Strong Mountain Winds Over Weekend

Over the weekend Mt. Lemmon experienced over 75 mph winds which dropped a significant amount of dead trees. Catalina Highway ended up closing on Saturday. Marshal Gulch and Organization road was still closed on Sunday due to a downed tree on a power line.  If I have time at the end of the day today I am going to check Bigalow and Bear Wallow road  for hazard trees as well as Rose Canyon and Spencer Canyon because the sheriffs did not check those areas. I will document my findings and report back to you this week.

V/R,

David McMahon

Developed Recreation/ FPO

Santa Catalina Ranger District

5700 N Sabino Canyon Rd

Tucson, Az 85750

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Report above from the Forest Service - note that Catalina Highway was closed during part of the weekend. I checked the wind gusts at RAWS sites and found: 59 mph at Guthrie around 4 pm MST on Saturday; 53 mph at Mt. Hopins around 8 am on Sunday; 48 mph at Muleshoe Ranch just after midnight on Saturday; and 46 mph at Sollers on Mt. Lemmon just after midnight Saturday night.

Edited to add: Mike Leuthold sent along WRF forecast of surface wind speeds valid at 08 UTC (above - for 1 am MST) on Sunday morning (March 16th). Note the winds at middle and foothills elevations were forecast to be over 20 m/s - the spatial distribution of the high winds suggests a surfacing mountain wave. The TUS sounding from 12 UTC on the 16th (below) certainly appears favorable for this to occur - note the very strong NE winds and pronounced inversion present just above mountain-top levels. Model also forecasted very strong winds in the Kitt Peak and Baboquivari Peak region (left near bottom).