Quite an interesting afternoon and not at all what I expected here. Thunderstorms began developing around 2:00 pm MST, apparently along a convergence zone right across the metro area. Radar below is from 2:05 pm, right after a brief storm had moved across our area of town. That storm produced 0.03" of rain in the gauge, and I was alerted while sitting here at my work desk, when I could smell rain.
The storms have been high-based and low-topped, but produced lightning flashes and brief, local heavy rains. Three or four cells have moved overhead since early afternoon. Storm at 3:15 to 3:20 produced blowing dust, estimated gusts of 50 to 60 mph, power surge, and then another brief period of heavy rain. I checked a bit ago and total here was up to 0.13" (airport and DM both recorded a bit over a tenth also). Really quite amazing.
Earlier model runs forecast little for today, but the 18 UTC WRF-NAM caught up with what was going to happen. Above is that run's forecast skew-T for Tucson valid at 3:00 pm this afternoon and below is its forecast for composite radar echoes valid at the same time.
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