CuPIDO

Left: I had not realized how common turret detachment might be.....


There is a wonderful cover article in the January 2008 of BAMS (Bulletin Of The American Meteorological Society) called "CuPIDO - Mountain Hotspots For Thunderstorms" (more information here). The folks at ASU, U of A, and the University of Wyoming have, with much monitoring and persistence, have probed and helped understand one of the Southwest's great treats, the onset and progress of cumulus convection during the annual summer monsoon season. The research focused on summer 2006 storms over Mount Lemmon, just NE of Tucson, AZ. The summer monsoon is a vastly complex, yet more-or-less dependable process that is crucial to life in the desert.

Michael Leuthold, one of the co-authors, was a buddy back in grad school days.

The article notes the unusual MCSs that developed over the Mogollon Rim during that summer of 2006. I remember watching those storms from afar, here in Sacramento, on the Internet, and being quite surprised by their appearance:

Flights had to be suspended during two 4-day periods (Fig. 5): the first one, 20-23 July, because it was too dry, and the second one, 27-30 July, because it was too wet. Overcast morning skies, record moist soundings (e.g., Fig. 6b) and record precipitation occurred during the latter period. This was the result of a low-level moisture surge and upper-level northerly flow associated with a weak, quasi-stationary low over New Mexico. On three consecutive days the northerly flow aloft drove mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) southward during the late evening and at night. The MCSs were sustained by the large water vapor content in the BL (over 15 g kg-1) and northerly low-level shear. Such flood-producing nocturnal MCSs are rare (McCollum et al. 1995) and were not predicted by operational models. In structure and predictability, these events are reminiscent of eastward-propagating nocturnal convection over the Great Plains (Carbone et al. 2004). Two ISFF stations (NE and ENE in Fig. 1) were severely damaged by the storms of that period.

Here's a general public newspaper article in the Arizona Daily Star regarding the project.