From what some of the folks are saying, the upcoming rain event from Hurricane Odile could be worse than what we got from the remains of Norbert last week. We got ~ 3″ of rain here in Gilbert; they’re saying central Arizona and the Valley of the Sun could get up to as much as 5″ of rain spread over the next several days:

“Hurricane Odile has made landfall in the Baja Peninsula and it is working its way up toward Arizona right now,” 3TV meteorologist April Warnecke said as she explained that rain chances start Monday night into Tuesday morning, with the heaviest rain likely Wednesday and Thursday in several rounds of showers.

Although Odile will not be a hurricane, or even a tropical storm, by the time it gets here, the weather pattern will have an impact.

With rainfall totals between 1 and 5 inches, Warnecke said there is a potential for more flooding.

The rain will not end Thursday, however. Showers are in the forecast through the weekend.

The first sign of Odile is in a sharply-defined wall of clouds sliding in from the southeast:

…which makes sense when you look at this very imposing pic from the National Hurricane Center:

…and see that while the hurricane is south of us the nearest clouds to us are from the southeast. Gee whiz – that’s one a big freakin’ mess of clouds and rain. Who woulda thought I’d have to move to Arizona to be impacted by hurricanes in 2014? Heck, I may end up having to get me one of these! (Thanks to Goodboy “Goose” Dwyer for the link!)

And if this weren’t bad enough, Dr. Jeff Masters’ blog at Weather Underground is calling for yet another tropical system that could be ready to form off the western coast of Mexico later this week (my boldings):

Our top models for predicting genesis of tropical cyclones are keen on developing a broad area of low pressure (Invest 97E) located about 500 miles south-southeast of Acapulco, Mexico. This system is predicted to follow a northwesterly path parallel to the Pacific coast of Mexico, and might be a danger to Baja early next week–though it is too early to know. In their 8 am EDT Tropical Weather Outlook, NHC gave the disturbance 2-day and 5-day odds of development of 50% and 70%, respectively.

I guess, Odile, you are “Like A Hurricane”.