Upper trough with rain continues to march toward Catalina from Siberia and points west

…and maybe points north, too.  Lately models have been foretelling rain in Catalina on the 17th or 18th.  In case you don’t believe me, here’s the precip forecast from last evening’s (00 Zulu) WRF-GOOFUS1 model run for the morning of the 18th as rendered by IPS MeteoStar:

Valid for Monday morning at 5 AM November 18th. The colored areas are those in which the model has foretold rain during the previous 12 h. As usual, the heaviest amount is foretold for my house here in Catalina/Sutherland Heights.
Valid for Monday morning at 5 AM November 18th. The colored areas are those in which the model has foretold rain during the previous 12 h. As usual, the heaviest amount is foretold for my house here in Catalina/Sutherland Heights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are the chances this will really happen so many days ahead?  Pretty good.  Let’s check out the “Lorenz map2” below:

The Lorenz map valid for 5 AM, Monday, November 18th. Cold air? Its in the bag. Rain? No doubt showers in the area with a pretty low snow level.
The Lorenz map, a name I made up but he deserves it since he came up with the Chaos Theory due to which such maps like these are produced by our computer models; where little, itty bitty things can feed into the system and alter the whole thing, like the cliche of a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil and affecting a tornado in Texas later, as a friend said in a SEA Times article a few years ago, a friend, BTW,  that I played softball with on the Dept team and could really hit the long ball3… Oops, where was I?  Oh, yeah, this map is valid for 5 AM, Monday, November 18th.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cold air in Catalina?   Having to put your jacket on for a few days? Its in the bag.

Rain? No doubt showers in the area with a pretty low snow level on the 17th-18th, but, with the long overland trajectory as presently indicated, not much, maybe a tenth of an inch or so, kind of marginal.

Yesterday’s clouds, high ones

There was some iridescence in a patch of Cirrocumulus about mid-morning, and then what might have been a bit of a parhelic circle in a patch Cirrus.  That was it.  More interesting clouds today as streamers of moist air at high levels sporadically invade Arizona, and today should be one of those.  Get cameras ready!

DSCN609310:56 AM. Sublte bright, slightly curved line in the upper part of this photo of a Cirrus cloud patch may have been a “parhelic arc.”

 

 

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1 As the Global Forecast System is affectionately known.

2I think E. N. Lorenz deserves it, a map with his name on it that we currently call “spaghetti plots”, or by the uppity “model ensembles” name.  You put little errors in at the beginning of the model run and see how different the end results are.  Not too much effect at the beginning because the errors are so small, but usually end up producing a ball of yarn after kitty played with it, as one reader wrote, after a couple of weeks, meaning that the reliability of any specific prediction at that time is nil.  You see, all instrumentation has some error factor, so we never really measure the exact state of the atmosphere.   This is a technique of adding little errors is to see how much they can affect the outcome.  Sometimes, when something really POWERFUL is out there somewhere, those little errors don’t have much of an effect, and that’s when we can make a pretty good prediction for more than a week out.

3In case you don’t believe me again, this time that I actually played on a softball team with someone that might be asked his opinion on something by a newspaper reporter from the Seattle Times, here is a picture of Dr. Nick “Blaster” Bond, my teammate. I took this picture him because I really liked him, and we both liked to play on teams with girls who could really play, too, then we would win co-rec titles because of how well THEY played.  It was great!  Nick always wore those ripped short-shorts no matter how cold it was, even if it was raining.

Famous scientist, quoted in newspapers, Blaster Bond, about 25 years ago. I took this picture because I liked him so much.
Famous scientist, quoted in newspapers, Blaster Bond,  looking askance at some lollipop softball pitcher, about 25 years ago.  Not the same Bond responsible for “Bond Cycles” in paleoclimate proxies, though I wish he was because then I would be more important as a person having more important friends I could mention.

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.