What's the weather where you are?

Not nearly so chill this morning: the storm those cirrus clouds hinted at has come, leaving us overcast overnight, and as a result we didn't cool off nearly as much. Temperature at daybreak was 65F/18C and the sky is completely grey -- though not uniformly so: the layering is thicker and darker over the mountains in a way very suggestive of moisture getting too heavy to remain vapor. The birds, during my morning walk, were subdued -- except for a fluster of sparrows down one alley.

The chance of rain down here on the valley floor is only 30%, and unlike the last storm it's not at all blustery -- barely a breeze in fact. Better chance of rain tomorrow, and predicted much cooler, so probably the associated cold front hasn't actually moved through. We'll see.

Yesterday was a nice late-autumn day, with increasing clouds. Late night, the wind kicked up, and around 3 am, rained for about 20 minutes. Now, it's a damp chilly morning (about 40F when I poked outside, shortly after sunrise) and mostly cloudy -- high today should be at least 10 degrees cooler than yesterday.

Season's achievement unlocked: small storm with strong cold font.

(To be clear: The storm in total is actually big -- we got just the small tail of it, down south here.)

It's supposed to clear a little, but not all the way before the next storm system moves through late tomorrow, with heavy rain likely on Thursday. We'll see what that means in practice, but it sounds like the snow levels will be most of the way down the mountains.

We're in the middle of our first major winter storm systems of the season (it's actually two lows chained together). Rainfall throughout the city has been .8" to 1.25" over the last 24 hours, after about .5" the previous night, and about 2" up on the mountains. It's early enough, though, that it's not cool enough for snow except on the very peaks.

Traffic this morning was not pretty, though at least for major rush hour, rain was on pause between bands of clouds. Our house and the couple blocks around it was without power when we woke up -- took a couple hours for repair crews to fix things.

Rain showers likely through the day, trailing off tonight, but the bulk of precipitation should already have fallen. It'll be chilly tonight, after the two cold fronts moving through. If it were a month later, we'd have frost tomorrow morning, but for now it'll just be time for jackets at dawn.

(Admin: Missing location.us.az.tucson and place.desert tags.)

---L.