As the 500 mb low that has circled around Arizona for past week or so opens up into the westerlies this morning, widespread thunderstorms have impacted southern California. The IR image above is from 12 UTC this morning, and the plot of CG flash density below (from weather.graphics and Vaisala for 12-hours ending at 1345 UTC) indicates an unusual degree of nocturnal storm activity inland over most of southern half of California.
Here in southeast Arizona PW has increased to over an inch, and the CIRA blended PW analysis for 12 UTC (above) indicates highest PW still to our south and west. The morning skewT plot of 12 UTC upper-air data for TWC (below from SPC) is interesting in that there is considerable, elevated CAPE present above 700 mb, with only a bit of lifting needed for high-base showers to develop.
The visible image above (for 1415 UTC) shows considerable shower and storm activity over northern Sonora and western Pima County that is spreading our way. There was apparently only a truncated run of the 06 UTC WRF-NAM at Atmo this morning, but the WRF-GFS from that time seemed to forecast the activity over California quite well. However, the model appears to get storms going in our area a bit too late in the day and also perhaps not widespread enough across Pima County. The WFR-GFS forecast below is for precipitation through midnight tonight. So, our second weather event of October begins to unfold.
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