Tucsonans in many locations across the metro area got pouring rain Monday late afternoon and many also reported hail and strong winds, as the city officially logged its first measurable rain of the monsoon season.
Some residents in the Swan/River and Swan/Sunrise areas posted on social media about property damage and high winds. Photos of trees uprooted there were tweeted by KVOA News 4. Swan/Sunrise got 1.72 inches of rain from the storm, the National Weather Service said. A resident's video posted by KOLD showed hail on the ground that looked like snow cover at River/Craycroft.
Kingfisher, on Grant Road near Tucson Boulevard, posted that the storm took out its neon sign but that the restaurant will remain open.
There were various power outages; Tucson Electric Power's outage map is at tep.com/outages.
Please send us your photos and videos of the 2023 monsoon season to be featured in a gallery on tucson.com. Email them to eds@tucson.com and please include the location and date.
It was Tucson's first official rain since May 19 and finally gets this late-arriving monsoon season started. The city's official gauge for weather records, located at the airport, logged .45 inch Monday.
The city was only a few days away from the record for the latest annual start to measurable monsoon rain and was in the midst of setting daily heat records when the storm hit. We still ended up with the third latest recorded rainfall date for a monsoon season, behind July 20, 1901 and July 18, 1935.
The highest recorded wind gust Monday was 63 mph at Tucson International Airport, the weather service said.
While some Tucsonans were dealing with uprooted trees and other issues, some were posting about the glorious plummets in temperature that the storms bring. "It went from 108 to 78 at my place in about 20-30 minutes," a southeast-sider said on Facebook, for instance. But before long the temps hopped back up and "ugh" mugginess set in, a resident just west of downtown lamented.
The Tucson area saw heavy wind, hail and rain Monday afternoon as the 2023 monsoon kicked off.
By 6 p.m., the Rillito River had been brought back to life after weeks of excessive, dry heat. This clip shows the river just west of North Campbell Avenue.
