Jumbo package

Through deliberate deception, the title is likely to bring in quite a few football-centric  people, since “jumbo package” is a term used when an offensive team bring in all the “Sumo wrestlers” they have, usually in attempts to score a touchdown from 6 inches outside the goal line.

The “jumbo package”,   however,  is about some weather, essentially at “mid-field” rather than on the goal line (i.e., just ahead):

A large and very strong upper low center is forecast to arrive on  Sunday, October 25th, football day, the last reference to football in this blog.  As it passes over Arizona, the first snow of the year would likely fall on the ‘Frisco Peaks by Flagstaff.

Tremendous rains, too, would  occur here in AZ with this low,   espepcially2 here the SE corner, should it happen.  See WRF-GFS model outputs below, as rendered by IPS MeteoStar:

Valid on Sunday, October 25th at 5 PM AST.
Valid on Sunday, October 25th at 5 PM AST.
Valid on Sunday, football day, October 25th at 5 PM AST.
Valid on Sunday, football day, October 25th at 5 PM AST.  The bluish regions denote especially heavu rains having fallen in the prior 12 h.

But does it happen?

Let’s check the spaghetti from NOAA for a hint about whether this weather happenstance has much chance of occurring:

Valid on Sunday, October 25th, at 5 PM AST.
Valid on Sunday, October 25th, at 5 PM AST.
Same map as above, except annotated for those who find the map geographically challenging.
Same map as above, except annotated for those who found the first  map geographically challenging.

You, too, as an expert on spaghetti now,  are as crestfallen as I was to see this spag output from last night, showing that the espepcially strong low is, in fact, an outlier;  a not impossible situation, but an unlikely one since we don’t have the bunched blue contours where the jet stream is strong,  down thisaway.  Rather, those blue lines are grouped over the Pac NW, and only one or two bluish contours are down here, ones that would be associated with that upper low on the 500 mb map above for Oct. 25th

Still, even when you know its an outlier, it brings hope for a bountiful rain, which is good.  Will monitor this as the days go by, in case the outlier spaghetti output is an outlier.

The weather just ahead

Of course, as all weatherman know, we still have our boomerang friend Joe Low returning with rain; that’s in the bag, and  has a little “friend” following behind him.  These, combined,  should  bring substantial rains overall in AZ and in the Catalina area,  in the form of scattered showers and TSTMs that persist over several days beginning later Thursday through Monday.  Joe et al. are slowpokes, which is good.

Haze and smoke are up, if you’ve noticed that our skies have been not so blue, but whitish.  Stuff is coming up from Mexico it appears; (Smoky) Joe will bring more of that before it gets here.  So, look for a hazy patches of Altocu and/or Cirrus in the next couple of days.  Maybe a small Cu off in the distance.

2:06 PM, October 11th. Shows the kind of hazy, smoky conditions we've been having lately. There is also some delicate Cirrus up there contributing to the whiteness.
2:06 PM, October 11th. Shows the kind of hazy, smoky conditions we’ve been having lately. There is also some delicate Cirrus up there contributing to the whiteness.

The End

 

——————————-

2“Espepcially” is a word I made up via some inadvertent key strokes, but I kind of like it:   “In particular, but with some energy.”     BTW, Coke tastes better than Pepsi, if that new, unexpected word made you think of a soft drink.

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.