Arizona storms bring weekend flash flood threat

You're watching the Fox 10 Weather Experts with meteorologist Erica Horvathin on Fox 10 News. Welcome back. Well, today, temperatures climbed to 85 degrees. We saw some peaks of sunshine between the clouds, and that helped us warm up to right around normal for this time in October. Right now, we're at 82, so the clouds have caused us to cool down a few degrees from that high temperature. And up north, we're at 56 in Flagstaff, 63 in Prescott, and really just low 60s to mid-60s across all of the high country, except for that highest terrain near Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon We have lots of cloud cover moving in from the southwest and this is just the beginning of the moisture moving into the state. It will become thicker cloud cover and eventually just full on rain as we go through tonight and tomorrow and it will last through the weekend. There's currently a lot of tropical moisture being pulled northward from what was Tropical Storm Vance and most of that is bypassing us to the east but we'll still draw a little bit of it As a disturbance tracks its way over Arizona tomorrow. So we are going to be seeing some potentially strong to severe storms for our Friday. We're under a marginal risk here across central and southern Arizona. And this calls for strong damaging wind gusts of at least 60 miles per hour and some hail. We could even see some moderate to large size hail. But with this storm system, we are not expecting that tornado threat. And what you'll primarily see as well, flooding. There is even a higher risk of flooding than the severe storm criteria like damaging winds and hail. We're under a risk of scattered flash flooding tomorrow, but it will also continue on Saturday and Sunday. In fact, on Sunday, that threat widens even more. That's because we're going to be seeing... The second storm will move in Saturday night to Sunday, and that one is going to be bringing even heavier, more widespread, long-duration rain. So with the Friday event tomorrow, we could pick up around a half an inch to an inch of rain. On Sunday, we could see an additional one to two inches here in the valley. That is a lot of rain, especially... Considering how much we've already seen with the storms in the past few weeks, our ground is very, very saturated and in Flagstaff we're going to be picking up kind of similar amounts potentially even more on Sunday. So this could cause some river flooding and there are a couple of rivers that we're going to have our eyes on the forecast calling for moderate flood stage potential at Oak Creek in Page Springs and high Major flood potential at the Moenkopi Wash near Tuba City. Wet Beaver Creek at Rimrock could see moderate flood stage. And even the Cave Creek near Cave Creek could see at least action flood stage. Same with Oak Creek at Sedona. So the water levels are expected to rise. And it looks like the water levels are going to be the highest and spiking to their highest during that Sunday part of the weekend, the Sunday storm system. Now, with all that in mind, here's a look at our futurecast, timing it out for you. As we go through tonight, we're still looking pretty dry, but mostly cloudy. And tomorrow throughout the morning, still looking pretty dry. But most storms will start moving in by around mid to late morning, early afternoon. This is 12 o'clock, and this line looks to push from west to northeast across the state throughout the midday and afternoon hours. So at 4 p.m. Very stormy out there. It does start to wind down for some from the west to east by the evening hours. Still going out east closer to the White Mountains, though, at that time. And we could see even more storms developing tomorrow late evening through the overnight. But it does move out mostly by Saturday morning. So Saturday is going to be a drier day for Halloween. And we could see some hit or miss rain here or there. But generally, around trick-or-treating time... During the afternoons we should be dry and the Sunday round of rain won't arrive until late Saturday night. Here's a look at our temperatures. 66 will be our low tonight in Phoenix, 54 in Sedona and 40 in Flagstaff. And tomorrow we'll see temperatures cooling by about 10 degrees from today thanks to the clouds and the rain. So have those warmer layers around where depending on where you are in the state as we go through the weekend. We'll see 70s in the valley through the weekend and next week.