At sunrise this morning there was somewhat chaotic clouidness around (above is 8 am MST view of Catalinas from campus). Most interesting at sunrise were substantial lenticular clouds streaming off to the west from the Catalinas and Rincons. These were unusual in that there was some convective development on their tops and mammatus formed on their west ends.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
While I walked along the Rillito I noticed distinct pockets of warm and cool air - probably related to where the wind had mixed down to the ground recently. By 7 am MST east winds had really broken through and it was quite warm - 73F here (about 15F warmer than yesterday morning) and 77F at TUS (12F warmer than same time yesterday). The east winds are now at least 25 to 30 mph based on a large wind chime that I have roughly calibrated. The east winds behind the backdoor front are quite strong, as per the morning Tucson sounding - below from SPC.
The sounding indicates east-southeast winds of 25 to 30 kts from 500 mb to the surface, so there's substantial downsloping underway. The SPC diagnostics indicate little CAPE, and PW values are mostly below an inch across southern Arizona. The early run of WRF-GFS at Atmo indicates another supressed day over southeast Arizona (there were isolated thunderstorms yesterday but no reports of measurable rainfall - there were a couple of nice lightning flashes off north of the Catalinas just after dark).
The WRF-GFS predicted rainfall through midnight tonight is shown above - WRF-GFS keeps storms and rainfall mostly in the north half of state - although a couple of isolated storms develop right along the border and south in Mexico. The current morning NAM forecast tends to keep storms and precipitation over the west half of state - both models agree that little happens today locally, except for strong east winds.
No comments:
Post a Comment