todnewman.com

Here’s an interesting view at the last month.  Traditionally, Tucsonans know that Tucson weather changes quickly in the fall from summer to winter.  This change is always welcomed, but it also means that Thanksgiving always sneaks up on us.

The plot below shows the drama of this changeover in the last month from higher temperatures to lower.  Plus, you can see the timeperiod in the middle where the change seems to have been put into motion by a storm event (see the lightning spikes in blue).   After those 6 days of cloudy and stormy weather, we have slipped into a pretty predictable pattern with no clouds and gradually decreasing temperatures.  Looks like something must be happening today with the high pressure and lower temperatures, though.

lightning_sensor_data_plot-month

We’ve been getting a lot of rain lately in Tucson.  Not sure if it’s a late Monsoon or early winter rains (or hurricane rain).  Two days ago we had rain nearly all day.  You can see all the lightning strikes in the plot below.  As normal, at the scale I use, the intersection of the humidity and temperature lines signify rain and the “pointy” luminescence fills signify cloud coverage.

lightning_sensor_data_plot-week

October is the month that Tucsonans live for, because it is when we finally see hope that our wonderful winter weather is coming.  In the one month chart here you can see the hot, consistent pattern of September get interrupted (in this case by the remnants of a hurricane).  This must have been the trigger, because the patterns got all confused and the result is our nice, low morning temperatures.  Humidity is still swinging wildly, but the highs are lower every day (along with the temperature.  The luminescence sensors are also telling a story of cloud cover (see the jagged peaks and compare to the smooth hills of September).

lightning_sensor_data_plot-month

You can look at the timeframe from 10/1 to 10/3 to see how the remnants of a late season hurricane passing through the desert can disrupt a stable non-monsoon weather pattern.

From about 9/27 to 10/1, we see the typical non-monsoon cycle recover after the 9/19 monsoon event.  The hurricane event on 10/1 throws this pattern into disarray and it still hasn’t recovered.  Note the difference in the luminosity data, temperature, and pressure.

lightning_sensor_data_plot-month

Looking at the last month of data, we could be seeing a trend towards drying up and cooling down.  The length of the days  is getting shorter and the light is less intense (see the Light spectrum ‘bumps’).  Also, the temperature swing is smaller through the day.  The pressure went up quickly after the last rain event and now is tapering off.  We’d expect higher temperatures for the last couple of days but didn’t see that.  The daily lows seems to be a bit lower each day.  Barring unforeseen weather events, I think we’ll start seeing the range between the highs and lows get smaller each day.

lightning_sensor_data_plot-month