Sunday was the second day in a row with early storms, followed by a suppressed late afternoon and evening with heavy anvils and debris cloud. Here at the house we had thunder around 2 pm with a few spits of rain - total for day a trace. In fact the storm and rain activity in eastern Pima County shifted to higher elevations around the edges of the network. Rainfall during the past 24-hours is shown above for the central and western part of the network. The central metro region of Tucson had very little rain (coverage only 30%), while the entire network had about 70% coverage. The 0.43" at east end of Orange Grove was produced by the storm shown in previous post. Across the network 9 sites recorded more than 1/2 inch and 1 site in the Catalinas had just over an inch.
This morning the Tucson sounding remains quite moist as PW is holding at about 1.6", with perhaps moderate CAPE at low elevations and more at higher elevations. It seems likely that storms will develop early again today. It is of note that the winds aloft have basically crashed, and the profile is chaotic with light speeds. So today will tend to see storms propagating toward locales with higher CAPE - slow movement should favor even heavier local amounts today. The 500 mb trough has continued to weaken and is now stagnant, from south-to-north over central Arizona. The NAM forecast indicates that this
feature has morphed into a weak short-wave, open to the north, that comes back toward the east tomorrow, visiting our part of the state for the second time.
The early WRF-GFS forecast of composite radar valid at 3 pm this afternoon is shown above - note the big hole over central Tucson. The total rainfall forecast through midnight tonight (below) also shows a large minimum rain area across central Tucson. I think that local point forecasts for rainfall for today will be very difficult, since much will depend upon where first storms form, and then on which way they propagate.
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