Yesterday (Saturday July 9th) we were at Santa Rita Abbey (5 miles northwest of Sonoita). The sisters report only a trace of rain there this summer - see the dry, brown hills in top photo (note that the mesquites and junipers appear to have their roots down to moisture). The bottom photo above is a shot of building towers over the Santa Rita Mountains - taken at about 11 am. It began thundering there about 12:30 pm (MST) and continued through 3:00 pm, but with only light showers that were enough only to dampen the dusty ground. Try as I might, I could never decide upon a consistent movement for the heavier showers on the mountains - some seemed to head toward the west-northwest but others just seemed to drift, and at one time it seemed that a cell on the Santa Ritas was moving to the south.
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Indeed, heaviest storms yesterday were generally stuck on the mountains, although some cells magaged to drift to lower elevations. The Catalinas appear to have received the heaviest rains - Catalina ALERT stations had 5 mesurements over an inch, and 2 over two inches - thus, flood warnings for those mountains late yesterday. There appears to have been 0.01" here at house from anvil sprinkles. Yesterday's storms illustrate well what a challenge forecasting in southeastern Arizona can be. The Catalina/Rincon Mountains forecast zone had 100% coverage of precipitation. However, the low-elevation, greater Tucson ALERT gauges had 0% coverage of rainfall. All of this within a small mesoscale area!
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