Thursday, July 28, 2016

Another Day With Severe Thunderstorms


Severe, high-based thunderstorms moved into the metro area a bit after 6:00 pm MST yesterday evening. Above is view north from campus at 6:35 pm and below is an IR satellite image from 5:30 pm.



There were nine reports of severe thunderstorm winds sent to SPC by the TUS NWS Office (above). The airport had gusts to only 51 mph; but DM AFB had gusts to 61 mph; and the Nogales airport recorded gusts to 71 mph. Here at the house we had several gusts around 60 mph between 7:00 pm and 7:30 pm. The plot below of detected CG flashes is for the 24-hours ending at 6:00 am MST this morning - certainly an active storm day for southeast Arizona.

As for rainfall - the airport had 0.53", DM had 0.76" and Nogales had 2.01". Here at the house we had another 0.12" before midnight (total for yesterday (0.33") and then storms during the early morning hours added 0.41" - quite a nice total for last 60 hours (0.97").

Across the ALERT network only 9 sites had rainfall during the day (05:00 am through 05:00 pm), but 100% of the sites had measurable rain during the night (05:00 pm through 05:00 am this morning). There were 31 ALERT sites with more than half an inch and 5 with over an inch (these were in and near the Catalinas).

The morning sounding at TWC was taken with thunderstorms nearby and during light rain - thus, a highly modified sounding. However, the widespread rains have left southeastern Arizona much cooler this morning. Very hard for atmosphere to recover after such an event.


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