Photo above shows a building Cu tower on the Catalinas at 8:30 am yesterday morning (10 August 2011) - note the unusual situation with the cloud bases well below the mountain tops. Storms developed early as several weak outflows moved across the Tucson metro area. Almost 40% of the ALERT sites had rainfall, with 10 reports of more than 1/2" and 3 reports greater than 1". So, a definite upturn for the second day in a row. I checked the ALERT sites above 5,000 ft elevation and coverage for these sites was 75%, while great Tucson only had 1 of 20 sites with very light rain. Here at the house we had rumbles of thunder from a storm on the Catalinas and a light sprinkle - so yet another Trace day.
Photo above from the Kitt Peak webcam shows a heavy storm to the south at 6:15 yesterday.
This morning's Tucson is even a bit more moist than yesterday's, but the terrible, L/V wind profile continues almost through the entire troposphere. The sounding again indicates CAPE for lower elevations and excellent CAPE for the high elevations. Looks like a bit more sunshine today; however, storms at low elevations will very much be driven by outflows and local CAPE - on days like this it is hard to get rain at the house unless a cell develops nearly overhead. The morning NAM forecast keeps rainfall mostly down along the Borderlands. The midnight run of Atmo's WRF-GFS has considerably increased coverage of nice rainfall over much of southeastern Arizona through midnight tonight - so I'll root for WRF-GFS today!
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