More Heat Today - Not Much Yesterday Other than Heat

Another very warm morning with temperature here at house around 80 F at sunrise.

 Radar echoes did indeed surround Tucson yesterday afternoon - graphic above shows echo tops at 05:15 pm MST. Since cloud bases was nearly 15,000 ft, the showers near Tucson were not very deep. Deeper storms tended to stay east to south of the radar. There were gusty outflows here, although not as strong as the WRF forecast, and they did nothing to ease the 116 F heat. There was a report of a downburst wind gust over 70 mph near Nogales.

The CG flash density plot below (from weather.graphics and Vaisala) indicates that thunderstorms generally stayed over or very near the mountains.

With the strong heat low persisting over the Southwest, moisture is slowly creeping northward up the GoC - as per the MIMIC total precipitable water analysis below. The very high values in the GoM are associated with Tropical Storm Cindy, which is heading in the general direction of Lake Charles, Louisiana.