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Post by AJ1013 on Sept 20, 2019 13:38:03 GMT -5
Models have been remarkably consistent over the past week bringing copious amounts of rainfall to the deserts of the Southwest, particularly in Arizona. With the potential event now less than five days away I thought I should start a thread to document it. Interestingly, even though Tucson is normally significantly wetter than Phoenix, Phoenix is the city most consistently forcasted to be inundated by this event Here are some forecasts for locations in Arizona as well as some precipitation maps: Tucson:  Phoenix:  Precipitation Maps EC:  GFS:  |
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Post by Ariete on Sept 20, 2019 14:54:15 GMT -5
What's the records, what's the likelihood of this happening, and how anomalous would it be? For us who might not be that familiar with the climate.
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Post by AJ1013 on Sept 20, 2019 15:07:43 GMT -5
What's the records, what's the likelihood of this happening, and how anomalous would it be? For us who might not be that familiar with the climate. The wettest September ever in Phoenix recorded 5.41" of rain, the wettest September ever in Tucson recorded 5.60". Wettest month ever in Phoenix had 6.41" of rain, wettest ever in Tucson had 7.93". Based off the consistency of the models and various ensemble runs I would say there is a ~50% chance of one of the two cities recording at least 2.5" at the official recording station which, in Phoenix, would be among the top five wettest storms ever recorded, possibly top three. It's likely given the type of set up we will have that somewhere in the desert basin will record 6-8" of rain which will cause catastrophic flooding and will be by far the heaviest rain event ever in that particular location. If models predicting 6"+ in Phoenix verify it will break essentially every rainfall record ever set in Phoenix and would cause up to 100 million dollars in damage. Here's a link to a similar event in September 2014 which, as of today, is phoenix's wettest storm ever with 3.30" of rain. This event caused around 35million in damage, shut down the city, and caused numerous flash floods leading to multiple deaths. Keep in mind that 3.30" is peanuts compared to what some models are suggesting could happen early next week. www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2015/09/06/historic-storm-phoenix-2014-flashback/31563463/ |
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