Very late post today.
Brief summary of various aspects of the overnight storm event.
Precipitation - at 7 am this morning about 75% of the Alert gauges in Pima County had measured precipitation in past 24 hours. Those that had not had rain were generally in the southern portions of eastern Pima County and most of those had light rainfall after 7 am. We had
0.24" in the gauge at 7 am here at house and had 0.02" more in the next hour or so. Heaviest rainfall report I noted at 7 am was 1.65" at CDO and Coronado (i.e. up on the northwest flanks of the Catalinas).
Snows were quite heavy at high elevations in the mountains and the photo above shows a bit of snow on higher peaks of the Catalinas at right side of photo.
However, the main aspect of the storm was the very strong wind gusts that swept across most of state - many areas in almost all parts of state had winds of 50 to 60 mph and max gusts were considerably higher. For example, the Gutherie RAWS station reported winds of 79 mph, Horse Camp Canyon had 73 mph, and the anemometer on the roof of the Atmo building on campus also had 73 mph. The only station that reported thunder was apparently Phoenix and the SPC storm reports map indicates a number of severe thunderstorm reports in Arizona last evening. This was a "sneaky" severe storm situation in that the severe winds were produced by the extreme synoptic pressure gradients and the thunderstorms were along for the ride!
The most interesting thing about the photo above is that there is considerable dust hanging in the air, even after widespread precipitation. This gives an erie cast to the photo and as the preciptation areas moved to the east they had a distinct brownish cast to them. Very strange morning reflecting the power of the windstorm.
The strong S/W that produced th overnight weather in Arizona has swept eastward very quickly and is now bringing a very major snow event to the Central Plains and upper Midwest, in addition to widespread blizzard conditions tonight as the low intensifies.
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