Mostly Skunked Again

Yesterday's event (11 October 2012) mostly avoided southern Arizona. What showers and rain there was tended to occur, at lower elevations, during the morning yesterday. At 10 am MST there was a bright flash and a tremendous crash of thunder here at the house - I heard it without my hearing aids in! There were several very light showers and 0.02" ended up in the gauge. And that was the "event." The above photo shows what appears to be a heavy rain shaft over the Catalinas at 10:30 am MST. Atmo also recorded 0.02", while DM and TUS had traces. Only four of the ALERT stations in eastern Pima County had rainfall and those were in the Catalina Mountains, with a max of 0.08" (note that the ALERT minimum amount measured is right at 0.04", so there were probably other slight amounts around the lower elevations). Most of the southeastern Arizona RAWS stations to the east and northeast of Tucson had light rainfall. Only two amounts were over 0.05" - with the RAWS station on Mt. Graham coming in with the heaviest amount I found - 0.15". Some low clouds are hanging on the mountains this morning, as the Kitt Peak web cam shows below at a bit after 7 am MST. I looked at the WRF-GFS low temperature forecasts for tomorrow morning and it appears that it will likely be the first morning of the Fall with lows in the 40s here at the house.

The final, trailing part of the short wave at 500 mb does not cross by until tomorrow morning, but model forecasted showers stay to the north, except for a tiny amount predicted by the WRF-GFS on the top of Mt. Lemmon. So it goes for our first chance for some October rain here.