Boiled up from moisture coming from SE out of Mexico and heat generated a lot of energy for the winds and updrafts and downdrafts to play with...
Monsoon season storms are often violent but usually not this big and angry...super rare to have tornadoes. We see swirling dust devils of heat generated small vortexes or spinning heat columns all the time in summer, they rarely have a storm system feeding them and are heat generated. You can see the spinning dust columns from a good distance.
Clouds in Sunday's storms were building up to 40k feet.
This screen grab Sunday at 6.30 was when things were starting to kick off near me and I live out in desert valley beyond Tucson Mountains The Tucson Mountain chain isn't that high but it serves to buffer me from some storms and the tornados were cutting path along I10 it seems as it had enough open area to build and sustain the winds. The storm rolled across town and we rarely see huge patches of purple, red and yellow are typical. Millions of dollars in cleanup and roofs, and other stuff all across town.
Crazy thing is more heavy storms are expected this week. We are percolating between 105-108f most afternoons. So, the crews will get much of things cleaned up before next round adds to the mix. The temps are typical for July, storms are too, just not massive block busters like these were...
If you own a home, best check your coverage as weather events and damage will be more common as we face hot temps feeding storm systems. Probably going to bury us in snow this next winter too. Better to have coverage and not need it than need it and not have it...
Stay safe everyone and hydrate for the heat and don't take unnecessary risks...
David
Added a shot of weather radar to give you better idea of where I am relative to Tucson...South if Marana (City) a few miles most of Tucson metro proper is E of I10 and the major roads shown are largely bound by it on the west.
2nd capture zooms out to show you Phoenix relative to Tucson...we are a bit over million people and Phoenix metro is 5th largest city in US. Tucson is roughly around 2000-2400 ft asl with Phoenix around 1200 if I recall correctly.
