Brief Look At Yesterday

We were at Santa Rita Abbey yesterday (about 5 miles north-northwest of the junction in Sonoita). The day dawned refreshingly cool but heated up rapidly. Winds were easterly, although about 3:00 pm a strong and cool outflow from west came by with gusts of 30 to 40 mph. This was apparently from an area of dissipating showers near the Santa Ritas.

Agave stalks at sunrise.

Two CG flash density plots (from weather.graphics and Vaisala) both ending at 6:30 am this morning. Above is 24-hour FD, showing thunderstorms near Tucson metro area, and below shows 6-hour FD indicating that thunderstorms continued through the early morning hours over southwest Arizona.

Second below is MesoWest plot of observed rainfall over southeast Arizona for 24-hours ending at 9:00 am MST this morning. Apparently the storms produced little in thw of rainfall. Although driving back around 5:00 pm yesterday, we hit a brief but heavy shower just before we passed north by the NWS radar. Coming on down and west to Tucson area, there appeared to be a number of dry microbursts coming and going, as well as one or two large dust devils.

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Update re Eugene

At mid-morning today the NHC was rating Hurricane Eugene as a Category three storm and their forecast of intensity and track is shown below.