First - NHC kept providing a very strange forecast for Georgette late into the day and early night yesterday - the top image is what one found at NHC at 6 pm last evening. They seemed to ignore the strong trough that was sweeping through the Southwest. The trough quickly sucked up the remnants of Georgette and related heavy rains are now off to the east in New Mexico and Texas Panhandle.----------------------------------------------------
The advertised rain event for Arizona didn't live up to the model forecasts across most of the state yesterday. Tucson and DM had no rain last 24-hours, although POPs were 70 to 90%. Across the ALERT network only 37 stations (40%) had measurable rain. Four gauges had more than half an inch with Mt. Lemmon hitting 1.18 inches. Thus, all of us forecasters were done in to some degree by the models - we got the extensive intrusion of tropical moisture and strong southerly winds but not nearly as much rainfall as predicted - so, just when you think the models are really great - zap!
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However, on the small scale things got very interesting at lunch hour yesterday. The middle photo shows heavy rain on campus at noon. The bottom radar image shows two small bands of moderate echo over northwest Tucson at 1220. These showers moved quickly up across Mt. Lemmon and were long gone by 1 pm. The atmo rain gauge caught 0.62" during lunch break. Here at the house light sprinkles began at noon and 20 minutes later there was 0.77" in the gauge - quite a rain rate! The heavy rain here was characterized by millions of small to moderate sized drops, no lightning, and no thunder. Thus, this seems to have been a typical, tropical heavy-rain band with warm-rain cloud processes predominating. I was very impressed - but, I wasn't caught out in it as were many at the university.
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