The more unstable air mass of yesterday (relative to day before) led to considerably more storm activity over southeast Arizona yesterday - as per CG flashes through midnight last night (above). I used to have access (a number of years ago) to a CG flash map for Arizona for 24-hours ending at 12 UTC each day. The plot included a count of the number of CG flashes detected - this allowed both a broad quantitative assessment of a day's activity, in addition to the subjective one based on apparent density etc of the image. If anyone knows where I could access a similar product please let me know.
Yesterday both storms and anvils tended to move south and early storms on the Catalinas covered most of the Tucson metro area under anvil cloud which mostly suppressed activity across the City. As I mentioned below we had thunder here at house but no rain was observed. If you look carefully at the CG graphic the doughnut hole over the metro area is apparent.
The metro west and east sectors of the ALERT network for past 24-hours (above and below), show the near zero coverage of rain at low elevations across Tucson.
Across the entire ALERT network 46 of 92 sites had measurable rainfall. There were 16 sites with more than 1/2 an inch and 5 of these had more than an inch - as per the 1.57" shown below at Saguaro NP East Headquarters. There was light flow occurring this morning in the Rillito.
Regional, 24-hour, rain reports from MesoWest at 7 am MST this morning indicate a number of heavy rain amounts - of note is the reported 3.49" in the San Pedro Valley north of Benson - this a heavily farmed area and if such a cloudburst occurred, there was probably much damage over there.
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