HikeArizona.COM

The endless chatter of weather.

Radar showed a decent storm over the majority of the Slide Fire area yesterday afternoon.

Rain this afternoon in Payson. Quite the rain cloud in the Mt. Ord area, lake in the sky look and it extended in altitude.

SpiderLegs wrote:Used to live right off Catalina Hwy...

That's my 'hood

This area and the southeastern Catalinas enjoyed a tremendous downpour yesterday afternoon.

Preston wrote:

SpiderLegs wrote:Used to live right off Catalina Hwy...

That's my 'hood

This area and the southeastern Catalinas enjoyed a tremendous downpour yesterday afternoon.

Wasn't into hiking when I lived with my folks. Had a little bit of talent for bike racing and Catalina Hwy was 10 yards from my driveway, so I've ridden my bike up Mt Lemmon more times than I can count. My brother is a sheriff and that part of town is his beat. He was looking forward to handing out "stupid motorist" tickets after some of the downpours this past week.

Yesterday I was driving the tour van with a family of four. We were headed south on 89 from Cameron toward Flagstaff, a little south of Gray Mountain, when a storm hit. It got worse and worse, to where I couldn't see. I pulled to the side (not much room there) and was putting the hazard lights on when what seemed like a wall of wind, water and debris hit the van from the side, rocking it a lot. We watched large debris, roofing tin, etc., flying across in front of us. I thought a tornado was about to hit. Then it was over, and we went on.

Driving I-40 eastbound a bit ago, I saw some small patches of snow on the ground at the A-1 Mountain exit (about 2 miles west of Flagstaff). Probably it was patches of hail, but snow sounds more impressive.

hippiepunkpirate wrote:Driving I-40 eastbound a bit ago, I saw some small patches of snow on the ground at the A-1 Mountain exit (about 2 miles west of Flagstaff). Probably it was patches of hail, but snow sounds more impressive.

Hailed like crazy this afternoon in Williams after myself and D. hiked Summit Mountain. Glad we didn't get caught in it. Since I have that crack in my windshield after a truck on Lake Mary Road flung a large cinder rock on it a couple of weeks ago, I was worried it would not hold up to the hailstorm, so I pulled underneath the entryway of one of the hotels in Williams as I was driving home from the hike and waited until it had died down a bit. Sheesh! We need rain, so I ain't complainin'!

I like the rain, but the humidity is always trying. I wonder if Lemmon and other places have started to pick up much. With any luck, we won't have a weaker monsoon, or at least not early on, with the developing El Nino.

azbackpackr wrote:I was worried it would not hold up to the hailstorm

Your windshield can withstand hailstones the size of grapefruits. Even with a crack. It might crack some more, but it's not like hail is going to come flying into the car. The body on the other hand ... will look like a golf ball when its done. But windshields are made strong.

Literally had a "come to Jesus" moment when caught in a monsoon storm on Mt Lemmon back in college. Was out climbing near Windy Point and misread the weather, thought we had an extra hour to get in one more route. Anyways, the storm rolled in and my friend & I hole up in a cave to get out of the rain. Thought for sure we were going to get fried by lightning or best case slip off the wet granite outcropping that we were stuck on trying to get back to the car.

I planned to do Mount Wrightson again today. With a 90% chance of storms today and 70% tomorrow, I think I will opt for something else. I also planned to buy a Parks Pass, or whatever it is known as now. I was going to get one last week, but the Madera Canyon area is not staffed. With the rain, I think I should wait to buy a pass so I can maximize the utility of the pass. September is probably the best time. I figure I will be more familiar with the Tucson area next summer, or take a trip next summer, so having it during the summer of 2015 instead of this summer, might be better. Plus, I'm cheap. Well, I did pay the $5 last week, so not that cheap.

For Madera I bought the $20 annual pass. It has a peel and stick part so I can just leave it on the windscreen, and not worry about forgetting to do the hang tag thing with the America the Beautiful parks pass. They can be purchased at the gift shop.

Looks like mount Elden and east Flagstaff got pounded by rain. Perhaps up to 4 or 5 inches over Elden.

Jim_H wrote:Looks like mount Elden and east Flagstaff got pounded by rain. Perhaps up to 4 or 5 inches over Elden.

I dodged a big one that looked to me as if it was west of Flagstaff, but it was east of 64. I was driving down it a couple of hours ago.

I just got back from two weeks in AZ (mostly Flagstaff) UT. We had thunderstorms and hail on our first Inner Basin attempt, and some thunderstorms on the do-over (Wednesday and Thursday). They were nothing like the massive deluge that hit there yesterday afternoon.

Jim_H wrote:Looks like mount Elden and east Flagstaff got pounded by rain. Perhaps up to 4 or 5 inches over Elden.

I was at the Canyon when it happened (got hit hard with rain/wind at Mather Point BTW), but a good amount of Elden/East Flag storm was hail. Apparently it caused a mud flow coming off Elden and going into the Swiss Manor neighborhood. A FB friend of mine had an impressive video of it, bulldozers and backhoes piling mud 10 feet high to make the street passable.

Seems Elden has been getting hit with really heavy storms a lot in the last few years. In July of 2011, there was a big one that created a small mud flow over the west side of the Fatman's Loop near the Pipeline trail. That is good mud, too.

Bradshaws got nailed with 1.5 to 2.5". That'll get washes running.

Maybe Mount Lemmon and the ridge extending out to the west (along which the Mount Lemmon trail runs) will get one of these >1 inch rainfalls? Course, not really fast, over a few hours.

monsoon flow + geography + historical data = yes, that will happen. Probably more than once this season. The exact day is TBD.