Hypnometeorology; some rain to close out month?

I would like you to clear your mind and stare at this map at this site for 10 minutes.  After which time I will ask you to do things you might not otherwise do, like buy a weather station for the back yard and have it report to the Weather Underground (not to the radical left wing group spawned during the late 1960s, but to the OTHER Weather-centric Underground, though it is true that they both originated at the University of Michigan and what is that about?)………buy that “I ‘heart’ spaghetti” (weather “spaghetti”, of course)  T-shirt for $4 plus $75 for postage and handling, and some other things as I think of them.

I’ve thought of some things…   For example,  while under this “spell”, like maybe take more cloud pictures, take a course in cloud photography, fill in your weather diary more completely than you have been, you know, that kind of thing, nothing really untoward at all.   I am pretty sure you won’t have to worry about ending up some kind of weather automaton or human weather robot until I snap my fingers after viewing that map up there (linking to it yet again just to make sure you saw it).  Maybe we should constitute a human subjects review committee before I post today….just in case.

In the meantime, look for some nice Cirrus today.  Some of it should be visible by daybreak.  That Cirrus is all that’s left of some front that banged into the coast yesterday.  This scruff of Cirrus in the satellite imagery is moving so fast it appears it will go by completely before being capable of  giving us a colorful sunset.  It’ll be a close call.  Oh, well.

The weather way ahead–lookin’ good, that is, bad

Finally, the less reliable 06 CUT-GMT-Z time model run (the one that crunches some global data at 11 PM AST) has some green pixies here.  As rendered by IPS MeteoStar here are two shots of a rain that occurs the night of the 29th-30th of March, yes, THIS month.  Wow.  The model outputs at 06 Z and 18 Z are not considered as reliable as those at 12 and 00 CUT (Central Universal Time, as we have named what used to be Zulu, or Greenwich Mean Time, but does the rest of the Universe know what time we think it is?  “I don’t think so”, an editorial).  Some graphics of the possible precipitation event:

Valid for 11 PM AST, March 29th.  Colored regions show areas where the model thinks it has rained/snowed over the prior 12 h.
Valid for 11 PM AST, March 29th. Colored regions show areas where the model thinks it has rained/snowed over the prior 12 h.

 

Valid at 5 AM AST,March 30th.  There's hope!
Valid at 5 AM AST,March 30th. There’s hope!
The upper level configuration for 11 AM AST March 29th, just about the time the rain moves in here.
The upper level configuration for 11 AM AST March 29th, just about the time the rain moves in here.   Very nice.

Of course, its mandatory to see if this forecast has ANY support whatsoever in the NOAA “ensembles of spaghetti”, and here is a plot for the 29th of March. It’s coming, that trough, it will be here. Yay! However, will it be strong enough to bring rain? I think so, but, then, I would always think that because an inherent bias that I feel duty bound to report.  BTW, wouldn’t you like to be wearing a T-shirt like this for $4 plus $75 for postage and handling???

Ending crassly, CM

Valid for 5 PM March 29th, a Friday.  Could be exciting that day.
Valid for 5 PM March 29th, a Friday. Could be exciting that day.

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.