The morning showers across the metro yesterday put a damper on thunderstorm activity during the rest of the day. Although strong storms developed early and in all directions, they could not move far into the stable, metro environment. There were rumbles of thunder from decaying storms here at house, but only an additional 0.02" of rain. The plot of CG flashes above (from Vaisala and Atmo) is for 24-hours ending at 4:00 am MST this morning. Across the ALERT network 62 sites had 0.04" or more of rain yesterday, giving about 70% coverage. However, amounts were mostly quite light - only 6 sites had a quarter of an inch or more and two sites reported over half an inch.
The small, circular cluster of flashes west-northwest of here was right over Marana. The airport up there (which has an AWOS3 automatic weather station) measured a gust to 59 mph and power poles and lines were down in the area.
Today, the conditions have changed little - below is 12 UTC skewT plot for TWC (from SPC). Precipitable water remains around 1.50 inches, and there is some CAPE, but a layer of CIN remains to be overcome. The deep, southerly wind profile is not particularly good, since there continues to be threat of anvil shading over the metro area as storms again try to move northward - very strong storms might reach high enough to have anvil cloud trailing a bit behind storm cores, which would be good. There will be more sunshine this morning than there was yesterday, so that's a plus. Will just have to watch to see how this mixed-bag situation plays out.
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