Atmosphere Comparison

[Jim]

The endless chatter of weather.

[chumley]

It's a radar estimate. There's no question that the single-spot site at the airport got more. Yesterday. But it's not indicative of other stations in the area.

Check http://rainlog.org/usprn/html/main/maps.jsp as an example. There can always be highly-localized rain (or no rain). It's one reason why I like the new PHX valley average of something like 120 stations for measuring monsoon rain. Picking one spot at the airport can be widely variable and result in incomplete data. Even the rainlog site has very few data stations across most of the state. But it's still exponentially better than one station at FLG and one at Bellemont!

[Jim]

Right, but what I am saying is the accuracy of the product in not very good, as an estimate or not. Even when we have local radar storm total estimates, the product will not display the heavy amounts. They either tend to blend it in to a lower amount, or omit it entirely.

BTW, just checking the rainlog, you'll see what I mean. There are numerous other recorded locations, that are color coded on the 24 hour map as having received a certain amount, 1/10 to 1/4 or 1/4 to 1/2, but the rainlog records at least the next bracket up, sometime the recorded amount should be 2 color brackets up. The airport's recorded amount of 1.07 is not indicative of the total amount receive for the area, but the discrepancy between recorded and estimated is indicative of the product's accuracy. All I'm trying to say is that the tool is limited and the level of accuracy is not great.

Examples:
Rainlog Baderville location has 0.73", the map product has them in the 1/10 to 1/4
Rainlog Cheshire location has 0.68, the map product has them in the 1/10 to 1/4
Rainlog point a couple of miles south of Pine Canyon has 0.73", it appears to be in the 1/4 to 1/2 band.
Rainlog Williams location has 0.51", the map product has them in the 1/10 to 1/4
Rainlog Doney Park recorded 0.24, on the product it in the 1/10 to 1/4
Rainlog Hospital adjacent location records 0.44", oddly the product has that area in either a correct band, or the next higher band up. It's hard to tell with pixelation.

[Jim]

In more agreeable notes, La Nina is forecast to return or continue, depending on perspective. So much for a wet winter breaking the drought.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories201 ... anina.html

If we see a repeat of the 2011 winter, it could be very good news for the Colorado River basins and lakes.

[kingsnake]

Thunder in the 'slope. Just had a 1-second brownout. No rain yet.

[Jim]

How bout them storms last night? I don't know what the new normal monthly precipitation amount is for Flagstaff, it went up for August, but we had another big storm last night and have had over the old 30 year (2.12") mean normal precipitation for the month. Last night put us at 2.22". Quite surprising given the dry spell in late August. The rain was nice and all, but the real fun was the incredible lightning. The storm itself was weird in that it was a very heavy rain storm and an extremely active lightning storm well after dark, and after 10pm. It didn't really hit until right around 11pm. You could see the sky lighting up and hear the thunder for a good 1/2 hour before it came in. When it got here, the lightning was fantastic. I went to the stairwell and was looking out on the parking lot when a bolt hung down from the clouds like "J" and and either struck a tree, a car, or something on one of the other buildings. It was low enough to the ground that it was below the other building across from me. Been a long time since I've seen lightning and heard the clap at the same time. There was also a lot of cloud to cloud stuff right over town for a while, too.

[chumley]

Sounds fun. Here in Tempe we've had a nice lightning show the past two nights, but just a spitting of rain. But the south/eastern parts of the valley have gotten some rain out of it. Looks like Tucson has also gotten a fair amount. Overall, I've been disappointed in the valley-wide totals.

[Jim]

Rainlog is down for maintenance right now, too. I wanted to see what Flagstaff's and Tucson's total were.

[SkyIslander18]

Huge rain storms over Safford last night! We've been getting lots of lightning shows over the Gila valley almost every night for the last few weeks, but not much rain with them until now. We had a nice steady rain that started at dusk and lasted well into the early morning. It was so nice, I slept a couple of hours out on my porch listening to the water fall off my roof.

[kevinweitzel75]

Minor flooding here in Mesa lastnight. (At least for here.) Rumors of a tornado at Brown and Ellsworth, probably a microburst.

[Nighthiker]

Observed a Doppler Radar mobile unit parked south of the Beeline near Gilbert Rd. Came back from McDowell Mtn. Park and drove down the 202 and drove thru the storm in NE Mesa in the late afternoon and noted very strong down draft east of Power. Good rain and thunderstorm in Gold Canyon last night.

[azbackpackr]

Funny...this morning here in Flagstaff I went in my socks to take out the garbage. When I came back in I remarked to my roomie that now my socks were wet. He said,
"Yeah, funny thing about rain, it does get things wet." I said, "Yeah, I noticed it must have rained a little." He laughed and said, "A little!!??"

I slept like a log through the whole thing!

[Jim]

I slept like a log through the whole thing!

Impressive, because that seemed to have been the best and loudest storm I remember, going back to 2009. Mostly due to the lightning, but the rain was good, too.

[azbackpackr]

It is not the first time I have slept through a big storm. My husband used to marvel at my ability to do that in Tucson and Eagar.

[PaleoRob]

Awesome monsoon storm in CG and Tucson last night - wow!

[kingsnake]

All talk and no action last night in my part of Sunnyslope ...

[Jim]

I was woken up just after 6am this morning to the sound of someone pelting my building with rocks. Once I came to, I realized it was large hail. It started out as very large, almost golf ball size hail, that was infrequent, but really loud, and as the storm grew nearer, it turned over to smaller quarter sized hail that came down hard and fast for a few minutes. It ripped the leaves off of many of the trees. It briefly turned over to rain before finally moving away.

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/FXC/wxstory.php?wfo=fgz

Looking at the radar image, I live in the south part of town, in the smaller whitish radar area. Most of the white and purple went over downtown, McMillan Mesa, the Hospital, and buffalo park area.

Hail just before sunrise is weird, to say the least. This pattern may mimic monsoon season, but it is no where near monsoon season when you look at it. Severe lightning at 11pm, hail at dawn, this low is providing too much weird instability and energy for the typical weak monsoon storms we normally get in the Flagstaff area. What next, tornadoes like we had last October?

[azbackpackr]

We just had marble-sized hail on our side of town.

[Jim]

The stuff falling on my roof (I'm on the top floor) and my new windshield on my car was big. The biggest hail I ever saw first had. Lumpy, glassy looking, and about 2 inches across. Really loud when hitting my roof and other stuff. Good thing that stuff was light and didn't last long.

[chumley]

What next, tornadoes like we had last October?

One of the forecast discussions I read last week compared this system to last October, but seemed to indicate that this one would not have enough of the same "ingredients" to generate similar results.

[BEEBEE]

Was there any Hail in the the area of Flagstaff Airport?