About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
“Yep, rain’s on the way; yay”, to burst out with a little poetry there. But, it will be awhile before it gets here. See caption below.
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Non-meteorological entry:
Gas now down to 21 cents a gallon in 1967 dollars (that’s what that $1.53 a gal here in Catalina now converts to in ’67 dollars). Here’s a history of gas prices, FYI.
The End.
You’re probably wondering, as are Californian’s who live a little south of ‘Frisco,
“Where’s the wet winter in central and southern California?”
and for us,
“What happened to the Great Niño of 15-16 and all the drought-relieving rains that were expected in the Southwest?”
Remember when it rained so much in early January here? We were so excited, Big Niño being underway! And all the washes were running then?
Here what this MJO update rehashes about early January and the MJO, in case you’re too lazy to read it:
“During early January, a strong westerly wind burst near the Date Line was related to constructive interference with the ongoing El Niño.”
I didn’t want you to miss the important words. “Constructive interference.” To help you grasp this phrase, this would be when TWO or THREE lineman, instead of one, create a “crease” for a running back who then runs a long ways, to get into the current sports ambience ahead of Superbowl Sunday, just ahead. That would be an example of, “constructive interference”; for the team and its running back on offense in a football game1.
That was early January, and now its early February (the 6th), in case you were wondering how old this post is…. Lets see what the MJO experts say later in this same briefing:
“The intraseasonal signal weakened by late January as it destructively interfered
with the El Niño. Suppressed convection became less widespread across the Maritime Continent and shifted eastward to the SPCZ.”
You never want to read that your treasured El Niño (aka, Big Niño here) is being “interfered” with. Dammitall!2
We were counting on the current Big Niño to make droughty things right again all over the Great Southwest!
But no, now its struggling against the Dark Forces of the MJO wind regime out there, doing its thing and is now messing around in “Phase Space 4”, this latter location is also is, historically associated with poor rains in the Southwest.3
So, WHERE the eastward meandering MJO is right now, and the wind anomalies associated with it, are likely taking some steam out of the action the Big Niño, by itself, would have normally produced in the SW.
And it doesn’t seem any Nino like storms are in our immediate future, but rather what’s in our immediate future is a reprise of last year’s “Warm in the West, Cold in the East4” pattern where storms are generally shunted far to the north of us.
At least, this is now what I think is happening and why we have had such disappointingly dry weather for the past few weeks after reading this MJO updated briefing.
By the way, don’t forget to use that acronym, “MJO” in casual conversations about weather. It will be great to toss that out if you with neighbors or at a party, and someone sarcastically says, to no one in particular, “What happened to the big, wet winter we were supposed to have?” That’s when you jump in with “MJO” and what’ going on and how its messing with Niño, is YOUR take on things. I think this would be a great moment for you5!
No real rain in site over the next two weeks, only passing weak troughs, maybe some marginal rain with one maybe, as a ridge of high pressure aloft, something resembling last year’s pattern, recurs along the West Coast over the next two weeks. Boohoo.
The End
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1Offense is when you have the ball and you are trying to move it forward toward the “goal line.” Men like football in particular, though it may be a subconscious thing, because there is a clear metaphor3 to a football crossing a goal line and fertilization of female ovaries. This, of course, explains in this context, the exaggerated celebratory mode of the specific player who has carried the ball over “the goal line.” Nothing knew here, well known in Freudian circles.
2Sometimes you have to cuss to get the emotions out, an author in this month’s Atlantic Magazine wrote. Caution, this piece contains cuss words. Personally, I don’t cuss myself. So get the HELL off this blog if you want a lot of cussing.
3You will see this if you go to the last page of the MJO link in this post.
4Of course, “cold in the East” can always help the Arizona economy by getting more folks to bail on the awful winter climate they have there for AZ. That would be good.
5While I normally don’t recommend cussing, it could be that using the phrase, “….that f……g MJO is f……..g with our Big Niño” might deliver more impact and release more of your negative emotions about it. Scorsese would approve (see Atlantic link above)
If you don’t believe me, and slept through it during the power outages when it was COMPLETELY dark last night, here is a MEASUREMENT of the event from a private weather station, The arrow points to the event, 58 knots, which is about 67 mph. This is the greatest wind measured by the PWA in seven years, here and a few down there on Wilds. The measured (here, the max one-minute speed) wind is, of course, LESS than the actual greatest 1s or 2s puff, likely well over 67 mph. Unless you have a fancy ultrasonic anemometer, too much inertia in the cheaper ones to get those instantaneous puffs.
NEW: Got to 100 mph on Mt. Sara Lemmon before tower on which an ultrasonic anemometer was installed blew away.
Hope your trees are intact:
Only 0.17 inches tipped by the Davis Vantage Pro, but with wind blowing as it was, you KNOW that’s going to be substantially low. We really can’t measure rain that accurately in any thing but perfectly calm conditions. The more accurate measurements are made if your gauge is sheltered by vegetation that is about the height of the gauge top right near the gauge, but then increases like the inside of a bowl as you gradually move away from it in all directions. No trees, please, too close! Preferably your gauge is on the ground not up somewhere, too, which would exaggerate the losses from wind.
Now, I will go outside and measure the rain in two ground mounted gauges, one a NWS-style 8-inch gauge, and the little toy 4-inch gauge from CoCoRahs, that national group that wants your measurements! Sign up now. Here are the other totals:
NWS gauge, 0.22 inches
CoCoRahs gauge, blew over, no total! Dammitall! Wasn’t as protected in the weeds as I thought. That total “likely” was around 0.24 or 0.25 inches. CMP had privately predicted, 0.28 inches for this storm, whilst a major forecast professor from CSU who lives in Catalina predicted an INCH1!
Brutal out there, too. Temp only 43° F, still windy.
Sorry to say no rain for Catalinaland in our latest computer forecasts through the middle of February as the Big Niño hyped so much here and elsewhere is turning out to be big poop so far.
Cal rains only great in the far north of the State during January, and in the northern Sierras.
Sucked in by the Big Niño thoughts here, CMP was predicting quite the mayhem in Cal during the last 15-16 days of January, and 25-30 inches at some locations during that time here is a table for that period from CoCoRahs. Note Shelter Cove, near the King Range, has the most. Totals are sorted in descending order, Jan 13-31.
No doubt your curiosity was piqued and peaked by seeing how much rain could fall on you if you lived in Shelter Cove, on the Lost Coast of California. Well, here’s what its like there. Has an AP, too!
May try to get some more of that Cal precip since Jan 13, finding a modicum o direct verification of that huge amount of rain prediction.
No Mavericks surf competition yet, though larger waves have been battering the Cal coast over the past two-three weeks. Below, surf for today.
The End
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1Maybe the “Ivory Tower” has not only protected him from the hiccups of the “real world” due to tenure and that kind of thing, but also from discerning what real weather will be like. hahaha. Just kidding. Sort of. Recall CMP was NOT tenured, but just a “staff” meteorologist with a “light” at the end of the funding grant tunnel, year after year for about 30 years. So, I am pretty mad about “tenure”. Hahahaha, just kidding maybe.
“Tenure” was a recent subject of a Science Mag editorial (“Wither (wither) Tenure“), too; costs everybody, especially students, a LOT of money, it was said.
Too, often young bright researchers are blocked by senior professors having tenure and making large amounts of money that hang on well past their productive years.
Cloud Maven Person: Resigned from the U of WA Cloud and Aerosol Research Group due to feeling he wasn’t earning his high “Research Scientist III” pay anymore, brain dimming, though there was a pile of money that he could have continued on with. Title of resignation letter: “Time to Go”. This free-ed up monies for staff folks that remained in our group, too.
Com’on decrepit tenured faculty, give up! Resign now!
PS: My friend tenured fac is STILL active, gives talks/presentations around the world still, even though he’s quite a geezer now, as is CMP.
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I think you should read this.
Thanks.
“Phase Space 3”, no, its not an expression from Star Trek, though it would sound pretty good if it was. Rather, its the location of an oscillation in tropical winds that goes around the world in 40 days as a rule, not 80, from west to east. Right now the MJO is in kind of a muddle, not much to it, dawdling around Indonesia. But it is forecast to strengthen next week, looping back around and heading into Phase Space 3!
Some folks have connected weather patterns elsewhere to the various “phase spaces” the MJO is in, people like Zhou et al (2011), as you will find at the end of the above MJO discussion.
What kind of patterns that are relevant here?
Well, they have found a degree of correlation, not great, that when the “MJO” (has a nice ring to it; could be a coffee brand I think), moves into phase space #3, it tends to be wet in the western US.
So, if the MJO is not bamboozling the Big Niño we have in some way, this could be quite the one-two punch.
However, they may NOT be additive as in a 1-2, to destroy any solid information in today’s blog.
Zhou et al, did not look at the combined effect of a Big Niño AND the MJO in Space #3.
So, we’ll just have to see what happens next week as January closes out. Storms, cold ones, still in mods for Catalina and AZ overall as that happens.
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In the meantime, let’s look at some precip data, gathered by NOAA here. This will be good for you to look at, too.
Cal rain update
Honeydew, CA, up there near the King Range, now up to 26 inches for the month of January, though the “Sacramenta” Valley not filling up with water as practically foretold here a coupla weeks ago. Heck, that’s only happened once anyway, way back in 1862 (California flood–read about Stanford here), so maybe CMP was overcome with forecasting adrenalin.
Fire hose jet into CA with stupendous rains hasn’t materialized, but the darn thing keeps showing up now and then. What’s up with that? Not sure. Thought due to persistence in the mods, something stupendous would happen….eventually, and before January closed out.
Oh, well.
The End.
Below are rain totals for just the past FIVE days in Cal! Nice. This episode is taking a chomp out of Cal drought, at least in the northern half of the State.
Honeydew up there in that table, with 10.07 inches is in the lee of the King Range, that place where I told you to go to storm chase. The KR is to the SW of Honeydew. While Honeydew is wet, likely a coupla inches or more on the SW facing slopes of the KR.
Below, what it looks like right near the King Range:
Let’s see what Cal waves are doing….going big!
More Cal drenchers and big waves on the way in rapid succession, and grand total just for the last half of January are very likely to be within, or even exceed, 25-30 inches at one of the wettest points.
Looks more and more like something significant in precip here near the end of January, as a colossus storm smashes Cal and the coast, then rolls radidly SEward into AZ. Another snow episode toward the tail end of that storm here in the Heights seems a strong possibility, too. We’ll be shivering, no matter what, during it and after it passes.
The End.
(Missed some real doozie sunsets of late, too. Dang.)
Criterion for verification of a California flooding, calamity blogged about here, oh, I dunno, maybe a week ago already, based on progs and spaghetti, mostly:
25-30 inches of rain at one or more stations between yesterday and the end of January. First day of accumulation is here.
In comparison, in the Cal climo data for the Big Niño of 1998, January and February each had one or more stations that recorded more than 30 inches, BUT, it took the whole month! In other words, it was like someone hitting 70 home runs in a baseball season of 200 games, whilst Babe Ruth hit 60 in only 154 games. Or someone breaking college fubball records in 15 games, whereas as Barry Sanders only played in 12. Well, you get the idea without all the details.
We’ve talked about this place before, but if you storm chase, you want to be in the King Range, located where the “101” highway sign is on this map. No gauges available there, and they will likely have the greatest total during this calamitous spell of Cal rains. Will be posting these maps or tables every so often. Will also be checking to see how many reservoirs get filled up in the northern part of the State.
Here we’ll be pretty much bored out of our minds by great weather until late in the month I’m afraid.
The End.
Have had 1.75 inches here in the Heights last few days. Horsies are tromping around in significant mud.
But, to resume a theme about others from the prior entry, those in California, they’d better be paying close attention to the weather a week and more out. In this weather watcher’s opinion, which should count for something, California may be in for an unforgettable January.
Why?
Recall how those “ensemble-spaghetti-Lorenz” plots had an unusually constrained (contours of flow, red and blue lines that were unusually bunched together all the way from Hong Kong to ‘Frisco even 10-15 days out? That indicated a high confidence forecast of where the jet stream would be.
USUALLY, the contours are pretty wild, scattered all over the eastern Pac after about 10 days or so, and Cloud Maven Person got overly excited about this esoteric part of weather forecasting, and decided to write a partially decipherable tome on it.
Well, that constrained jet, blasting into Cal from the subtropical latitudes with a terrible ferocity, has continued in model run after model run now, and CMP’s excitement has been further elevated, maybe to penthouse level now, hard to elevate it more.
Way below are a few examples from just last night’s model run based on global obs at 5 PM AST, showing a few sample of the jet stream predicted pattern at 500 millibars, or around 18, 000 feet (from IPS MeteoStar, as usual).
THESE are extraordinary maps, and extraordinary maps mean extraordinary storms, AND they are appearing with extraordinary consistency.
They are also compatible with what we saw in those ensemble-spaghetti plots of a few days ago. So, like the “Frankenstorm” of 2010 that hit California, this series of strong storms hitting Cal in just over a week, will be considered to have been “well-predicted” by those crazy plots.
Is FEMA ready?
I think they will be involved at some point.
But, too, this is a forecast series where we (those in Cal) have lots of time to get ready for big, destructive events.
Like what?
For Cal, the usual.
1) Huge waves smash the coast, some home roll into the ocean. With a jet having a gigantic fetch from the Pac, huge waves are a certainty, surf will definitely be up, if that’s what you do because the surface winds will ALSO have a huge fetch to build those giant rollers.
2) Winds. At some point, hurricane force winds blow stuff around in one of more of the low centers generated by such a powerful jet stream. Looking at the pattern, I think one within this storm series may produce 100 mph winds or more somewhere in Cal.
3) Flooding. Can the nearly empty Cal reservoirs we’ve heard so much about be filled up in a series like this, something that might go on for one to two weeks? I think so, some anyway. But this is a truly wild thought, and as you can see, CMP is kind of out of control here.
It is certain that the rains with one or more of the low centers that slam the West Coast during this series will produce rains of 10 or more inches in a day in the hill and mountain regions of Cal.
Also, the series begins with a strong, but maybe not exceptional storm about 8 days from now, this after a pretty good rain has already occurred, so the ground is going to be pretty wet when the Big Series hits.
The jet stream pattern strengthens and shifts farther south with each day after this first major storm, and that’s when the real onslaught will hit.
I don’t want to get people overly excited like I am, but I am terming these, and the whole recent series of unbelievable jet streams bashing into Cal, and even Baja!, “the California calamity maps.”
Skipping ahead:
Skipping ahead some more….
Now the timing of these things WILL VARY as the mod runs keep churning out results, but in CMP’s view, the pattern that will cause CA havoc is locked in now, promulgated ALMOST without doubt by our Big Niño.
Here is another amazing map from a prior run, that just makes your jaw drop due to what the models are sensing is “out there” for Cal and the West Coast:
How will SE AZ do?
Seems like passing rains will hit during this CA bludgeoning period, but floody weather not expected.
Since we’re pretty much at our average total for the month of January right NOW, CMP is going out on a limb and predicting an above normal total for the WHOLE month.
The End
Been working on a talk for Feb 23, 1990…..at the U of WA, so not blogging too much. Will likely post “back to the future” talk in a few days. Its a science story, really, not quite a “talk.”
But enough of my blabbing, as Rob Reiner might say, lets move along to some INTERESTING spaghetti.
First of all, things rolling along pretty much as foretold in spaghetti at our last meeting, a week or so ago. Storms are rolling in on schedule now. Had 0.50 inches in the first one, here in Sutherland Heights.
Below, is the five day from now spaghetti or Lorenz plot. You may recall, though I doubt it, that spaghetti was foretelling a big ridge that would break off into the Arctic and help shunt storms into Cal and the West Coast. 
Well, that was spot on because it is going to happen after a little break from the current storms. Of those, the rainiest one for us is tomorrow and the next day. Likely to see an inch or more here in Sutherland Heights from that one storm! Looks like a quarter of an inch will be the total for the current one.
All this is so great for the spring bloom, too, that time of year we all love.
But enough of my blabbing #2, as Rob Reiner might say again, lets move along to some INTERESTING spaghetti.
But the real news I wanted to inform you about through excessive speculation is the spaghetti plots for about two weeks out, shown below. This ios amazing in my view.
I wonder if my one reader can detect the amazing part?
Its the grouping of the blue and red lines in the eastern Pacific that seems extraoardinary in a plot like this where “chaos” usually rules in this sector THAT far away in time.
Here, the grouping of red and blue, a coming together which can never happen in the political color realm, means there is a very strong signal in the measurements. The slight errors input at the beginning of the model runs leads to close to the same forecast even 15 days out!
So, what does it all mean?
This is no doubt in CMP’s mind that this strength in a medium range forecast is due to the constraining of weather patterns by the Big Niño now in progress. That feature is keeping the jet stream constrained to bash the West Coast and Cal, and that’s what you get out of this plot above. Very strong storms are now setting up to bash the West Coast, ones associated constrained to do so by the powerful El Niño.
The current storms, as you likely know from media weather folk, are classic in their El Niño appearance, streaming into Cal and AZ at lower latitudes out of the Pacific. So far this winter, in Cal and AZ, we haven’t seen much effects of a Big Niño until now.
That 15 day spaghetti plot is not one that we here can pin confidence on about a lot precip, but hang on in Cal, especially beginning about a week from now when this pattern really sets up and then crescendoes.
Below, just decided to add the 10 day spaghetti, kind of out of control due to excitement. The bunching of red and blue contours is astounding to me in this one, that in the east Pac resembling that of the geographically-forced bunching we see all the time in the extreme western Pacific off China. This bunching, with a dip to the south (trough) off the West Coast indicates a very reliable forecast of a huge trough bashing the West Coast about then (Friday, 5 PM AST, Jan 15th). Maybe, just MAYBE, those Cal reservoirs WILL be filled up in a single winter!
The End.
Its never too early to talk about rain and storms in old AZy.
A couple are already on the move and will arrive here between the 3rd and 5th of January. Confidence is quite high, more so that on the last failed medium range forecast, which I think says something1.
However, its after those first couple of storms that it gets really interesting, given the Big Niño in progress. Scrutinize this hint of future weather below, valid some two weeks from now:
Cloud maven person admits that this is his very favorite pattern since he was a kid, the one that’s being suggested above, so subjectivity,, the enemy of science, could be creeping in.
The Big Fat Ridge (representing a blob of deep, relatively warmer air compared to the air hundreds of miles around it) has overextended itself into the Gulf of Alaska and Arctic. It looks like too much of it has extruded into the Arctic areas.
What always happens when the BFR extends to the north over thousands of miles is that the westerlies, with their series of storms moving along in them, “break on through to the other side”, as Jim Morrison might say if he had been a meteorologist. But they are shunted by the BFR “underneath” and travel at relatively low latitudes north of Hawai’i toward the West Coast.
That means those low pressure centers carried along in the westerlies travel over warmer water than usual, arriving along the Cal and Baja coasts with Hawaiian style wetter clouds. Some of the great rainfalls in Cal and AZ occur in these situations.
How much can it rain from storms like those, should they materialize with vigor? Check this 24 h rain table out for Cal for January 21-23, 1943. These are all just 24 h amounts for a storm that gradually shifted southward along the West Coast. Broke 24 h precip records from Cal to Colorado:
The storm that produced these prodigious totals originated near the Hawaiian Islands a few days before the rivers of atmo water struck the West Coast. The above table was typed by the writer (hah, “typed”, then “writer”2) on a Hermes 3000 typewriter in about 1962 or ’63. Only those amounts over 10 inches in a day are shown. Shows you what can happen when storms barge in from warmer waters, and when they are strong (have deep low centers with them that produce strong winds against the mountains.)
So, while the first coupla storms are pretty much (he sez, in the bag, will be watching to see if the above “Lorenz plot” (aka, spaghetti plot) has seen something two weeks out. Usually only the strongest signals show up that far out, and what is shown above is darn strong for a ridge, trough underneath in the eastern Pac.
Add a pinch of veracity, too, due to the Big Niño we have now. Niños are phenomena that enhance the southern portion of the jet stream/westerlies in the eastern Pacific and SW, and that means stronger lows out there, too.
Exciting days ahead in old AZy!
The End.
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1In a sense it was quite accurate for so many days ahead. While there was NO precip, it WAS, in fact, quite a storm of cold air.
2Another silly-ism. There’s a real quarry of them here in this blog. But I hope to indulge listeners not only with an occasional “silly-isms”, but I also hope to educate the listener with one or two facts, one of which is often correct. Are you listening?
A possible great storm has been able to make it through all the model calculations intact for a few model runs now. Spaghetti tell us its in the bag that something big is coming to all of the Southwest around Christmas Day and just after. Check it out:
