Messages
Hotter than normal temperatures will continue through the week.
Chances for isolated showers and thunderstorms will linger through Monday for portions of our forecast area.
Plaincast — the National Weather Service forecast, decoded into plain English
What is an Area Forecast Discussion?
Area Forecast Discussions are the real forecasts, written 3 to 4 times daily by NWS meteorologists reading the models and interpreting what they mean for your area. They offer far deeper insight than any weather app, but they're written in dense meteorological shorthand. Plaincast uses Anthropic's Claude to summarize them into plain English, side by side with the annotated original.
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 Las Vegas, 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.
Discussion
Persistent ridging across the Desert Southwest will keep temperatures above normal through the week. Monday will be the "coolest" day of the week, with afternoon high temperatures topping out around 2 top 5 degrees above normal. Temperatures across the region will increase on Tuesday and Wednesday as we dry out. Across the Mojave Desert, temperatures will be around 4 to 7 degrees above normal through the second half of the week, with temperatures around 2 to 4 degrees above normal across the southern Great Basin and in the Owens Valley. The long duration of these anomalous temperatures will result in widespread Major-to- Extreme Heat Risk across the Mojave Desert during the latter half of the week with widespread Moderate Heat Risk across the southern Great Basin and Owens Valley.
Current radar and satellite imagery show isolated showers and thunderstorms moving southwest to northeast through Mohave County and across the southern Great Basin. Storms will continue to develop on the higher terrain across northwestern Arizona and the southern Great Basin this afternoon, with the potential for isolated convection to chance of rain up in the higher terrain of Clark County an the Mojave Preserve. Gusty outflow winds, localized downpours, and lightning are the main threats with today's storms. Overnight, moisture will increase across our southern and eastern zones. This additional moisture will help to fuel another round of afternoon showers and thunderstorms for areas south and east of the I-15 corridor tomorrow. Beyond Monday, dry southwesterly flow aloft will cause moisture to decrease across the region through the end of the week.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Las Vegas discussion at /o/VEF/, see what changed since the last one, or open The National Desk for where the weather is today.