Surprise late April rain, thunder strike Catalina! Snow piling up on Ms. Lemmon!

Gasp these late April totals from the Pima County ALERT gauges, as of whenever you look, along side our Sutherland Heights total, as of 7 AM now, of 0.58 inches.  This total is about the normal for the month of April here.  Fantastic.  Several nearby mountain and Catalina foothill totals are well over an inch with Oracle Ridge having 1.50 inches!  However, the top of Ms. Mt. Lemmon is reporting nothing, which means the precip there is falling as snow.  Nice couple of thunderblasts last night between 1:30 and 2 AM, too.

Yesterday, the latest wrf-goofus model (executed by the U of AZ at 11 PM AST night before last), had no rain in Catalina, and only a pittance in the mountains east of us.

Still a chance for measurable rain during the day today, too, but it’ll be gone by tomorrow, and it’ll likely bt a long time before rain returns.

Yesterday’s clouds

2:53 PM.
2:53 PM.
2:54 PM. Cloud street again.
2:54 PM. Cloud street again.
5:39 PM. Disappeared for awhile, then came back.
5:39 PM. Disappeared for awhile, then came back.
5:52 PM. The look of a storm, Altostratus above Cumulus and Stratocumulus.
5:52 PM. The look of a storm, Altostratus above Cumulus and Stratocumulus.

 

The End, for now, anyway.

 

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1Total is from a CoCoRahs gauge, not the Davis Vantage Pro online tipping bucket, which registers slightly low.

By Art Rangno

Retiree from a group specializing in airborne measurements of clouds and aerosols at the University of Washington (Cloud and Aerosol Research Group). The projects in which I participated were in many countries; from the Arctic to Brazil, from the Marshall Islands to South Africa.