Anyone for sprouts?

Man, I wanted some sprouts so BAD yesterday afternoon!  But, no, it looked like there weren’t going to be any.  The air seemed to be too dry near the tops of the small Cumulus clouds that populated our sky until 3:30 PM LST.  But then, voila, sprouts!  Little acorns grew into huge cauliflowers!  And then, voila#2, those sprouts reached the “glaciation level” and well beyond it, where the tops suddenly transformed into ice, meaning that there is hail/graupel and snow that will fall out of the bottom of those clouds and melt into RAIN!

While we didn’t get any here in Catalina yesterday, it was still a spectacular sky for us to enjoy.  Here are some examples, in case you missed them, which, if you are in Colorado, Montana, or New Hampshire, or somewhere like that, you CERTAINLY did and will want to see this.  First, a failed cloud.   Tried to sprout as best it could, but didn’t have what it takes.  Sky pretty discouraging at this point because it was 100 friggin’ degrees and the Cumulus clouds were acting like they had cold bottoms; they weren’t sprouting in response to the ovenly weather, to continue a theme.

But then,  when I wasn’t looking and had really kind of given up, voila#3, here was this “glaciated” tower (3rd photo)!  It was stunning!  I missed this because, as a man with feelings,  I was preoccupied with the vets “rassling” with our horse, trying to poke him with huge needles (photo included as a human interest diversion in case you’re already tired of seeing cloud pictures.)

Off we went, with more cloud sprouts and glaciation!  The Cumulonimbus “calvus” shown on the right (5th photo, the one after the horsey shot) with palo verde tree in foreground, virtually went “volcanic”; a huge cloud explosion ensued after this shot, 16 minutes later (4:44 PM LST).  You can really see this happen at the movies here, presented by the University of Arizona Department of Atmospheric Meteorology.  “Two thumbs up.”

And, of course, we had another memorable sunset to clog our already overloaded brains.

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.