While waiting for rain, some useful information…

Let’s look at February’s climo for Catalina, now that the month is practically half over (hahahah, sort of):Daily rain frequency for Feb

 

2012-2013 updated water year rainfall
Oh, my, such a sad chart so far….
What the experts at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center are thinking--a smudge of higher precipitation for Arizona!
What the experts at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center are thinking–a smudge of higher precipitation for Arizona, thought the chances, they feel, aren’t great, 30-40 % is all.  Still, its something.   This would be a pattern of precip that goes with our upcoming storm, one that will be much more of a dumpster in the northern half of the State than here.  With the spaghetti plots having already indicated a high probability of a big trough in the SW US a week ago, this forecast may be based only on that one pretty sure thing which would give a monthly prediction of above normal in the Four Corners area and northern Arizona  a leg up, so to speak.  I mean, you wouldn’t want to forecast below normal precip in a region for a whole month if you knew there was going to be a flood in the first two days of that month!  Hope this forecast is due to more than our Cold Slam, coming up!

 

BTW, yesterday I discovered at first sunlight that a trace of rain HAD fallen the previous night by finding raindrop images in the dust on my “trace detector” instrument  (a car parked outside under the open sky).  Hope you found drop images somewhere, too, and properly reported or at least, logged,  your trace  of rain.

Here’s a radar depiction of those areas of sprinkles from WSI Intellicast, amounts ending at 5 AM AST yesterday.  If you are in one of the faintly blue areas shown below, and DID NOT report a trace, we will have to consider confiscating your Cloud Maven Junior tee….and you should consider whether being a CMJ is really for you.  Its OK if its too much…

Ann 2013020412 AZpcp

Here the rain forecast from the WRF-GFS model, our best, as rendered by IPS MeteoStar:

Valid for 11 AM February 10th. This is the first WRF-GFS run with rain here in it. Only the Canadian model had rain here before this one.
Valid for 11 AM February 10th. This is the first WRF-GFS run with rain here in it. Only the Canadian model had rain here before this one.

 

The End.

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.