About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
galaxy-like storm pinwheels toward Catalina; 0.32 inches of RAIN logged so far
At this hour, a small, pin-wheeling, galaxy-like vortex is drifting toward Catalina. Last night the town was ravaged by 0.30 inches of rain and winds to 50 mph around 2 AM as one of its pin-wheeling bands came through, likely with a big arcus cloud fronting it.
This was the first measurable rain in Catalina since I don’t know when. You probably don’t remember, either, its been that long.
More rain is expected as the little pin-wheeling vortex moves overhead of the little village of Catalina today and on to New Mexico tomorrow.
Plunked below is the Pima County ALERT rain map amounts with the Sutherland Heights amount plunked on it as well. We did pretty well it appears, compared to surrounding amounts. Yay. Our desert will love this! The greatest amount here is 0.46 inches at Dan Saddle in the CDO upper watershed. I guess he hasn’t found it yet.
As of 4 AM today. If you want an update go here. Also here’s the U of AZ rainlog site. Should be pretty well filled in by 8 AM or so.
Some Clouds
8:46 AM. This pretty scene shows a nice little cloud streets composed of Cumulus streaming off the Catalinas from the southeast. Buys-Ballots Law says there a low to your right facing upwind, or, to our southwest. Looked kind of like a summer scene, didn’t it? The green tinge continues in the desert and on the mountains, even though it hasn’t rained, its been warmer than normal since I don’t know when. Pretty remarkable when you think about it.
And if you mention our desert vegetation, as I have, how can you not exult over the fabulous blooms on one of the most horrible plants on earth (haha), as far as spines and glockets go, the prickly pear!
11:48 AM, though I suppose the time is not needed. So pretty, our “Arizona Rose.” Some day, they’ll GMO the spines and glockets away, I’m quite sure…1:41 PM. By early afternoon there were lots of clouds with ice in them and virga and light rain showers around. Techincally this could be a Cumulonimbus, but its a pretty weak one. The bases were again, as the day before above the freezing level. You can see that in the snow virga below, which disappears as the flakes melt just below the freezing level.3:14 PM. Here’s a nice cross-section looking toward Oracle Ridge down Equestrian Trail Road showing that in general, the shower clouds weren’t especially deep at this time, so the shafts coming out of them weren’t so great, either.3:54 PM. It wasn’t long before further deepening occurred and significant showers rolled across the OV. Mom’s gone now, but that her trotter horse wind vane now perched on our fence….6:18 PM. Those showers pretty much missed Catalina, but as the evening approached some breaks in the clouds allowed those gorgeous highlighting of our mountains. Its a form of heaven, I think.
The Weather Way Ahead
Our models, supported by those ensemble “spaghetti” maps are making most of May look pretty darn nice, at least through 20th-25th as the upper air configuration reprises troughs twixt now and then. They’re looking like dry cool fronts, though, no rain in ’em. Snowbirds done left too soon!
The End
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.
Nice photograph of that Prickly pear flower! Right now, I’ve got a few of my cacti flowering as well (2 of them are mammillarias). That’s good- because after Wednesday, they’ll be lucky to see any sun for a while.
Nice photograph of that Prickly pear flower! Right now, I’ve got a few of my cacti flowering as well (2 of them are mammillarias). That’s good- because after Wednesday, they’ll be lucky to see any sun for a while.