I have been busy and was unable to take a close look at conditions today. Above is rainfall from MesoWest through 7 am MST this morning - showing the low-elevation focus of yesterday's event, Here at the house there 4 or 5 separate thunderstorms along with 45 to 50 mph wind gusts a bit after 6 pm. The first couple of storms were off on the flanks of the Catalinas and just produced rumbles of thunder here. The first storm with rain was a small cell which developed nearly overhead - 0.03". The next was the large and severe storm that produced gusts to 66 mph at Davis Monthan. The core of this storm passed a bit to the south and it produced wicked lightning here but only 0.11" more rain. The final storm, after dark, produced a short period of heavier rain and brought the final total here to 0.42". Heavy storms in the metro put a lot of runoff into the Rillito, which flowed (see trace below) at over a 1,000 cfs just after midnight.
The morning sounding today was modified and not representative of the broader environment, making the forecast again difficult - see Mike Leuthold's discussion here -
http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/products/models/forecasts/wrf_disc.html
I looked at the 2 pm conditions and compared a number of parameters to the WRF NAM and GFS forecasts - the NAM version seemed to be doing a bit better with respect to the radar echoes below. However, I have to admit that I could come to no clear conclusion. I was surprised to see that both models have a significant cool bias (at least today) wrt to the Mt. Lemmon RAWS station.
There now appear to be some storms around the edges of the metro area and we'll have to see if any of these run across town.
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