About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
Looks like we’re having wind today
But will it rain?
Stay tuned until tomorrow evening to find out!
Range of amounts in Catalina, given kind of a marginal moisture situation:
Goose egg to 0.33 inches max, median 0.165 inches, CMP’s best forecast. A friend and met man/prof predicts 0.50 inches here, FYI.
Looking backward
Have felt a little guilty not posting cloud photos from the last storm, Oct 30th, leading my reader into some sadness, maybe even despair the following day when she didn’t see her cloud day reprised. Here are a couple of the characteristic scenes from that day, which includes a shot of a rare drizzling cloud. You will love that shot! Also reprised here is the pioneering technique of novella-sized captions.
8:07 AM. Note how the deteriorating Equestrian Road draws your eye to the bank of Stratocumulus. Quite artistic I think. Think of Bob Dylan’s mournful line, “If today was not an endless highway…1.” Equestrian Trail Road actually ends in Sutherland Heights., just so you don’t lose focus here.8:59 AM. The easy to read sign of a wind shift, one that pushed up the tops of the innocuous Stratocumulus to a thickness where drizzle drops began to form.
9:12 AM: “Drizzle, der it is”, as might be phrased in old TEEVEE show, In Living Color. Shape of lower cloud tells you that the wind is blowing from right to left.10:33 AM. Let’s quote Bob Dylan again, this time in one of his most famous incomprehensible songs, Subterranean Homesick Blues: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows; a horse will do.” Well, CMP added those last few words. Bob couldn’t think of something as good as that. The clouds and horse tell you the wind is blowing from right to left. Btw, ome people were so amazed by the words in that Dylan song quoted above that they began to call themselves, “Weathermen.” How crazy was that? Who in the WORLD would want to call himself a “weatherman” that wasn’t one?
1043 AM. The perfect Cumulus congestus? I think so.4:11 PM. Rainbow. Indicates raindrops are falling over there.
4:37 PM. Just pretty, no words needed.
Still windy outside, 6:03 AM to be exact. Looks like the observation of windy is going to be correct. Expecting some nice lenticular clouds to show up today. Have cameras ready. No rain before 7:15 PM. Overnight, watch out!
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.
