Quick Summary

Yesterday afternoon here at the house we had a rumble of thunder, a strong and very dusty outflow from the south, and spits and sprinkles of anvil rain. Total here only a trace. About 40% of the Pima County ALERT stations had measureable, mostly light, rainfall. Better amounts were at higher elevations and over west and southwest in the Avra Valley area, including the Sasabe RAWS station with just over half an inch. Four ALERT stations recorded a half inch or more, with 0.71" the maximum amount. Not much here in the metro area lower elevations - highest amount appears to be at ATMO with 0.06" and a gust to 52 mph on the roof. The airport had thunder and a gust to 44 mph and Nogales had thunder, and a gust to 44 mph, and 0.07". So mostly a day with thunder, wind and dust here in town, but the cool outflow was a nice relief from the heat. The top image shows IR satelite depiction of the cold anvils at 6:30 pm and the middle image is Tucson composite radar image a bit later. Over all the activity yesterday was positioned about midway between the 06Z model forecasts - east of the WRF and west of the NAM - and extended further than forecast to the northwest toward Phoenix.

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This morning PW amounts are down some over portions of southern Arizona, however dewpoints remain in the 50s and lower 60s. The 500 mb temperature is an impressive -12C at Tucson. The 06Z run of the WRF model at ATMO indicates reduced activity over Pima County today, with the storms shifted mostly into Santa Cruz and Cochise Counties to the southeast. The bottom graphic shows total accumulated rainfall predicted by the WRF model ending at 7 pm this evening. With the cold mid-level air and some slight degree of CAPE at low elevations, expect to see storms around but again they will tend toward lingering over higher elevations.