Twenty-four hours ago there was ONE panel of rain over Catalina, a “spittance”, a taunt, and now there are TWO panels of rain for Catalina on Friday, the 28th of January, ones that have appeared in the model output from last night’s 5 PM AST global data crunch. FOUR panels, total, having rain/snow SOMEWHERE in Arizona are now calculated with that same storm!
And, today, its only NINE days out from real time, which is better than 10. Has a tad more credibility. Here are two of the AZ rain (snow in the north) panels from IPS MeteoStar for you personal inspection:
So, for a credibility check on rain, “Who you gonna call?”
Spaghetti busters!
Well, more completely, “spaghetti possible storm busters!”
Here is last night’s “ensembles of spaghetti” from the NOAA supercomputers for the 28th.
A quick glance of no more than 1 second will tell you that this storm in the West on the 28th is just about guaranteed now. Deliberate little errors introduced in the model run at the outset of data crunching, little errors that produce all the different lines (contours) did not shake the original output to death over the West; we still got us a big trough as indicated by the red and blues lines both dipping to the south in the western US. That “coherence” in those lines means a welcome widespread precip event in the interior of the West, including Arizona on the 28th.
As in so many cases this season, we are a bit on the edge here in Catalina, so rain here is more “iffy”, not guaranteed, as it would be, say, for Flagstaff, but rather just, “likely.” Certainly another temperature plunge after a string of pleasant days is “guaranteed” about this date with this system. Hoping for more than lowering temperatures and cold air.
Where are we today?
The long foretold scenario in the models, strongly supported by spaghetti, “Toasty in the West, brutal cold in the East”, is about to happen.
80s forecast for southern California, nice here, too, now. 69 F here in Catalina yesterday.
Meanwhile some godawful cold air is readying for a southern plunge from the Arctic, colder than the air ALREADY plunging across the northern Plains States today. Here is the actual map, from the quite wonderful maps provided by the University of Washington Huskies Weather Department of which I was a member until I retired because, “It was time to go” as I wrote in my resignation letter; didn’t want to “hang on” kind of like Willy Mays1 did past his prime, that is, to impede progress in science by “hanging on” as brain dimmed, thus squandering public monies from research grants. That’s why I am here in sunny Arizona writing silly blogs like this one..
Oh, yeah, that map:
- 5 AM AST THIS morning. Its got writing on it.
As much north and south amplitude as is shown on this map shows, there will be even MORE amplitude in the next 48 to 96 hours with warm and cold temperature extremes reaching their peaks. Expect to read about them affecting the East in that time frame.
Then all of this amplitude you see above “melts down” into more of an west to east flow pattern–remember flow is along the (green lines, aka, “contours”). With west to east flow, temperatures moderate from extremes.
Clouds?
There’s a clear air gap in those tropical Cirrus clouds that we saw yesterday. Another batch, now over Baja (see map above) is creeping northeastward toward us, and we’re likely to see some of them before sunset.
TE
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1Willly Mays, one of the greatest baseball players of all time in New York as an outfielder with the Giants. But when the team moved to SFO, Willy was past his prime, didn’t make those great catches anymore, and his batting average went to hell. He was even booed in SFO! Hard to imagine. But then the saying arose about him, “He played too long.”
