0.48 inches fell after 7 AM yesterday, a nice addition to the 1.83 inches already “in the (raingauge) can”, with a 0.01 inches dollop overnight here in Catalina/Sutherland Heights, slightly more and less here and there, with several inches in the local mountains. That addition brought our storm total to 2.31 inches, about 2.5 times normal for the month of November which averages only 0.96 inches.
Recall that at the beginning of the month, it was deemed by the Climate Prediction Center of NOAA that we in SE AZ would experience below normal precip. But this just shows how HARD it is to predict monthly precip anomalies in semi-arid and arid regions where ONE good storm of just a day or two, can blow the forecast (thank goodness!)
Much harder to blow a monthly forecast in places like Seattle where monthly totals are based on many rain days, and if you only had 25 days with rain in a month instead of 30 due to some storm deflecting pattern, then it might turn out to be a droughty one (hahahahaha, kidding my Seattle reader). Those CPC forecasts have a greater chance of verifying in wetter areas where one rogue storm won’t blow those forecasts up.
Also recall that this season we have no La Nina nor an El Nino to hang our climate forecasting hat on. Makes it tough as well.
If Carl Sagan was a meteorologist today, he would be describing our 2-day November drought bustin’ storm as one worth “billions and billions and billions” where nearly every corner of our drought-impacted State got substantial rains. Should help, too, with wildflower eco-tourism in the spring; at least some wildflower blooms now guaranteed.
Should be a gorgeous day today with deep blue skies punctuated by fluffy Cumulus clouds, some tall enough to form ice and produce virga and light showers here and there; not likely to measure here, though. Lots of Stratocumulus1 around early before breaking up into Cu.
Next rain chance? As November closes out into the first coupla days of December.
Yours and mine; the weather and clouds of yesterday
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1 Stratocumulus: “flat Cumulus”, a cloud name oxymoron