Interesting Week On Tap

There were more storms yesterday than on Saturday - above is TUS composite radar a bit before 4 pm MST on July 7th. Graphic below shows 24-h CG strikes ending at 5 am this morning. The storms tended to hug the mountains and low elevations of metro Tucson area saw mainly heavy cloud, several outflows, and rumbles of thunder. We had thunder and several spits of rain here at the house, as well as several outflows that were not very strong. Moisture is up some and it is a very humid and muggy morning. Across the ALERT network in eastern Pima County the reports were: 30 of 92 sites (33%) with rain during the past 24-hours. Only 10 sites had more than 1/4 inch; 5 sites had more than half an inch; and Elephant Head Butte (east of Green Valley) reported 1.89 inches. Across the rest of southeast Arizona Safford reported most rain at 1.16 inches. Very hard to say which version of the 12 UTC WRF did best yesterday - each had pros and cons. My quick look leads me to feel that the WRF-NAM was again an overall better forecast than was the WRF-GFS.

This morning PW is up some, but the sounding is fairly chopped up by early morning activity and several outflows. Winds are currently light and variable though most of the troposphere and it will be interesting to see if a real steering flow can develop by afternoon.

I am not showing any of the early WRF because it seemed to over-forecast early morning convection. It does develop some east-northeast steering flow by afternoon. The most interesting aspect of the early WRF is that it forecasts the increase of PW associated with TS Erick to begin pushing into Arizona this afternoon - even quicker than I had anticipated. Below is the CIRA blended PW product that indicates high PW values extending north across about 3/4 of the Gulf of California at 6 am MST. With the increased moisture, the early WRF forecasts a very active and wet three days - so we will likely have a very interesting weather week.