Mostly Suppressed In Southeast Arizona Yesterday

Yesterday (Sunday the 11th) was mostly suppressed over southeast Arizona. There were a few isolated storms off to the southeast and east  of Tucson. Stronger thunderstorms occurred from Phoenix to the north and west, where there were several severe storms reported. Phoenix was hit with yet another dust storm during the afternoon. Only 6 of 93 ALERT stations had rainfall during the past 24-hours and amounts were all very light.

This morning much of Arizona and northwest Mexico is covered by hevy clouds, with some embedded convection. Doesn't appear that there'll be much sunshine today. Above visible image is from 1430 UTC.

Sounding from SPC for Tucson at 12 UTC is above. There is a bit of elevated CAPE but the SPC diagnostics appear way too high for this afternoon. The PW remains at a bit above an inch - not a very promising sounding, especially given the thick clouds. Note that the vertical windshear is quite strong, with 70 kts maximum just below 200 mb.

Both the Atmo early WRF-GFS and the 12 UTC run of the NAM forecast storms across most of southeast Arizona today. The above graphic is the WRF-GFS forecast of composite radar echoes for 2 pm MST this afternoon (note that the early morning clouds and showers were not initialized well in the model and this has compromised the forecast). Obviously there is enough elevated CAPE for thunderstorms - an area of storms has developed over Tucson while I've been typing. Raining lightly here and there was just a crash of thunder from the east - see 1446 UTC radar below!