About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
Have had little time lately, some problems, too, loading photos in WP, so that’s why. Looks like the next best chance for rain is Friday into Saturday. But you already know that from all the TEEVEE weather you watch.
The End.
Lot of excitement going on today….
But likely, not excitement TODAY, July 27th. Hang on for a wild ride in the last three days of July, the 28th, 29th and 30th. There are no more days in July than that1. August looks pretty active for storms. So far we’ve haven’t even had an inch of rain in July! Awful. No re-greening of the desert, either, as we usually see by now.
In the meantime, nice sunset yesterday; not much else.
The End, except for the next part, which I just thought of:
Educational module
Let us look at the rise of sea level we’ve heard so much about. Here’s the only measurement I have looked at whilst looking for something else, actually. I found it amazing so I thought I would pass it along. From Astoria, your last 100 years of sea level measurements:
From this site: “The mean sea level trend is -0.27 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.34 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from 1925 to 2014 which is equivalent to a change of -0.09 feet in 100 years.”
Well, I have been “informed” by a Mr. Mark Albright, U of WA, Seattle, that the sinking tectonic plate under Astoria and offshore has more than accounted for the minimal rise in sea level associated with both coming out of the Little Ice Age and anthropogenic warming. Still, fascinating to find a location where sea level is sinking!
I think I would consider, in view of this info, moving from the Pac NW to avoid the inevitable Big One, that 8 or 9 mag earthquake that we know can happen in subduction zones…
The End, again.
—————————-
1Let’s see if anyone is reading this….
From the past three days, these:
In other news…..
Record July rains are falling in much of the coastal and intermediate valleys of southern California as the pathetic remnant of once proud Category FOUR hurricane Dolores makes landfall there today. Places like San Diego have had well over an inch, unheard of in July. August, not so much, since tropical storm remnants have passed over southern Cal in a few Augusts. Remember August 1977, when two inches fell on LA due to a tropical storm remnant?
That also August deluge in Los Angeles, by coincidence I am sure, preceded the big Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) switch in which low centers in the Pacific shifted farther to the south beginning with the 77-78 winter and the Arctic warmed up. Wallace et al 1995, Science Mag, discoverers of the PDO, were claiming that the PDO shift had seriously muddied up the global warming hoopla of the time, suggesting caution in those global warming claims.
Nobody really paid any attention, since it was about to get even WARMER in the years immediately ahead, like in the 97-98 winter when a giant El Nino, like the one now out there, spiked earth temperatures to a record high of the time.
By the way, the phrase, “global warming”, has been supplanted by the phrase, “climate change”, one that has been bastardized from its original use since climatologists have always considered the phrase, “climate change” a temperature-neutral, precipitation-neutral, could-go-either-way one, but as you know today it is one-tailed; that is, “climate change” today has only ONE meaning by those (often non-professionals) who use it; that an anthropogenic WARMING of the climate is underway with its attendant effects on precipitation and life itself.
When the earth stopped warming some 15-20 years ago, the global warming phrase heard all over the media had to be supplanted with something else, of course. I laugh, bitterly really, when I think of award-winning science geophys writer, Richard Kerr, of Sceince Mag, who wrote an article in Science, quoting the Hadley Center and such, titling his 2009 article about the hiatus in the rise in temperature, “What Happened to Global Warming?”
Of course, today such a title would not be allowed in Science Magazine. But then, Richard Kerr could not have titled his article, “What Happened to Climate Change?” either, since climate change is always happening on this planet, probably the others like it.
Speaking of mud, or muddying things up, some scientists (Karl et al.) are now claiming (in 2015) there was NO HIATUS in the earth’s temperature; that its been rising all along! This astounding finding is due to some manipulations/”corrections” of existing data and use of African and other data not previously available. You can read about this in summary form: Lost and Found_Sci 6-5-2015
This made me feel sad for the great scientists of the day, like Susan Soloman and others, who have generated hypotheses about WHY the pause in the rise in temperatures has occurred, even publishing those hypotheses in high end journals like Science Mag or Nature.
Those folks are bound to be pretty embarrassed now since they may have been explaining nothing that was real. It doesn’t get more embarrassing than that; kind of like explaining N-Rays, that bogus radiation reported after the turn of the century by French scientist, Renee Blondlot, at Nance University (the “N” was for Nance). Man, was Blonbdlot embarrassed when American physicist, Robert Wood, went to France to see “N-Rays” for himself and found that they were imaginary and reported them as so1. N-Rays, though they had been “confirmed” in numerous studies, were soon gone from the scene, one of the greatest mass delusions known to science.
Was there REALLY no hiatus, that the Hadley Center in England, perhaps the foremost climate center in the world, was somehow misled when they were reporting a pause or hiatus in warming? One thinks that the Karl et al 2015 report will get a LOT of scrutiny. Stand by….
More TSTMS in the area today through most of the summer. Hope one hits here in the Heights. We’re falling behind our 3.5 inch or so average for July.
The End.
————————
1It was the story of American physicist, Robert Wood, as told in the 1982 book, Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science, by William Broad and Nicholas Wade, that partially inspired your Catalina Cloud Maven.com to go to Israel in 1986 to see the clouds for himself since, in his experience after years of airborne cloud work at the University of Washington), the cloud reports emanating out of Israel were goofy, also the likely product of someone’s imagination. Those Israeli cloud reports WERE goofy as found by your author (1988 pub), and independently by others (U of Tel Aviv).
At 0.77 inches, and only 0.01 inches yesterday, Sutherland Heights is running a little behind our July rainfall average amount for the 13th of about an inch. But, we had an “above average”, really quite spectacular, long-lasting rainbow yesterday. Hope you caught it.
U of AZ mod run from 06Z (11 PM AST) calculates that today and tomorrow will be active late afternoon and evening thunderstorm days.
Hurricane Diary: Just formed Dolores just reaching hurricane stage today, winds of 65 mph or more. But, up, up, up, they will go!
The End
“Just Another Day“, btw, one of the many great songs by Oingo Boingo, if you’ve ever heard of them. We’re not just about clouds here. Trying to broaden your pop cultural knowledge with distractions like this.
Yesterday was remarkable in how exact it was to the day before in clouds, but ultimately disappoiting.1 There was supposed to be more cloud action, shafting around, that kind of thing, but there wasn’t. It was virtually identical in every way, including having only two clouds that got high and cold enough to have ice in them. I am sure you recorded them in your cloud diary, and this will be a little tedious as a result, but….what the HECK.
Here is your cloud day for yesterday, focusing on the detection of ice in clouds:
Today is another day. More hope for a shower late today or tomorrow, models say, then likely another dry spell as the summer rain season ebbs again for awhile until that possible super hurricane Dolores drags some moisture up this way. (Dolores, now just a tropical storm, was just born off southern Mexico near the coast. Will be interesting to see just how strong she gets.
The End
——————-
1Some fans like to see misspelled words here. Amyone see that criminal who was sentenced to “life in person” as described in the AZ Star? That was pretty grate.
Won something of a cloud lottery yesterday. A trace of rain might have fallen only on ME…as a single rain-producing cloud went over my house. I felt pretty special. Here’s the story in photos:
Looks like an active photogenic one with dense rainshafts around. Lots of excitement for weather guys like me. Hope we get shafted reel good here.
In unrelated matters, an extraordinarily strong hurricane still set to develop off Mexico in the next few days. If nothing else, surf will be up along the coast of Mexico and southern Cal. Will let you know when the winds in it have reached 140 mph or more.
The End
0.07 inches here in Sutherland Heights yesterday afternoon. Much more SW-NW of us, as the photos below show.
I now direct your attention to the forecast maps below, produced by the WRF-GFS model last evening’s global data, courtesy of IPS MeteoStar, the usual. The aforementioned extremely strong hurricane foretold in the models 24 hours ago, has acheived in this latest run, mythical strength, possibly a Category 6 or 7 (which don’t yet exist).
We presume the model went berserk, so its kind of fun to imagine how intense, how low the pressure in the center of such a goofy predicted hurricane could possibly be in the panels below.
First, the jaw-dropping -to-weather-nerds like the current writer, predicted height of 540 decameters height of the 500 millibar pressure level! For the pressure of 500 millibars in the atmosphere to be reached at a level that LOW in warm tropical air means that the sea level pressure must be astoundingly LOW to begin with. In warm air, the pressure doesn’t change as rapidly going up as it does in dense cold air.
I don’t believe, in viewing many weather maps with hurricanes that a height that low has ever occurred at 500 millibars. Thus, the pressure at sea level, for whatever reason, must be incredible in this predicted hurricane SW of Cabo. Surf will be up!
The record measured low pressure at sea level is 870 mb in one of the super typhoons (Typhoon Tip) in the Pacific some years ago where winds were estimated at about 200 mph. It is thought that recent devastating Super Typhoon Haiyan, 2013, had a lower pressure, 858 mb, or the equivalent of the density of air at 5,000 feet elevation was thought to have occurred at sea level!
OK, enough fun with a crazy model prediction, though this hurricane will be extremely strong, and the models are still bringing its pathetic, but wet, remnant into California a couple of days later. Many July rain records, though they are not much to begin with, will be broken if this remnant does make it to Cal.
What we really hope for is some aircraft reconnaissance reports during the life of this strong hurricane instead of satellite-derived estimates of strength (though the latter are quite good).
We still look quite wet during this period, too.
The End.
This first one grumbled a bit, sent a bolt or two earthward last evening. Dropped a quarter inch on Ms. Lemmon. Hope you caught these brief scenes from two modest Cumulonimbus clouds:
Spurred from hibernation by these scenes somewhat like the flying ants we have around here by a good rain , AND by the amount of rain indicated in SE Arizona in the latest model run, the one based on the 5 PM AST global data. Here’s what happens in that run:
A tropical storm (what is likely to have been a Category 4 or 5 hurricane earlier in its lifetime) whizzes offshore of Baja in in 11 days or so, rather unusual for July, and lassos a humongous amount of clouds and rain, dragging them Arizonaward.
Here are the ark-like outputs from our best model, the “WRF-GFS”, as brought to you by IPS MeteoStar.
The panels below are for every 12 h after the one above.
These heavy rains just go on and on, about three days worth in that run. Have NEVER seen so much rain predicted for this area, and while its too far away to have much confidence in it, its still worth considering as a possible event. You might want to perform some leak checks around the house just in case.
While the rainfall predicted above is somewhat moot, the likelihood of a strong hurricane in the Mexican Pacific is almost assured by our ensemble model runs (spaghetti plots). The signal is strong for one to form down there. Really, this kind of forecast is a remarkable thing that our models can do now days!
Such a hurricane will be fueled by the continuing extraordinary and vast areas of sea surface temperature anomalies; the entire eastern Pacific is aflame in unusually warm water. Check it out:
As far as today’s weather goes, well, you can see those thin low clouds topping Ms. Lemmon this morning. Dewpoints continue high, around 60 F. And with a trough moving in, should be another breezy, pretty day with scattered Cumulonimbus clouds.
But, for a man’s forecast, not a little wispy one like the one above, see Bob’s site for an outstanding analysis! CMP (Cloud Maven Person) does not have the time to do a good, thorough one, if he could.
The End
Want to see how many people drop in due to a misuse of words, maybe get more than one reader if a word punctilian drops in to see how bad the rest of the piece is.
Yes, those icy anvils that crept over the sky from the SE were from ejected from distant Cumulonimbus clouds yesterday afternoon and evening. They’ll be closer today, and for the rest of the summer.
The End.