Curse The Synoptic Pattern And What Happens?

Well I cursed the synoptic pattern yesterday and then saw isolated thunderstorms develop around the area. Image above from Kitt Peak looking south shows two of the storms at 5:35 pm MST. The plot of detected CGs below (from Atmo and Vaisala) is for 24-hours ending at 5:00 am this morning. We had thunder here from a small storm to the west, but only a brief spit of rain that wasn't enough to wet the the courtyard.

Around the ALERT network only 11 sites measured light rainfall amounts of 0.04" or more, with a couple of sites having around a quarter of an inch along east edge of network. Certainly more activity than I expected with yesterday's nasty inversion aloft. It was still present at 00 UTC but it had gotten hot enough during the afternoon to let storms build by it - highs around 103 F at TUS and Atmo.

The sounding this morning (above for 12 UTC) indicates a bit more CAPE today, even with the nasty inversion below 500 mb still overhead. The models have locked onto a weak short-wave that moves north from the huge data void of northern Mexico almost overhead by evening. Satellite loops this morning do indicate that this feature is down there, so a more interesting day on tap.

I've shown three WRF forecasts from Atmo below that all show forecast radar echoes at 3:00 pm this afternoon: Top - the 15 UTC WRF-RRx from yesterday; Middle - 06 UTC WRF-GFS ; and Bottom - the same from WRF-NAM version of model. There is reasonable consistency in the forecasts, with all forecasting strong storms in eastern Pima County. These storms also produce a strong outflow in each forecast.

The short wave, while quite weak, apparently brings some cooler air in mid-levels letting CAPE to increase substantially. This seems reasonable. But, I looked at the WRF-GFS 06 UTC forecast of the TWC sounding shown above - model had basically forecast no inversion as opposed to the actual observation. So, details of the thermodynamic vertical profile will be quite important as the day progresses.

Finally, the vertical wind profile is not very good, since anvils from storms to south and southwest will stream overhead, so the metro area may be close but anviled-out. Another day to watch what evolves.