Our neighbors, John and Jodi Ferner, were at the Grand Canyon with visitors yesterday. They were at Mojave Point when thunderstorms struck (map above shows Hermit's Rest Road, which is only open to tourists via shuttle buses). Map below (from Atmo and Vaisala) shows detected CG flashes through midnight last night, with thunderstorms restricted to the high country of northeastern Arizona (nothing within hundreds of km of the metro area).
Jodi emailed at 8:00 pm MST last evening and I've extracted parts of her message as per:
...A big storm blew in over the Canyon. We were up at Mojave Point and could see it coming, along with hearing thunder and seeing lightning. A shuttle bus came and driver said they were "evacuating Hermit's Rest" and we should prepare to get on a bus and get back to village - we waited for a bus to come, while waiting a bolt of lightning came so close we felt it! Their emergency "system" is definitely lacking. Many people were on the Rim Trail and had no idea what was happening. I was surprised by the lack of coordination and communication...
Here are the TWC skew-T plots from last evening (above) and this morning (below - both from SPC). During the afternoon yesterday the well-mixed BL grew to a bit above 700 mb, but the strong inversion and capping layer above 550 mb persisted and kept storms from developing.
This morning the inversion has lowered some to around 600 mb and PW has decreased to just over an inch. There is virtually no CAPE this morning, and as long as inversion persists, no chance for thunderstorms. The current WRF forecasts for this afternoon indicate isolated sprinkle showers but no thunderstorms.
Forecast models keep southern Arizona very quiet, until start of October when a tropical system may push deep moisture back into our area.
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