Smoothies

 

7:46 AM.  Stratocumulus lenticularis castellanus (has spires), an oxymoronic cloud.  You would call this Stratocumulus because its low enough to top Ms. Mt. Lemmon.
7:46 AM. Stratocumulus lenticularis castellanus (has spires), an oxymoronic cloud. You would call this Stratocumulus because its low enough to top Ms. Mt. Lemmon.  While some turrets can be seen, others are causing shadows.  Have never really seen something quite like this and I look a LOT.
10:35 AM.  Stratocumulus lenticularis on the Catalinas.
10:35 AM. Stratocumulus lenticularis on the Catalinas.  The moist air is resisting like mad being lifted over the Catalinas.  Oddly, once condensation occurs a bit of heat is released and on the left you see that it was enough heat to allow a Cumulus turret to rise out of the smooth cloud.  This is pretty darn rare site, seeing such smoothness AND Cumulus rising out of the same deck.
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3:46 PM. Cumulus humilis, no ice, except in those Cirrus clouds on the right.
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5:28 PM. Sun dog, or mock sun, also “parhelia” in natural Cirrus and in a contrail. The parhelia is likely brighter in the contrail since the simple hexagonal (six-sided) plate-like ice crystals that cause parhelias are smaller and more numerous in the early stages of a contrail.

 

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6:09 PM. Cirrus spissatus.

 

Today’s clouds

Much like two days ago. Higher based Stratocumulus/Altocumulus with patches of heavy virga and sprinkles around.
Back edge of the cloud mass times in around 2-4 PM. Might be a little early for a great sunset, but just in case, have camera ready.

Looking farther ahead….

Still mainly dry through the next two weeks, though close call on the 7th, a situation that appears much like today, That close rain call NOW appears in both the Canadian and US WRF-GFS models (yesterday they were vastly different).   So, with that, a chance of a few hundredths here after nightfall on the 6th into the morning of the 7th.

Spaghetti, in a dismal series of plots, also shows little hope for rain here through the 20th.  So, even with mistakes in the initial analyses, deliberate ones to see how different the forecast maps turn out, we still can’t exit our drought!  Oh, me.  Poor wildflowers.

The End (did you see the giant mammatus/testicularis to the north this morning?  If not, here it is:

7:15 AM today.  Altostratus opacus mammatus.
7:15 AM today. Altostratus opacus mammatus.

 

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.