August 30, 2010

Tucson Weather

Here are some links for Tucson weather information: The Tucson area observations are something I am always looking for, and are tucked away in a hard to find place on the NOAA site. If the above link stops working, you may be able to find this data by Using the general info link, clicking on Tucson, then below "Current Conditions" click on "More Local Wx".

My notes

Here is my thumbnail summary. June is really hot, especially late June. There are four hot months, June through September. May can be hot, but it is generally quite tolerable. So you get 8 months of great weather. April and October-November are fantastic.

The following is a table I generated from 10 years of temperature data. I break each month into 4 weeks (A, B, C, and D). Week "D" includes the extra days at the end of each month

 1A    34.37    63.48
 1B    34.51    64.67
 1C    35.20    66.77
 1D    34.40    64.41
 2A    36.69    68.74
 2B    37.13    70.00
 2C    38.70    68.37
 2D    37.37    71.50
 3A    40.59    76.31
 3B    41.96    76.82
 3C    43.89    81.33
 3D    45.43    85.36
 4A    47.54    85.14
 4B    48.62    91.52
 4C    47.96    93.02
 4D    52.37    96.09
 5A    53.67    96.94
 5B    57.82   100.79
 5C    57.72    98.87
 5D    57.97   103.40
 6A    64.11   106.96
 6B    66.02   109.23
 6C    67.69   110.59
 6D    71.30   109.98
 7A    72.17   110.26
 7B    75.26   108.84
 7C    75.32   104.59
 7D    75.69   105.30
 8A    74.18   106.19
 8B    74.87   101.65
 8C    72.66   102.08
 8D    73.19   103.66
 9A    71.77   101.78
 9B    70.36   102.20
 9C    65.83    99.74
 9D    62.87    97.68
10A    59.62    95.42
10B    57.58    91.77
10C    53.35    87.20
10D    48.21    84.56
11A    44.67    81.05
11B    43.57    79.69
11C    40.96    74.82
11D    41.81    73.12
12A    39.72    70.23
12B    36.93    68.07
12C    35.19    67.85
12D    36.90    66.36
I have a weather station at my house that collects data one a minute. I started it running in April of 2017. The above table was generated in August of 2026. First I calculated the min amd max temperature for each day. Then I gathered all of that for each week and for all the years. So, each value above is the average of about 70 days.

Back in 2024 I did something similar, but only looked at high temperatures. The following is based on the 7 years from 2017 to 2024 --

Here are average high temperatures, month by month --

01 65.3
02 67.5
03 79.2
04 93.2
05 101.3
06 109.9
07 107.9
08 103.3
09 100.1
10 89.2
11 77.9
12 66.4

Here I break down each month into a first ("A") and second ("B") half --

01-A 64.9
01-B 65.5
02-A 66.2
02-B 68.5
03-A 76.5
03-B 81.6
04-A 88.5
04-B 96.8
05-A 100.2
05-B 102.2
06-A 108.9
06-B 111.0
07-A 110.1
07-B 105.1
08-A 103.5
08-B 103.1
09-A 102.8
09-B 98.3
10-A 92.7
10-B 86.1
11-A 81.2
11-B 74.6
12-A 69.0
12-B 64.6
I repeated this, using only data from 2021 to 2024 and got the following. Nothing particularly different from the above. This was sort of testing the notion that things have been getting hotter.
01-A 63.2
01-B 64.0
02-A 66.1
02-B 68.5
03-A 72.9
03-B 76.2
04-A 84.6
04-B 92.3
05-A 97.5
05-B 100.8
06-A 106.4
06-B 109.3
07-A 109.6
07-B 105.4
08-A 103.8
08-B 103.1
09-A 101.9
09-B 98.2
10-A 90.1
10-B 84.9
11-A 79.1
11-B 72.6
12-A 68.0
12-B 63.4
I did all of this on 8-11-2024, so this looks at data from 4-7-2017 to 8-10-2024.

Even though we see average highs of 100 all through May, things never really seem consistently nasty until June. Once September rolls around, it is still hot, but you can feel that the transition is in progress. I did all this in mid August of 2024 because I was getting the feeling that things were cooling down. It would also be interesting to look at overnight lows.

Meteorology

Low pressure areas in the northern hemisphere (sometimes called "cyclones) have winds that rotate counterclockwise around them and are usually cloudy weather.

High pressure areas in the northern hemisphere (sometimes called "anticyclones) have winds that rotate clockwise around them and are usually clear weather.

The base of the stratosphere (top of the troposphere) is about 19,000 feet. ??? It is rare that clouds reach above the top of the troposphere, but sometimes big thunderheads (cumulonimbus) do.


Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Weather Resources / tom@mmto.org