Another heavy storm in the metro area yesterday (Sunday, 29 July). This time the storm moved north across the east side of town, and then westward along the foothills of the Catainas. Photo above was taken looking toward the foothills at about 3 pm. Here at house we had thunder, outflows, and 0.25" from light showers as the echo core bypassed us to the north this time. Path of heaviest rains shows nicely on the two panels from the ALERT network (below) that give 24-hour rain ending this morning. Across the entire network, 70% of the stations had rain yesterday - 22 sites had more than half an inch; 9 sites had more than an inch; and the station at Finger Rock and Skyline had 2.01" (photo above is centered about at Finger Rock).
This morning the Tucson sounding (below) remains very moist and with strong south-southeasterly winds in middle levels. The 500 mb inverted trough is quite pronounced this morning over the western portion of Arizona. It is forecast to stagnate out there over the next three days. The sounding this morning actually has only a sliver of CAPE if boundary layer mixes out to about 750 mb. The early WRF-GFS forecasts a totally down day in the local area. Factors that lead to this dramatic downturn appear to be: weak subsidence and moisture divergence in lower levels, coupled with warm temperatures and some drier air from northern Mexico around 500 mb. WRF-GFS forecasts PW here at U of A to be down to around 1.30 inches at 5 pm this afternoon. It's hard to accept that there won't be some mountain storms around today - will watch to see what the new runs this morning do.
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