Valley meteorologists weigh in on cooler temps

PHOENIX (FOX 10) - Mother Nature has many Arizonans wondering if she's playing tricks on them. The usual warm, near triple-digits, haven't surfaced for days. Instead, they were replaced by cool, wet weather in the Valley and snow in the high country.

While most everyone is enjoying these cooler than average temperatures, meteorologists at the National Weather Service are working hard tracking storms.

Meteorologist for the National Weather Center in Phoenix Mark O'Malley says this particularly unusual storm system is what brought bands of rain into the Valley in the morning hours and snow in the high country.

"It's a storm system that has dug really far into Arizona," O'Malley said. "It's aided a little bit by El Niño, but it's just a pattern that we have gotten into now where we have had just these deep storm systems rolling across the state."

O'Malley says the last time temperatures were so cool and we had so much rain and snow this late in May was more than a decade ago.

"It was back in 2008, a very similar storm system affected the state," O'Malley said. "Flagstaff almost had four-and-a-half inches of snow and the high temperature in Phoenix on this date in 2008 was 72 degrees."

It's not expected to get much warmer in the Valley on Thursday. The staff at NWS is keeping an eye on developments and O'Malley says it will warm up this weekend. We should see average temps in the low 90s, but even those high's might not stick around.