Cool, Bright Morning In Tucson

A very beautiful morning in Tucson with clear skies, clean air, and cool temperatures following yesterday's rains. View above is from campus looking north at 7:30 am MST. Wore a light wind-breaker when I walked for first time this Fall. Low here at house was 42 F versus low 50s at the airport. 

There were some thunderstorms around eastern Pima County yesterday afternoon - CG flash density below is from weather.graphics and Vaisala for 6-hours ending at 6:45 pm and indicates storms near by. We had another 0.08" of rain yesterday afternoon but I did not hear thunder, but that does not mean much, since I had my hearing aids out.

If one looks at 24-hour rainfall across the ALERT network for past 24-hours the data capture portions of the early morning event as well as the afternoon showers. So, I took a look at the network data for the period from 11:00 am through 11:00 pm last night. During that period 53 sites (~55 % areal coverage) had rainfall. Amounts were generally under a tenth of an inch, with Mt. Lemmon site having most rainfall at 0.39". I continue to feel that the ALERT data, a valuable mesoscale data set, are probably under-utilized locally.

Far to the south, Hurricane Patricia is strengthening rapidly and is forecast to make landfall as a major hurricane. Above is morning visible image of Patricia at 1345 UTC and below is the morning forecast for the storm from the NHC.