If you have had your spaghetti this morning, you would be able to write headlines like this. Here’s the plot, no, not like in a detective story, but an actual plot from the Spaghetti Factory at NOAA, valid for 192 hours from last evening, or in plain speak, next Thursday afternoon at 5 PM, April 12th, AST:
SInce you’ve had lessons in spaghetti, you should be shrieking when you see this one, “My gosh, look at that potent, powerful storm about to strike California! I can’t believe one that big would strike in the middle of April. Quite unusual.”
OK, calm down that bit, but still stay excited. Yes, the Dark Void radiating from approximately where Santa Claus lives in this plot shows you where there can great confidence that a big trough is going to be present where the Dark Void ends. Notice the dark tube extending from Nome-Anchorage, AK, all the way SSE to off northern California. And another one in eastern Canada, etc. That, as you know, is where a trough will be at 00Z on Friday, April 13th (in ordinary time, 5 PM AST on the 12th, and with that, a strong low center is coiled and ready to strike. Exciting.
Let’s go to the next chapter of this plot, one but a day later, valid for 5 PM Friday the 14th and see if the Darkness is able to extrude (I really like that word because its fun to stretch it out and make it sound like what it is describing–“ex-TRUDE”, you can feel it oozing along, its an onomatopoeia, like “thunder”). Now where was I?
Oh, yeah, the plot, revealing the plot (story-line goes), for the next day is below.
Sorry you you have to see this. After explaining the above plot, and with the background on spaghetti plots I have provided you in ealier blogs, I don’t have to tell you how disappointing the one below is. Only a slight chance of rain here exists, and there is not much confidence in configuration of the trough and jet stream around it after it rockets up to the Cal coast on the 12th.
There is another chance of rain indicated from last night’s run, that on April 19th, a day in which it has not rained in 35 years here in Catalina. Odd. Are we due? Or are there climatological factors at work to minimize rain around the middle of April? I really don’t know the answer. However, it is not a very reliable prediction at this point. It will likely come and go in the model runs in the days ahead.
In the meantime, today’s clouds
Here are a couple of shots of the Cirrus/Cirrostratus-with-contrails1 mesh we have overhead this morning, ice clouds, as you now, with a hint of lenticulars off to the distant west. Should have nice Cirrus-ee clouds all day, and again, a chance of Cirrocumulus or very high Altocumulus lenticulars. Not much chance of anything below about 15,000 feet above the ground today.
1I HATE contrails except when I am flying to some fun place I want to get to in a hurry!
The End
