Severe weather in AZ.

[illinoistrains]

Over the past 2 days, Arizona has experienced some really bad weather. At my house last night i had hail bigger then golf balls and some strong wind. Northern Arizona was under a Tornado warning this morning with on touching down near Flagstaff causing I-40 to close and a train to derail plus lots of other damage.

[Smjh1979]

Where to begin...

Unlike the Phoenix and Flagstaff areas, the Prescott and Prescott Valley areas got spared pretty well.

I signed up for a free service from The Weather Channel where I would get emailed severe weather alerts.

Just for fun, I kept a running tally on what kinds of warnings were issued.

Since the first warning was issued at 1:08 AM this morning, until the final warning expiring at 2:45 PM, I have never seen this many warnings EVER for October. Lots of records were set Today.

Normally during a Monsoon storm, maybe 2-4 Tornado warnings would get issued for the whole state, and that's all that would normally happen for the whole year.

Well, just for Yavapai County alone, and not counting Gila or Coconino counties, Yavapai County had a grand total of 20 Tornado Warnings, and 15 Severe Thunderstorm Warnings!

What's also shocking is that at 8:30 AM this morning, Prescott Valley was put under a Tornado Warning with the tornado expected to strike around 8:40 AM. Luckilly, nothing happened in my part of Prescott Valley. Just light sprinkles is all that resulted from that "Tornado".

However many other areas were not spared. I think Dewey-Humboldt & Cherry got a total of 10 warnings, many of them were Tornado, and Sedona got about 7-10 Tornado warnings as well.

Also, the NWS office in the Bellemont area got 3-4 Tornado warnings as well, so they got to experience the warning first hand.

Coconino County had a lot of Tornado Warnings as well, probably another 10-15, so over 30 Tornado warnings in just 24 hours is something that is unheard of for Arizona.

The following is a link showing some of the damage at Bellemont, and also shows some of the derailed cars: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/FXC/make_img.ph ... 1&force=no

Here are some hail reports as well: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/ ... GZ&pil=PNS

Some reports on the SPC show 2.25" hail. Pretty large... We did get hit with one storm last night that under the old Severe Thunderstorm criteria, would've been Severe. We had 0.75" hail fall here, although it only lasted about 1 minute, due to the storms moving at 35-50 MPH.

A lot of warnings were talking about Walnut & Golf Ball size hail, and even one warning last night even mentioned Baseball sized hail. No Grapefruit hail fortunately though...

Back in 1997, a Tornado Watch was issued, but it was for the GreenLee county area. No other Tornado Watches were issued until January 2010, when a Tornado Watch was issued for the Western 1/4 of the state. Now On October 6, 2010, Two consecutive Tornado Watches were issued, both within 3 hours of each other, and also marked the first time that Yavapai County had a Tornado Watch since I've been in Arizona.

Luckilly all we got out of it was 3/4" hail, pea sized hail, and a lot of rain. No power outages, no disruptions to Cable or Internet. I think we got off pretty lucky Today...

In the 23 years I've lived in Arizona, and the 17 years I've lived in Prescott Valley, I've never had a Severe outbreak like this ever.

Also, if you look up news on Google or any other kind of media outlet, there are tons of reports on this severe outbreak if you want to know more. I'm sure the NWS will put out a lot more on this soon, especially since they were in it at least 3 times, if not 4.

[Smjh1979]

One other thing I forgot to mention, when the Downtown Phoenix area got slammed Yesterday, I was watching the radar, and something I had never seen happened.

For the first time, I actually saw white color, which means dbZ values of 75. I had never seen that happen since the NWS started using radar years ago. That was the first time I had ever seen that in Arizona.

[AndyWS]

Pretty crazy day for you guys all right. I wondered how you were faring when I saw the tornado watch up for parts of AZ this morning.

[Smjh1979]

I was awake from the first warning at 1:08 this morning, and again at 1:30 when the second warning came up.

Fast Forward to about 3:30 AM, when things started kicking into high gear, I pretty much started the day then, and stayed glued to the laptop for about 6-7 hours waiting to see what would come next, and whether we would get hit.