Dust in the wind; model rain on the distant horizon

“All it was was dust in the wind” , recalling that tuneful song about large aerosol particles by the rock group, Kansas.    Note: Their first album was incredible!  (This lead in, in case you thought that yesterday evening’s haze was smoke from our awful fires.)

Here’s the change from two evenings ago to last evening.   Cold front went by late yesterday afternoon, pressure began to rise, the dust moved in, and temperatures were 5-7 degrees cooler than it was at the same time the day before.   I guess we only get dirt now with our fronts.  I guess we should be happy;  we have that bit more top soil as well a lower temperatures for a day or so.  BTW, dust particles causing this gritty haze at right usually run a few micrometers in size, HUGE for aerosol particles, so, unlike smoke particles, mostly 100 times smaller, dust don’t hang around for long.

A happy surprise in the overnight National Center for Environment (NCEP) model run, as shown repackaged by IPS Meteorstar a nice weather browsing web site.  Water from the sky in the model runs!  Right here in SE Arizona!  Its only 12 days away!  Start your calendars!  It wasn’t there on the prior NCEP run!  (Sad,  “truth in advertising” note:  These forecasts are mostly unreliable this far in advance, but…what the HECK!  It feels great to see possibly bogus rain here and let the mind wander toward the presence of giant Cumulus clouds, ones that transition into Cumulonimbus capillatus incus ones, cloud to ground lightning, the aforementioned dust washed off the cacti and mesquite trees, fires put out by gully washers!  Its like thinking about Christmas or other gift receiving holiday!  OK, calming down now.  Could just be a numerical mirage.  We have to keep that in mind.  Feet on ground now.  Not having unrealistic expectations as I sometimes do.

The end.

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Categorized as Aerosols

By Art Rangno

Retiree from a group specializing in airborne measurements of clouds and aerosols at the University of Washington (Cloud and Aerosol Research Group). The projects in which I participated were in many countries; from the Arctic to Brazil, from the Marshall Islands to South Africa.