The 2006 monsoon has "officially" arrived at the NWS surface observation site at Tucson International Airport (TUS) as of Wednesday 28 June. Has it arrived at other places in southeastern Arizona, and if so when? There is no clear answer to that question, assuming anyone is actually interested. I can not resist pointing out several things.
Using the NWS Tucson definition for the official start of the monsoon, it appears that the monsoon arrived at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base one day earlier than it did at TUS. These two surface observing stations are less than 10 km apart.
If one used other definitions of the "start" of the monsoon, the dates of arrival would vary considerably.
For example, if the start at TUS were defined as the first time that the running three-day average surface dewpoint temperature exceed 50F, then the monsoon would have begun on 6 June.
If we defined the start of the monsoon in Arizona as the first day on which the count of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes across Arizona exceeded 10,000 (a fairly significant number of strikes!), then the 2006 monsoon would have begun on 8 June.
Enough said about the Arizona monsoon conundrum for summer 2006!
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