Plaincast decodes the National Weather Service's Area Forecast Discussion — the real forecast, written 3 to 4 times a day by the meteorologist on shift — into plain English. The discussion is where a forecaster explains their reasoning: which models disagree, what they are watching, and how confident they are. Below is the current edition for Albuquerque, with its shorthand expanded. The full experience — an AI plain-English summary beside the annotated original — loads with JavaScript, and every one of the 68 forecast offices has its own edition.
Area Forecast Discussion · National Weather Service Albuquerque (ABQ) · issued Sunday, August 23 at 1:21 PM MDT.
Messages
Showers and thunderstorms will decrease in coverage today and Monday, then increase in coverage Tuesday through Thursday, with a risk of cloud-to-ground lightning, erratic wind gusts, and ponding of water on roads.
A risk of locally heavy rainfall and flash flooding will develop with storms along and east of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains both Tuesday and Wednesday.
Moderate-to-high heat risk will impact much of central and eastern New Mexico during the first half of the week, then spread to western areas as well during the latter half of the week with near-record high temperatures each day.
Short Term
(This evening through Monday night) Issued at 1211 PM MDT Sun Aug 23 2026
Upper level high pressure remains squarely planted over NM with central 500 mb heights of about 597-598 decameters. This is keeping temperatures generally 5 to 10 degrees above normal. This orientation of the high has not offered any recent moisture intrusions to come into the state, but earlier monsoon moisture has been getting recycled with daily rounds of storms producing small, but mighty footprints. More stability has wrapped into the southeastern and south central areas of the forecast area, inhibiting storms there, and this has shoved the focus for convective initiation into the western and northern high terrain. The other feature of significance is a small perturbation riding in the weak westerly flow over CO which will spawn storms through the afternoon, and cold pools from these cells should eventually lead to a few more storms into northern NM through the evening. Any storms that make into northeastern NM could find localized shear enhancements near this cold pool, and could briefly turn strong to severe through the evening. Elsewhere outflows will keep low, but present, storm prospects in the northern and central valleys this evening with very low probabilities for airmass storms in the east central plains. Leftover cloud debris will then be slow to clear through the morning Monday.
Conditions on Monday will be similar with another small shortwave trough moving on the northern periphery of the high into CO, likely igniting additional storms that will sag into northern NM. A moist backdoor frontal boundary will also be seeping into northeastern NM, potentially aiding in convective initiation while also introducing more shear for additional strong cells. Instability will expand a bit southward, introducing low storm chances for the central to south central highlands and mountains along with a more southward extent of the eastern plains. Temperatures will remain hot and above normal with only a degree or two of "cooling" in the northeast while southeastern zones gain as much. This will push Roswell to 105, Heat Advisory criteria for the area, so after coordination with neighboring offices, this advisory statement will be issued with this forecast package for Monday.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Albuquerque discussion at /o/ABQ/, see what changed since the last one, or open The National Desk for where the weather is today.