There were many heavy thunderstorms over the higher terrain in parts of southeastern Arizona yesterday afternoon. The photo series here is from the north-looking web cam at Kitt Peak - top 4:42 pm MST, first below 4:48 pm, second below 4:55 pm, and third below a zoomed version of 4:42 pm. The feature of interest is at the right side of the frame and question is: is that a wet microburst or a brief tornado? Feature was very short-lived and seemed to be followed by a number of equally brief funnel clouds. By 4:55 pm clouds of blowing dust had become visible along the left side of the frame. The zoomed image for 4:42 doesn't clarify the situation at all.
There was a severe thunderstorm warning in effect for the Avra Vallet and Tucson Mountains area at the time of the 4:50 pm composite radar chart shown above. Kitt Peak is near the western-most, small yellow echo just south of highway to west of warning area and the small red echo over and just north of highway, west of green line, is probably related to the feature captured by web cam. Any thoughts on this event are welcome. Jack Hales has sent a web cam loop for this period, but I haven't figured out how to slow it down for careful viewing.
The thunderstorms stayed mostly over mountains and the highlands to the west. Only 19 stations (20 percent) of the ALERT stations recorded rainfall and these were around the edges of the network. Amounts were generally light, but 6 sites had more than a quarter of an inch and two had just over half an inch.Even though yesterday's activity was a substantial increase compared to day before, the metro area was again skunked. The plot of detected CG flashes above (from Vaisala and Atmo) is for 24-hours through 5:45 pm MST yesterday afternoon - it shows the metro doughnut hole yet again, all too starkly. Here at the house there was a nice show of mammatus on the thick anvil that covered most of the lower elevation areas.
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