Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Brief Summary First April Weather Event


The main impact of the current weather event was the strong and very gusty winds yesterday afternoon. Gusts across all of Arizona were generally in the 40 to 70 mph range (here in the southeast the gusts were 5 to 10 mph stronger than shown on the wind cartoon in an earlier post). Highest gusts I noted in a quick look were: Douglas 53; Ft. Huachuca 55; Empire 55; Flagstaff 63; Winslow 64; and Guthrie 68 mph. Interestingly, the Atmo rooftop anemometer did not reach 40 mph and there seemed to be some problems at the site. Impacts were closed interstates and multiple wrecks on I-10 between here and Phoenix (see above).

The main rain band moved through the Tucson area around midnight with amounts and coverage somewhat better than the models predicted. More than 85% of the ALERT stations measured rainfall with the rain missing the southern-most sites - amounts were generally less than 0.25", except in the Catalinas where amounts reached above half an inch (snow at the highest elevation sites - see Mt. Lemmon webcam image below). Here at the house I estimated gusts at one time during the afternoon at 50 to 55 mph and also found 0.22" of rain in the gauge this morning.


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