Its been February for awhile, Groundhog Day has passed without incident, and I suppose some climatological information might be of interest. February has the highest average rainfall of any WINTER month, though it has come up short in promise so far with a big fat zero. The models tell us that there is still a chance of rain this mid-week. And, of course, as the prior rains have this winter, the coming chance of rain involves another one of those erratic cutoff lows, ones that the models have a hard time with, humans, too. Here’s a preview from IPS Meteostar based on last evening’s data taken at 11 PM AST. The chart below is valid for Wednesday evening at 11 PM, about the time rain chances are greatest. As you can see, the strongest winds around this low (brownish regions) are on the west and southwest side, meaning that the low will move off to the southeast, farther away from us after Wednesday evening rather than come toward us. “Dang!” The Canadian model has this cut off low going off the south boundary of their forecast map, somewhere down toward the Equator, a complete miss that is just too horrible to contemplate. In that event, maybe Acapulco will get some rain .
In the meantime, below is a chart of the days on which it has rained over the past 35 years here in Catalina. Looks pretty noisy, no sign of a decrease in chances of rain through the whole month, no sign of any “singularities1“, short term climate deviations. The decreasing chance of rain, something we know is going to happen, is not yet seen. Hard to grasp how quickly that period where the rain chance drops off to almost zero is “bearing down” on us, as a fan of the Arizona Wildcats might put it.
The End
1A technical discussion of what climate “singularities” are and how to find SOME of them here: Mapes_climate harmonics_mapesetal
