About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
A pretty trash Wednesday
Wednesdays here in Catalinaland are, of course, trash and recycling days. And, along with T and R day, we found ourselves amidst some pretty pretty scenes, and in some cases, extraordinary ones,….and a little rain (a trace here in The Heights). I reprise those scenes in case you missed them; you probably did because you’re not some kind of photonut like the writer.
However, be advised that some of the mid-day photos will show smog, smog that was ingested into our poor clouds.
That smog bank, emitted from the Tucson area, almost reached Catalina yesterday during the day. It came up around Pusch Ridge and up along the west side of Samaniego Ridge and almost reached Catalina before its advance was halted by a north wind push and it retreated to the the south. My heart was beating so fast that it might overrun us! Marana and Oro Valley were heavily contaminated for awhile. And smog is like a cloud cancer1.
7:46 AM. A rare display of Stratus along the Tortolita Mountains. If you were hiking and were in this, it would be fog to you, still Stratus to me viewing it.7:46 AM. Rare shot of what appears to be ground fog or just fog rolling eastward out of Tucson. Some flakes of Altocumulus above, and a higher layer of Stratus on the Tucson Mountains.
8:49 AM. This was an amazing sight, to see a thin Stratus cloud fronting an early morning Cumulonimbus capillatus. The Stratus is hard to see, but its the thin dark line on the horizon above Priscilla’s house below the turrets and ice of the Cb. The only other time I have seen such a sight was in Seattle after a snow with Stratus clouds and fog all around the city, but with warm Puget Sound sending up plumes of big Cumulus clouds.
10:37 AM. The day was not without some cloud levity, as these “twin tower” Cumulus clouds show, drawing attention to themselves.
11:26 AM. First ice in clouds becomes visible. It was obvious a few minutes later, but if you saw at this time, or can find it here, you are a pretty CMJ, worthy of an accolade. Of course, if you looked at a radar map of the area, you would have known where to look in advance since there was a small echo in this complex by this time. The precip just was not enough to form a shaft. Note, as well, that Twin Peaks, Continental Ranch area is NOT visible due to the smog bank that was going to move up this way, as it turned out. And look how gorgeous it is toward the Tortolita Mountains!
11:38 AM. OK, here the ice from that turret in the prior photo is now obvious (center frizzy area). However, it was also obvious that the smog toward Marana/Continental Ranch was now closer, even while we had a north wind here in Catalina. Was that southwest wind going to win and mess up our fantastic skies?11:42 AM. Here you can see the smog as it was advancing around Push Ridge and had gotten farther north along the side of Samaniego Ridge. Those lower cloud fragments along Pusch Ridge at the top of the smog tell you that the air was more moist than the air our Cumulus clouds were forming in, and therefore, that this advancing smog bank likely associated with deliquesced aerosols from cars and other urban effluents (aka, “air sewage”) accumulated during the Tucson fog earlier that morning that was now being mixed into a deeper layer and heading this way! To think of breathing air like that. in a short while..it was a ghastly thought.
12:12 PM. To make a short story long, the advance of the smog, with its lower based clouds got as far as Golder Ranch Drive over there by Samaniego Ridge (whitish area below the lowest cloud base on the left), before receding under a freshet of north wind. However, some southern parts of Catalina were affected for a short time.
1:14 PM. By this time, larger complexes of Cumulonimbus clouds, pretty weak ones, were developing over and north of the Tortolita Mountains and upstream of us offering the hope of some measurable rain in Catalina, the smog pretty much pushed back to the southern parts or Oro Valley and Marana.
2:00 PM. Widespread light rain showers were in progress from these weak Cumulonimbus clouds, but sadly, bypassing Catalina. But huge visual payoffs were ahead as the clouds broke at times, and some stunning sights emerged.
2:35 PM. Stunning….to me, anyway. View this in full screen mode for best impact. Later, more accessible stunning.
3:01 PM. Breathtaking; in total awe of this scene! Note gliaciated tower at right.
4:28 PM. And those scenes just kept coming! It was hard to be indoors for even a minute.
5:28 PM. The fading sunlight and the fading Cu only got more breathtaking. And we realize how lucky we are to be here and see scenes like this so often.
5:38 PM. The smog belt, held at bay during the day, still lurked to the SW of us, compromising our sunset by providing a reddish-yellowish sickening hue to it, a sign of a smoky presence, that may compromise today if we’re unlucky.
The weather ahead and way ahead
Well, RIP El Niño, an EN expert has written me just yesterday. Not much left of it he says, having a attached a map of ocean temperature anomalies to kind of rub it in. So we can’t count on hot water in the eastern Pacific to help fuel Southwest storms as was expected by the CPC and others last spring. But, that doesn’t mean that there can’t be a juicy late winter and spring, but the odds are down.
And, we won’t see clouds like yesterday until the long-foretold-by- spaghetti trough arrives around the 22nd of January, and with it some chance of rain. Doesn’t look like it could possibly be very much. BTW, Only 0.02 inches total in three days of light showers in the current situation. :{
BUT…..in the longer term, spaghetti is once again HINTING at a break-on-through-to-the-other side situation, your writer’s favorite as a kid, 10-14 days from now. A high builds up along the West Coast and in the eastern Pacific, gets too big for its britches, can’t maintain its giant north-south range, drifts farther and farther north and begins to break up, kind of looking like a horseshoe with the open end down (toward the south) as the jet stream “breaks on through to the other side” and “underneath”, that being a jet stream comes through from the warm subtropical central Pacific to the southern areas of the West Coast.
The north part of the West Coast and Gulf of Alaska are dominated by higher pressure with lower pressure to the south, so its kind of an upside-down-from-normal looking weather map, pretty rare, and that’s why its cherished by yours truly.
The End, at last!
—————————————————-
1As you know, when clouds are heavily contaminated with air pollution, they can’t rain as easily because the droplets are smaller inhibiting rain in two ways: by preventing the formation of drizzle and rain drops, and making it more difficult for ice to form since the formation of ice happens at higher temperatures when cloud droplets are larger. So, clouds have to be taller when they are polluted to produce rain, either way.
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.
