Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Severe Thunderstorms And Heavy Rains


There were many thunderstorms around southeastern Arizona yesterday afternoon and evening (above graphic shows lightning strikes for 24-hours ending at 6 am MST). Many of these storms were terrain-locked and movements were extremely variable. The morning papers report wind damage at at least four spots spread across the general Tucson area and severe reports at SPC extend up to parts of Maricopa County - widespread severe storm reports for out here.


The rains were somewhat fickle yesterday, with many places completely dry while the nearby Catalinas received torrential rains - across the ALERT network 57 stations had rainfall (62%) with much of the rain falling with storms after dark (only 17 sites had rain up to 6 pm last evening). The map above shows 24-hour rain amounts over the Catalina portions of the ALERT network - note the 4+ inches at Mt. Lemmon. The Rillito was not flowing this morning, which I found surprising. A check of the data for the USGS gauge at the Dodge Street bridge shows only a brief spike of 60 cfs a bit before midnight. The fickle nature of the coverage is shown by the reports in the Rincons/east metro section of the network - below. here at the house there was a storm a bit after 9 pm MST that left 1/10" in the gauge. At many places along my walk this morning the ground remained bone-dry.


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