The Dewey Tribe: Weather - Arizona 12 June 2010

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Weather - Arizona 12 June 2010

With all of the severe weather happening around the country deep into tornado and severe weather season, Arizona was able to get a little taste of that Saturday. Now Arizona doesn't see too much "severe" weather during this season, there is a whole other season for that known as the Monsoon. Approaching Monsoon Season, a couple of thunderstorms popped up Saturday just Northwest of Phoenix. It was great to finally see something on the radar other than just ground clutter. I will post some more on the Monsoon as I learn more about it. From the sounds of it, it should be a great season to see some lightning, thunderstorms, dust storms and a ton of rain!

Saturday's storms were pretty minimal, but there were a few Significant Weather Advisories issued:

SIGNIFICANT WEATHER ADVISORY FOR...NORTHWESTERN MARICOPA COUNTY IN SOUTH CENTRAL ARIZONA...AT 1129 AM MST...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE METEOROLOGISTS DETECTED A STRONG THUNDERSTORM NEAR AGUILA...MOVING SOUTHEAST AT 5 MPH...HAIL UP TO ONE-HALF INCHE IN DIAMETER AND WIND GUSTS UP TO 50 MPH ARE EXPECTED..

As of 11:45am a line of thunderstorms were approaching the Phoenix Metro area with another developing storm system out Northwest of the area, just crossing into our warning area.

Throughout the day a few more of these were issued, totalling 7 in all. The accumulated precipitation was only a trace in some areas, including Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport and up to 0.02 inches 4 miles out of the city of Maricopa. So while this wasn't a very big rain event, it was a lot of fun to see the storms moving and developing and falling apart on radar. I imagine there will be a lot more to see when we are in full swing of the Monsoon. Nothing like the severe weather out on the plains, but I'll take what I can get here in the desert!