily precipitation data summed from 6/15 to present. (Alternate color scale, Colorblind-friendly)





Perc Days

Percent of days with rain: A count of days observing greater than or equal to 0.01" of rain divided by the number of days between 6/15 and the current date. A value of 50% indicates that rain was observed on half of the days between 6/15 and the current date.


Max 1-day

Max 1-day precipitation: This maps shows the single maximum 1-day precipitation amount observed in each data grid cell between 6/15 and the current date. (Colorblind-friendly)


Latest Day

Recent precipitation: This map is the most recent one-day total precipitation. This will often be the total from yesterday through 12Z of the current day.
All daily precip maps

Perc Avg

Percent of average precipitation: Percent of average is calculated by dividing the total accumulated precipitation by the long-term (1991-2020) mean and is an indication of how much totals have deviated from average precipitation for the June 15th to present period. 100% is equal to average for the time period shown on the map. (Seasonal Average Total Precipitation)


Intensity

Daily intensity index: This index is the simple ratio between the total precipitation over the time period and the number of days observing rain with units in ‘inches/day’. A high value indicates that most of the total precipitation came in a small number of large or intense events.


Days Since

Days since 0.05" rain event: This map indicates the number of days since at least a precipitation amount of 0.05" was observed in each data grid cell. Higher values indicate a longer time period or break since at least light rainfall was observed.


Anom TS

Daily change in precipitation anomaly coverage: This figure depicts the daily change in the coverage of different categories of precipitation anomalies or differences from average. It is calculated by counting the number of grid cells in each anomaly category (e.g. below or above average) each day and then dividing it by the total number of grid cells for New Mexico. For example, if the brown or below average category is greatest for any given day, then that indicates most of the state was observing below average precipitation.


Other SW monsoon season resources:

Climate Science Applications Program - University of Arizona Cooperative Extension

Latest https://github.com/mcrimmins/AZ_NM_MonsoonMaps


Last Updated: “09-30-2023”© 2022 The Arizona Board of Regents. All contents copyrighted. All rights reserved.