Weather Summary - 30 June Through this Morning

The last seven days have been quite amazing here in southeastern Arizona. There have been thunderstorms somewhere in the Tucson metro area every day except for the 30th, which was suppressed due to strong, downslope east winds.

Yesterday was the day with the most widespread rains. A large are of heavy cloud at sunrise acted to suppress local storm development. But shortly after dark outflow winds converged over Tucson, helped by two weak short waves - one from the southeast and one from the northwest - triggering a large MCS. Every one of the Flood Districts 91 gauges reported measurable rainfall except for three - which I suspect may be out of order. Largest accumulation was 2.60 at White Tail on the Catalinas. Here at the house we had 0.60".

Today the two middle-level waves continue to interact and the atmosphere is very wet with high IPW amounts. The widespread rains will mean a shallow boundary layer later today that will need strong outflows into lower elevations if storms are to develop away from the mountains. The longer range forecasts continue with very wet forecasts out past 7 days as both depression Five-E and an upper cyclone over eastern Mexico move slowly this way and continue the flow of subtropical moisture into the Southwest US.

Some summaries for the past seven days:

Douglas Tstms on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 6th total rainfall 0.17"

Art Douglas reports storms and rain at Ash Canyon (just south of Sierra Vista)
on the 2nd through the 5th (and probably yesterday also) with rainfall of 1.00"

Nogales: Tstms every day with total rainfall 1.31"

Tucson (TUS) Tstms on 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th total rainfall 0.45"

Here at house Tstms on 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th total rainfall 1.39"

Phoenix (PHX) Tstms on the 3rd and 4th total rainfall only a Trace

Note that Phoenix has had high temps of over 105F every day of this period and that 3 days were over 110F. While temps were over 100F in the afternoons the dewpoints were often in the middle 50s to low 60s. Thus, the heat stress and misery gradient between Tucson and Phoenix this last week has been very strong, probably maximizing between Picacho Peak and Casa Grande.