Monsoon continues to ghost the Southwest into next week

As the summer wears on, it looks more and more like the monsoon is going to be another "nonsoon" in the Southwest.

Rainfall is running quite a bit below average across the Southwest, and temperatures remain well above average as a result of less rain and lower humidity levels.

Through Aug. 6, Tucson was running 7.6 degrees above average for the month, while Phoenix was about 6 degrees above average.

Places like Las Vegas and Palm Springs have yet to record measurable rainfall this monsoon season.

There's still some time left in the season - probably another 5-6 weeks of the core of the season, but the next week or so is definitely not looking promising.

The issue over the next week will be the lack of a ridge over the South and Southwest.

When the setup looks like this, the flow is more out of the west and southwest and not out of the south-southeast like we need to pick up the moisture from Mexico and bring it northwestward into the Southwest.

A westerly flow basically shuts the door on moisture and leaves the Southwest in a pattern more typical of early summer.

The door may start to open a little bit toward the middle of the month, but we'll take a closer look at that next week.

The lack of a monsoon is adding to what is becoming a more widespread drought situation across the West. Take a look at this week's Drought Monitor:

We've talked at length before about how the building drought has been concerning in Oregon and Northern California, but drought conditions have really been expanding across the Four Corners recently because of the slow monsoon season.

The increase has been notable - the amount of area in any of the drought categories in the West has increased from 55 percent three months ago to nearly 77 percent now.

Elsewhere in the West, wildfire season is starting to heat up along the West Coast.

The Apple Fire has been making some headlines in Southern California recently and is one of the larger fires in the West right now. It's currently just 30 percent contained.

There have been some large fires in Northern California, but nearly all of those are very well contained.

Due to thunderstorms over recent days, there has been an uptick in fires in the Northwest because of lightning. There were nearly 100 new fires reported on Friday morning, although they were mainly small fires. Even so, they will need to be watched in the coming days. The good news is that there are no major wind events on the horizon in the coming days.

The area from Oregon through Northern California remains the area of most concern because of how dry it has been. We'll continue to have to watch for dry thunderstorms.

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