Would you cancel a desert trip for this forecast?

Hi desert rats, 

based on your experience, how often does this kind of forecast map to enough rain to enforce the "Dont climb wet sandstone" rules?

This is for a trip to Valley of the Gods, climbing Friday-Sunday, need to decide by Wednesday. Really stoked but its hard to justify an 8 hour drive unless we can climb 3 days. 

Would you cancel, assuming that NWS forecast continues to show "Chance" of rain but 0.01" total precip amounts? or would you pay more attention to the euro model showing over half an inch? What would be your cutoff?

What Would Chuck Pratt Do?

“To gain any lasting worth from what the desert has to offer, we had to learn to put our pitons and rope away and to go exploring in silence, keeping our eyes very open. It wasn't easy. We wasted a lot of time climbing until we got the knack.”

sage advice

Looking at GFS and Ecmwf on windy i would not go. You are probably good on rain through Saturday at least but it's going to be blowing 20 knots+ and your drive back is going to stink, looking at rain and snow over the mountains assuming you are going back to the east side. A little far out for more models for comparison.

Might have a little better idea by tomorrow.  Doesn't look too juicy right now.  

Its pretty warm.  Even light showers might not wet the rock, especially if there's any wind.

A euro website has an interesting spin.  Got low amounts of precip, mostly in the later evening Saturday and early morning on Sunday.  .3mm and .9mm.  With some wind.

Looks ok to me.  I'd wait until tomorrow though.  See how juicy the incoming trough might be.

my rule of thumb is usually 30% if it is a long drive. in my experience, when the forecast is 30% it seems to rain 70% of the time.

We got lucky and ended up with an awesome trip. The rain started just as the follower topped out on eagle plume, which just added to the adventure. We thought the trip was over, but a couple hours later the sand was bone dry even in the shade. It was extremely windy which probably helped. So we climbed Mexican hat that afternoon and mt Chomama the next day; any choss issues were just related to loose rocks sitting around, not holds breaking and still no damp sand was found. From the satellite it looked like moab and CO national monument got a lot more rain than VOTG.