Thursday, June 30, 2016

I Love A Rainy Night

As Eddie Rabbitt sang back in 1980:

I love a rainy night
I love to hear the thunder
Watch the lightning
             light up the sky

For two nights now there have been rains, lightning, and thunder, after midnight - almost like being back in the Midwest. Yesterday there were isolated severe thunderstorms during the afternoon (4 reports at SPC 2 near the airport and 2 in Pinal County), but the serious rains set in again just before midnight.


There was a very nice, full, rainbow at sunrise yesterday (above) and this morning there is stratus along the foothills just north of the Rillito (below).



The ALERT network data are fairly interactive and allow the timing of rainfalls to be explored in fair detail. I took a look at the areal coverage of precipitation across the entire network for three six-hour periods. From 11:00 am through 5:00 pm yesterday afternoon coverage was 15%; from 5:00 pm through 11:00 pm coverage was again 15%; but from 11:00 pm through 5:00 am this morning coverage was 100%.

The two sectors shown here have amounts plotted from 11:00 pm MST last night through 6:00 am this morning. Most impressive amounts fell on the north side of the Catalinas, with nearly two and a half inches at one site.

Here at the house we had 0.10" before midnight and 0.50" after midnight - what a final week for June!



The plot of detected CG flashes (above for 24-h ending at 13 UTC - from Atmo and Vaisala) includes the time bar - so greens are storms yesterday afternoon, etc.

Sounding below is from TWC on campus for 12 UTC - VERY moist with considerable CAPE possible with sunshine. But, of course, cloud cover is thick and very extensive. Too wet to rain? - we'll see.


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