It was a wet monsoon, but don’t get used to the rain.

Forecasters are calling for warmer, drier weather through December on the heels of a monsoon that poured more rain than average into 90 percent of the reliable gauges in and around Tucson, according to one weather expert.

“A lot of them were significantly over - 50 percent over or 80 percent over,” said Gary Woodard, a University of Arizona researcher who tracks hundreds of rain gauges across the state.

It was enough rain to erase drought temporarily statewide. Only the western edge and northwest corner of Arizona are abnormally dry, according to the National Drought Monitor.

It is not the first time in recent years the monsoon quashed drought. But with the Pacific Ocean temperatures average, we are likely in for less rain and warmer temperatures through December, according to a monthly report from the Climate Assessment for the Southwest, a collaborative of scientists at UA.

“If that happens, we could be looking at drought creeping back in,” Woodard said. The monsoon was boosted by tropical storms Dolly and Julio.

“And maybe a little bit from Lowell,” said Gregg Garfin of CLIMAS.

But the picture for the next three months is a bit fuzzy, because weather resulting from neutral Pacific temperatures is harder to predict than from El Niño (warmer water) or La Niña (cooler water), Garfin said.

Though Tucson International Airport got just 5.52 inches of monsoon rain - just below the normal 6.06 inches - midtown got hit hard. The most rain fell in an area bounded by Alvernon Way and Craycroft Road and Speedway Boulevard and Fort Lowell Road. Several gauges in that area took in 10, 11 or 12 inches, Woodard said.

Marana gauges came in under 6 inches, though Green Valley hit 10 inches, he said.

Phoenix was also hit hard with 5.7 inches, or slightly more than twice normal. Flagstaff got less than Phoenix, at just 5.44 inches.

Woodard tracks local rainfall in more detail than has ever been done through Rainlog.org, a network of hundreds of volunteers with backyard gauges. Though their data is less reliable than a controlled, mechanical gauge individually, because there are more than 600 in Pima County, researchers can weed out anomalies in the data, Woodard said.

“If you have a dense enough network you see anomalies. At some point a dense network of volunteer scientists is better than a less dense network of tipping gauges maintained by the government,” he said.

His Rainlog system includes 619 Pima County volunteers, who report rainfall daily. It started in Sierra Vista, grew to Tucson and Phoenix and is now statewide.

Volunteers include retired weather professionals and ordinary homeowners, Woodard said. “We’ve also got Brownie groups.”

Credits: Tucson Citizen

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