At 556 pm MST on Fri Jul 28 2023 the National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm warning covering much of the Tucson area. The storm was located at the time over Sabino Canyon Recreation Area. The warning stated cell movement as southwest at 15 mph. My place is about 7-8 miles due west of the recreation area. (At the time I only heard a radio host's summary; details of the warning looked at much later.) It was about 6:10 pm before I heard thunder and went out on the patio to take a look. Then it took another 5 minutes to realize that I should go back in and get my phone to take some pictures.
The format for the image captions is MMDDHHMMSSPM. MST is GMT -7H. The thunder was coming from the anvil overhead. Maybe I was too far away and it was too bright, but I never noticed any cloud-to-ground lightning. The bright white blob on the right screamed hail. I quickly realized that the action was shifting south. The remainder of the images are looking southeast.
There were widespread reports of inch or more diameter hail on Tucson's east side.
And 60 mph wind gusts at both airfields on the distant right.
Awesome arch of darkness.
On going outside at 6:10 pm I was still in the excessive heat
northwest wind. By 6:20 there was occasional moderately buffeting outflow and a few drops of rain. Later about 10-11 pm a secondary band of showers moved through, but for the entire evening I received only 0.01 inch of rain.
