Another day with hours of thunder, but with those high and cold cloud bases, not much rain reached the ground. Also hurting the rain situation, too much ice. An afternoon sprinkle, a very close, rogue lightning strike, followed by an early nighttime “chaser” storm that, with all of its bluster, wind and vivid lightning, produced only 0.02 inches here, but a lot more at Sutherland Heights, a robust 0.39 inches (new knowledge, gained after dip sticking gage up there at around 7:30 AM) To see how remarkable that Sutherland Heights rain amount is, go here to the U of AZ rainlog network.
Here’s a smaller, but typical example of yesterday’s generally “low output” Cumulonimbus clouds:
Here’s another quite bad cloud (shown below), though it was good one one hand, because it was an early afternoon, frequently thundering cloud which gave promise of rain later in the day. But that rainshaft? Pitiful.
It was also a forerunner of the kinds of storms we would have. Again, with high and cold bases (and oddly to me), there seemed to be an awful lot of lightning for the size of the Cumulonimbus cloud at 1:55 PM, much of it in vivid cloud to ground strokes. You may have seen a another example of that last evening around 9 PM on the Catalinas when there were a series of frequent and spectacular cloud-to- ground strokes, but little rain. The most that fell up there was 0.28 inches at Oracle Ridge. Map here. BTW, you can see the “1:55 PM”
Cb in the U of AZ time lapse movie at the far left beginning around 1:40 PM.
Well, this is pretty boring, so will end here with a sunset photo from last evening:
The U of AZ WRF-GFS rendering of rain in the State of AZ sees early afternoon Cumulonimbus clouds breaking out over the Cat Mountains today.
Why not?
Starting out with pretty similar sounding this morning, but a bit more moist than last evenings above 600 millibars (about 14,000 feet ASL).
Longer view?
Hector marches slowly toward the Southwest (Canadian model outputs), promising an enhancement of August’s meager rains so far in southern AZ.
The End.
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1Reminded one of summers in Durango, Colorado, where high, cold cloud bases and “too much ice” is normal.