Dark clouds cover the sky as visitors take pictures and talk about the San Xavier Mission on March 28, 2022.

 Rebecca Sasnett, Arizona Daily Star

After a week that saw near-record high temperatures, Tucson and Southern Arizona are bracing for a short return of winter weather expected to include high winds and cold rains.

Most of the region was under a red flag warning Monday morning, meaning that because of low humidity and high winds, there was an elevated risk of fire danger. The warning is meant to alert the public to potential dangers, according to Meteorologist Rob Howlett with the National Weather Service.

“When we expect winds to be greater than 20 miles per hour and the relative humidity to be below 15%, those are kind of our criteria for putting out this warning just to kind of alert the public and for our fire partners,” he said.

Howlett also said those high winds, which are part of a late winter weather pattern, will bring cooler temps starting at the beginning of the week, and the most rain the region has seen so far this year.

According to an NWS forecast, Tucson and surrounding areas have a slightly better than 50/50 chance of seeing more than a quarter inch of rain and higher elevations should be ready for at least an inch of snow.

“We could see several inches on Mount Lemmon,” Howlett said. “And then in our kind of more Northeastern areas like the White Mountains, we could see a few more inches above that."

This cool spring weather won’t last too long, though. After this system moves on, Howlett said more seasonable temperatures in the high 70s and low 80s will return by the weekend.

“We'll start to warm back up pretty rapidly, and we'll be back into the 80s by later this week,” he said. “So, it's really just a quick system that moves through and then we start to warm back up and dry out.”

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Edward Celaya is a breaking news and marijuana reporter. He has been on both beats since May 2021.

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