This morning was clear and crisp, as per view of Catalinas above, with temperatures this part of town in lower 50s around sunrise. Yesterday was an active thunderstorm day, especially for October, and the plot of CGs below is for 24-hours ending at 1 am MST this morning (Monday, October 20th). There were two severe storm reports locally - lines and poles down somewhere between Ft. Lowell and River and hail to size of golf balls near Tubac. I suspect that the lines were felled near here, because of power surges and blinking lights.
Across the ALERT network areal coverage of rainfall was more than 70% for 24-hours ending at 5 am MST this morning. There were 19 sites with more than 1/4 inch and 5 with more than 1/2 inch. Keystone Peak, off in southwest part of network had 0.83 inches. Largest amount I noted this morning was 1.14 inches, with thunder and gusts to 52 mph, at Safford. Here at house we had thunder, wind, dust, gusts of 40 to 50 mph, but just 0.14 inches of rain.
It was interesting that storms avoided the higher elevations of the nearby Sky Islands with little rainfall noted at spots like Mt. Lemmon, where POPs and amounts are usually much higher than at lower elevations. The early run of the WRF-NAM model was quite good for yesterday afternoon and it kept the rain at lower elevations here in the metro area. Its areal coverage also appeared fairly accurate.
This morning's sounding at TWC on campus (skew-T plot above) is much stabilized, compared to yesterday's. There is at most a sliver of afternoon CAPE at low elevations and the early WRF-NAM reflects this, with its forecast of only some very isolated showers on the mountains today.
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