Storms yesterday stayed off to east and south of Tucson during the afternoon and evening. Composite radar image above is from about 4:20 pm MST. Plot of CG flashes below (from Vaisala and Atmo) shows that thunderstorms stayed east of Pima County, much as the WRF-GFS forecast. The WRF-NAM was too robust with storm coverage, rain, and outflow winds.
Mike Leuthold grabbed the MesoWest surface plot (below, from just before 6:00 pm) that shows a station with 54 mph winds - this station is along I-10 in New Mexico and is located in the Lordsburg Playa, The playa is a notorious source for blowing dust, so things may have been dicey along the interstate over there.
Here in the Tucson area a gust front did come in from the east, with dust, yesterday evening about 8:30 pm, but details are lacking since the TUS observations seem to be missing. Strongest outflow winds occurred mostly in Cochise County: Douglas had a thunderstorm with severe gusts to 58 mph (50 kts); Guthrie RAWS and Safford had gusts to 47 mph; and Ft. Huachuca recorded thunder with a gust to 46 mph.
Finally, the 00 UTC sounding from TWC on campus is shown below (from Univ. of Wyoming web page). The sounding was even more hostile for deep convection than I had estimated in yesterday's post - essentially no CAPE developed over the low elevations of the desert.
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