About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
Author: 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.
Yes, that’s right. The “meteorological June”, characterized by westerly flow aloft, desiccated air from the surface to 150,000 feet and maximum temperatures between 100 and 200 °F, has extruded itself into July this year in Arizona. There is no difference to speak of between what we are seeing now at the ground and aloft and what happens in June, a month when we’d like to be anywhere but here! Even Florida!
Remember, June is mostly cloudless here in Arizona, too. Well, that’s what we had yesterday in the middle of July. It was a tough day for a cloud-maven. It was also hard to imagine being in Arizona Phoenix and driving ALL THE WAY to Tucson on a hot afternoon (111 °F in parts of Mesa!) and NOT see a single Cumulus cloud! It just doesn’t happen. Nothing over the Mogollon Rim; nothin’ nowhere. I got pretty excited about nothing, and I am trying to relay that excitement to my readers, if any.
July is expected to begin late on the 18th or 19th. For more on July, and great forecasting, see Bob and Mike.
Oh, the weather station here in The Heights is working again. Pretty boring stuff these days, though.
NWS-style 8-incher gauge here in Sutherland Heights collected no less than 2.04 inches! All of this fell after about 11:30 PM last night. Good grief.
Flying ants are out in big columnar swarms, btw, confirmation of a major rain event here in the Sonoran Desert.
CDO wash had a major run, but was dry at Golder Ranch Dr. and Lago del Oro Parkway at 6 AM. The Sutherland Wash also had a major run, but is down to a relative trickle now. Am thinking flow in these washes in June must be extremely unusual, if not “historic.”
The well-exposed rain gauge. Note how prickly pear cacti come up to about where the top of the gauge is. Great for keeping the wind losses down when its raining, a problem with rain gauges.
About 6:30 AM this morning. The Sutherland Wash at the Cottonwoods and also, start of the Baby Jesus Trail.The CDO Wash at East Wilds Road, about 6:15 AM this morning showing evidence of a major run last night.
These some totals from around here and in the Catalin Mountains ending at 4 AM AST today from the Pima County ALERT system gauges. Note 6 h totals, next to last column on the right: Gauge 15 1 3 6 24 Name Location ID# minutes hour hours hours hours —- —- —- —- —- —- —————– ——————— Catalina Area 1010 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.94 0.94 Golder Ranch Horseshoe Bend Rd in Saddlebrooke 1020 0.00 0.08 0.16 0.51 0.51 Oracle RS 0.5 mi SW of Oracle 1040 0.04 0.04 0.20 2.01 2.01 Dodge Tank Edwin Rd 1.3 mi E of Lago Del Oro 1050 0.04 0.12 0.35 2.05 2.05 Cherry Spring About 1.5 mi W of Charouleau Gap 1060 0.04 0.20 0.31 2.09 2.09 Pig Spring 1.1 mi NE of Charouleau Gap 1070 0.00 0.08 0.24 0.75 0.75 Cargodera Canyon NE corner of Catalina State Park 1080 0.08 0.08 0.28 0.71 0.71 CDO @ Rancho Solano CDO Wash NE of S-brooke 1100 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.87 0.87 CDO @ Golder Rd CDO Wash at Golder Ranch Rd
Santa Catalina Mountains 1030 0.04 0.16 0.24 1.46 1.46 Oracle Ridge Oracle Ridge, about 1.5 mi N of Rice Pk 1090 0.04 0.20 0.51 1.02 1.02 Mt. Lemmon Ms. Mount Lemmon 1110 0.04 0.16 0.31 2.44 2.44 CDO @ Coronado Camp CDO Wash 0.3 mi S of Coronado Camp 1130 0.00 0.04 0.12 1.57 2.17 Samaniego Peak Sam Peak on Samaniego Ridge 1140 0.00 0.24 0.47 2.13 2.13 Dan Saddle Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge 2150 0.04 0.12 0.31 0.35 0.35 White Tail Catalina Hwy 0.8 mi W of Palisade RS 2280 0.00 0.12 0.35 0.39 0.39 Green Mountain Green Mountain 2290 0.04 0.20 0.31 0.35 0.35 Marshall Gulch Sabino Creek 0.6 mi SSE of Marshall Gulch
The above is from a rolling archive, so without a lot of trouble, you won’t be able to see them later on.
The End for now. Water and spiders in garage requiring immediate cleanup due to R++ last night; 1.00 inches in about 20 min! Is this June, or WHAT? Seems like the climate has gone beserk. Has anyone considered this?
Its not a McDonald’s product, but rather a reference to yesterday’s rain total here in the Sutherland Heights, but maybe there will be some extra blog “drive bys” of people looking to order a small meal…
Yesterday’s 0.26 inches was only the second day in 39 years that measurable rain has fallen on June 10th (normally reported the following day, today, at 7 AM 1 novella-sized ). Rain mainly fell in Sutherland Heights and to the north in this first episode, and later to the southwest through west of us as a big cell came in after 4 PM from the south sporting a huge anvil.
Measurable rain of at least a mm (0.04 inches), enough to trip the ALERT gauge bucket, did not even fall on the CDO Bridge at Lago, while 1.02 inches fell 1.5 mi west of Charouleau Gap (Cherry Spring ALERT gauge) yesterday. Nice.
Continuing with interesting information….
The day of this blog was Saturday, June 11th.
In the past 39 Junes, it has not rained in Catalina on this day. Check it out with this updated rain occurrences chart with generalities on it, ones that don’t always apply:
The Banner University of Arizona’s Weather Department computer model foretells rain in Catalina beginning just after noon today. If that happens, and I think it will, we will all experience a very rare event! I am really happy for you!
Yesterday’s clouds (which is now a few days ago, June 10th actually)
12:00 PM. This was an exciting shot for us since it shows that the mid-and upper portions of the Cumulonimbus clouds that are going to form over the Catalinas a bit later, are going to eject out rapidly toward Catalina. Some good rains here can happen in this situation, though not the heaviest ones since those have to fall through the whole body of the cloud rather than from well above the base since evaporation will take a toll on those falling drops once outside the cloud.12:24 PM. Another cloud builds explosively upward from Mt. Lemmon. Will this one rain?12:23 PM. Top of a weak Cumulonimbus passes directly over Sutherland Heights. A light rain shower is falling from the most distant part where ice formed. The ice was forming as the top went over us, and so the precip fell out after it had gone by, pretty unusual. This was partly because this top had not gotten as high as the one forming over us and downstream from Mt. Lemmon as this photo was taken. Sometimes we get pretty good rain in Catalina from clouds whose mid and upper portions eject out over us from Mt. Lemmon.12:24 PM. A glaciated portion of the Cumulonimbus top peaks out. No rain was evident from this cloud on top of Mt. Lemmon and whose top passed right over Sutherland Heights. Can you find it? If not, see zoom of this view next.12:24 PM. An clearly glaciated portion of the top of the Cumulonimbus cloud sitting on Ms. Mt. Sara Lemmon. Pretty exciting to see for us since no shaft was visible at this time, and only the tiniest radar echo was present since the radar was in between sweeps of our area.1:05 PM. Rain spreads downwind from Samaniego Ridge and is now falling in Sutherland Heights.12:34 PM. Shaft emerges from Cumulonimbus base onto Samaniego Ridge. Ice aloft was seen before this happened.7:28 PM. Sun elongates toward the horizon as it sets.7:50 PM. Looked promising as this TSTM moved toward Catalinaland but faded before it got here.
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1Mr. Cloud Maven Person was so excited he forgot that the rain that fell on June 10th will be reported on June 11th. By convention, the 0.26 inches which fell on the 10th, will be reported as though it had fallen on the 11th. That’s because it will be the 24 h total ENDING at 7 AM local standard time, the time when most obs are recorded these days.
“These days”?
Yep. It used to be the most stations, except those having recording gauges as here, as here, which can partition the rain by the exact 24 h it fell in, reported their precip in the late afternoon, 4-6 PM local standard time. The shift requested shift for cooperative observers like me occurred in I don’t when, maybe 20 years ago.
This shift had an important impact on climate since reading your thermometer, say, at 5 PM in a heat wave, might mean the highest temperature for the following 24 h was almost the same temperature as you had on your prior observational day even if a cold front came through a few hours later on that day and the high temperature on the following day was cold as heck, the high temperature actually 30 degrees lower. But the thermometer you reset at 5 PM the prior day will be immersed in those higher temperatures right after you made that ob. So, when a crazy thing could happen. The actual high temperature the following day could be 52 F, but the reset thermometer might have 81 F as the high for the whole 24 h following the official ob time. Got it? It is confusing, and something that causes headaches in climate studies.
Now, it is thought that the shift to 7 AM obs could lead to a slight amount of cooling since that same effect could happen during a cold spell. The low temperature of a cold, cold morning might carry over as the coldest temperature for the next 24 h day even if that next day was far warmer. Glad I’m not too interested in temperature, but rather clouds! Temperature is too hard, as Homer Simpson might say.
As you can deduce or not, the problem is that cooperative observers only read their instruments once a day as a rule, and the high and low temperatures for a day are averaged to get the average temperature for the whole day. Its the best we can do since cooperative observers for the National Weather Service are unpaid volunteers, which is redundant.
However, the cooperative observer network for climate data in the US is in collapse these days; not enough money to keep it up and so if you were to check the government publication, “Climatological Data”, mostly comprised of cooperative observations with a sprinkling of official National Weather Service ones, you would find lots and lots of missing reports. No one seems to care a lot about climate obs these days, though there is a mighty interest in climate models!
Well, we’ve gotten off into quite an informative harangue here…..
7:13 PM, June 3rd. Yikes.7:14 PM June 3rd.7:14 PM June 3rd. Finch stares at strange sunset. Smoke in the background dribbles down from Gila County fire.4:53 PM, June 3rd. Large rodent distraction. I thought they were nocturnal…..2:25 PM. Gila smoke layer dims sun slightly, but not much effect on temperature; was 107°-108° F about this time.7:15 PM yesterday. Same smoke band from up around Gila County, same sun.7:17 PM yesterday. Overview of smoke band.
The article purports, too, that meteorites landed “north of Tucson.” Who knows what life forms might be on them….?
Here’s what the remnant trail looked like from Catalinaland about an hour or less after it entered the “atmosphere”, 60-100 miles above us:
5:08 AM.5:08 AM Looking north from Catalina. Zoomed view. Looks like a “drunken” asteroid’s trail to me, or was it a spaceship circling around, taking a look at how we are doing on this planet? Well, they didn’t blow us up, take care of all the earth’s trouble spots, so I guess it wasn’t a spaceship with intelligent life, all powerful life. This trail does make you wonder how a trail can be so complicated falling into the atmosphere in a direct heading. Is the wind really that complicated up there at 60 to 100 miles above the surface? Well, of course, there’s virtually only molecules of “air” , constituent gases, at that height, not really what we think of as “air” and so maybe things can drift all around; maybe, too, the solar wind can push things to. Oh, well.
At first I thought it was a rocket trail, which I have seen resulting from Vandenberg missle firings, having lived in southern Cal. But then, upon further reflection, that couldn’t be right, considering our location, unless North Korea had done something after threatening us so many times with nuclear attacks (see p8 of the AZ Star about a month ago–not that important to be threatened with a nuke I guess if its on p8.)
Then, I thought maybe it was space debris, the Int. Space Station might have fallen out of orbit.
Was finally relieved to hear that it was an asteroid, though if was a bigger than “tens of tons” as NASA claims, it might have blown up all of Arizona.
Isn’t an asteroid calamity is what ended pretty much all life 65 million years ago when a giant one hit down there in the Yucatan area?
And, “hey” why didn’t we hear in advance that something tens of tons in mass was heading our way by our space monitoring folks? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Well, there you have it.
Super Devil Hits Catalina (June 1st); no injuries reported
Looks like it was in the Basha’s parking lot. Had a gorgeous perfectly formed tube a few seconds before I could get a shot off. “Jumping Castles” draw great dust devils, sometimes known as “dustnadoes” to them like mobile homes attract tornadoes.
And it just sat there in the Pacific, didn’t do much, at least here, except embarrass us precipophiliacs who thought a monster winter was headed our way in Catalina and environs1. Here’s kind of a sad chart documenting the disappointment here in Catalina:
Remember when seeing the downward trend that the measurements started during a VERY wet regime in the Southwest. In fact, it was quite droughty just before these Catalina measurements started.
The weather for June?
Unlike May where it was predicted here even BEFORE the month began that Sutherland Heights, Catalina, would experience measurable rain, and, in fact, we had grand total of 7 minutes of rain last month that produced 0.13 inches (!) on the 14th, am clueless about June. I will say that it looks to be warmer than May. We’ll check back and see how that forecast works out, but am feeling pretty good about it.
The End.
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1″Environs”, meaning all of the Great Southwest, including Burbank and the San Fernando Valley.
Lot of great scenes on the 18th, but, ultimately with hopes raised for appreciable measurable rain in Catalina, it was a disappointing day. Nice temperatures, though, for May if you’re a temperature person. Only a sprinkle fell (4:15 PM), and if you weren’t outside walking the dogs you would NEVER have noticed it.
Here is your full cloud day1, as presented by the University of Arizona Weather Department. Its pretty dramatic; lot of crossing winds, as you will see, and an almost volcanic eruption in the first Cumulonimbus cloud that developed near the Catalina Mountains.
That blow up was indicative of an remarkable amount of instability over us yesterday morning, one that allowed really thin and narrow clouds to climb thousands of feet upward without evaporating. Usually the air is dry enough above and around skinny clouds that even when its pretty moist, they can’t go very far without the drier air getting in and wrecking them (a process called, “entrainment”). Here are a few scenes from your cloud day yesterday.
5:45 AM. Gorgeous grouping of Altocumulus castellanus and floccus. They’re coming at you. (If you thinking of soft orchestral music here, you may be remembering well-known orchestra leader, Andre Castellanus.7:37 AM. Here a castellanus turret rises five to six thousand feet above its base. Had never seen one this skinny and THAT tall before. Was really pumped about the mid-level instability at this time. It wouldn’t last. The great height is indicated by the luminosity of the top,Also at 7:37 AM, another amazinging tall turret rises up from quiescent bases, ones not connected to ground currents. The bouoyancy in these clouds is due to the heat released when moist air condenses (latent heat of condensation). When the temperature drops rapidly with increasing height, that bit of heat released is enough to allow weak updrafts to rise great distances, sometimes becoming Cumulonimbus clouds and thunderstorms. These clouds, due to their size, would no longer be considered just Altocumulus andre castellanus, but rather Cumulus congestus. Here’s where our cloud naming system falters some. Later, a couple of these grouping did become small Cumulonimbus clouds with RW- (light rain showers).7:11 AM. The great height of these tops was also indicated by the formation of ice, that faint veil around the edges. Stood outside for a few minutes, thinking I might experience some drops, but didn’t.7:38 AM. The top of this Cumulus congestus has just reached the level where ice will form in the top.10:22 AM. Cumulus congestus clouds began their transitions to Cumulonimbus clouds early and often over and downwind from the Catalinas. Can you spot the glaciating turret in the middle, background? Pretty good skill level if you can.10:23 AM. Here’s a close up of that turret in rapid transition to ice. It was this kind of phenomenon that led Hobbs and Rangno and Rangno and Hobbs to reject the Hallett-Mossop theory of riming-splintering as THE major factor in ice production in Cumulus to Cumulonimbus transitions like these. The high concentrations of ice particles happened faster than could be explained by riming and splintering, or so it was thought. Still think that, but am in the minority, though there have been reports of inexplicable, fast ice development like that Stith et al paper (with Heysmfield!) in 2004 that for a time appeared to put the “icing on the career cake.” Incredible ice concentrations were found in updrafts of tropical Cu for which there was no explanation! That finding hasn’t been replicated by others, casting doubt on the whole damn paper! “Dammitall”, to cuss that bit.11:04 AM. Nice Cumulonimbus capillatus incus (has anvil) pounds up toward Oracle way. Tops are not that high, maybe less than 25 kft.3:41 PM. The air aloft began to warm and an inversion capped most of the convection causing the tops of Cumulus clouds to spread out and create a cloudy mid to late afternoon. Nice, if you’re working outside in mid-May. Since the tops were colder than -10 °C (14 °F) the ice-forming levels, some slight amounts of ice virga and sprinkles came out of these splotches of Stratocumulus clouds. One passed through the Sutherland Heights, but if you weren’t outside you would never have known it!4:38 PM. Isolated rain shafts indicate some top bulges are reached well beyond the ice-forming level. Note grass fire in the distance.7:22 PM. Pretty nice sunset due to multi-level clouds, some Stratocumulus, Altocumulus, and a distant Cumulonimbus anvil.
More troughiness and winds ahead during the next week as has been foretold in our models, and reinforced by weather “spaghetti” plots, after our brief warm up today. No rain here, though. Seems now like rain can only occur at the very end of the month where weaker upper troughs coming out of the Pac appear to be able to reach down and fetch some tropical air.
The End
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1Its gone now because I couldn’t finish yesterday. Went off to Benson for horse training with Zeus.
Its the way they do it now days, part retro, part modern. Next? Drones, of course. In the meantime these interesting scenes from yesterday:
12:51 PM. Cowpokes herding cattle, distant center.12:52 PM Monday. Can you find the copter? Pretty hard. Its a little one person job. Look on left side, center.12:57 PM Copter in flyby.
No clouds? Well today were “Cow-maven”….
The End
PS: Nice rows of Cumulonimbus clouds now (1:58 PM, Tuesday) distant N-NE from Catalina, toward the M-Rim.
