Two shots of Rillito running bank-to-bank, taken a few minutes ago.
View north from campus this morning shows Tucson looking much like LAX yesterday.
ALERT 24-h rainfall ending at 7:00 am MST this morning (above). Very heavy amounts in the local Sky Islands, as per model forecasts - note Mt. Lemmon with over 5" of RAIN. There was a very strong southwest to northeast orographic gradient in rainfall (also as predicted) - with Three Points having less than 0.04". Amounts over rest of network to south were quite light. Local amounts: TUS 0.16"; DM 0.51"; ATMO 0.61"; and here at house 0.64". Note that amount at airport was much less than forecast by any of the ensemble QPFs, but much closer to the WRF forecasts from 06 UTC yesterday.
Heavy rains in Rillito drainage have the wash flowing at its highest rate in many months - the USGS Dodge gauge (below) recorded a max of over 9,000 CFS just a bit ago.
The 12 UTC 500 mb analysis (above from SPC) is about as predicted by NAM yesterday morning, with main cyclone/trough remaining off Northwest coast, and a weak ripple passing across Arizona during the night. The GEFS mean 500 mb prediction for 500 mb by 5:00 pm MST on this coming Monday indicates the trough sharpening considerably and shifting into the West - the jet goes south of here and heights fall dramatically, bringing more unsettled weather and perhaps even a few snowflakes (but Monday is long way off).
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