A large MCS developed over the southeast Arizona Borderlands last evening - as forecast by the WRF model runs yesterday morning. The system moved slowly across much of southern Arizona during the night, with two spun-up, mesoscale convective vortices apparent in satellite imagery this morning. The IR image of system above is from 4:30 am MST, while the Yuma composite radar display below is from 6:50 am.
Here in Tucson the MCS produced a nice lightning show after midnight - above (from Atmo and Vaisala) shows detected CG flashes for 24-hours ending at 7:00 am this morning. Note that in eastern Pima County the active thunderstorms stayed mostly on mountains, producing the well-known metro donut hole.
ALERT observations (below for 24-hours ending 7:00 am) show that rainfall was sparse except for the storm cell that moved from the north part of Rincons across the northeast part of metro and the west-central Catalinas, moving away from mountains across the Catalina area. Here at house we had only 0.05", while airport had 0.02", Atmo 0.03", and DM a Trace. Our dry July continues across many areas of southeastern Arizona.
The morning sounding at TWC (below) was taken behind the MCS and is a classic "onion" shaped sounding. As a new BL builds today it will likely remain strongly capped with little chance of storms at low elevations.
The next five days appear quite grim as the large, 500 mb anticyclone strengthens and parks itself over the West.
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