We were away Friday afternoon and Saturday and so I wasn't able to observe all that happened here in Tucson. Precipitation amounts seem to have not been as great or widespread as expected. Only 0.03" total here at house, sometime between 5 pm MST on Friday and 5 pm on Saturday. The short wave and front did produce lots of convection and thunderstorms. Most significant were the strong winds of 40 to 60+ mph across most of southeast Arizona. As we drove south on Highway 83, winds at the Barrel Canyon USGS stream gauge were essentially calm. However, a few miles south, where the highway crosses an east-west ridge, the winds were very strong from the west at 30 to 40 mph with higher gusts. The winds at Santa Rita Abbey around 6 pm were quite ferocious. I checked the data from the Empire RAWS station and see that gusts to 51 mph were recorded Friday afternoon. The very windy RAWS site at Guthrie had winds to 64 mph. The two photos are of Mt. Wrightson, with some new snow, on Saturday morning - above was right at sunrise and below, with the bare winter branches of several cottonwoods framing the mountain, was an hour or so later. Several folks who had a booth at the book festival told us this afternoon that Saturday morning was very raw and challenging.
No comments:
Post a Comment