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.
One of nature’s true miracles, one that we Catalinans look forward to every summer, is the “Time of the Ant.” After the first substantial rains, ants burst forth from the ground like little angels with wings, forming tall columns of swirling, joyful creatures that hover above a favorite place above the ground for an hour or two each morning, in acts of conjugation. Sadly, the male participant dies after his reproductive act, while the female and new queen, goes happily off to try and start a new colony, one that may bring us joy in the summers ahead. Its really quite something.
Many nature lovers rush to Arizona from non-flying ant climes to see this remarkable event, which may only last a day or two following the rains. The first episode usually contains the greatest masses of flying ants, and so many come to Arizona at the beginning of July so that they do not miss the “festivities.”
Swarms in the first emergence of the flying ants in summer may number in the tens of thousands, seemingly in a swirling mass of chaos to us. But to them, it is EVERYTHING that they have dreamed of; oh, to fly! Imagine YOU wake up one morning with wings (!), and then had the urge to fly out the door and have sex somewhere, like over someone’s carport! Of course, many would consider this untoward behavior, but I was just trying to get you inside the mind of a flying ant on their wonderful day of emergence, maybe see things in a different light.
After the big rain of the day before, 1.09 inches here, I was ready for them!
7:59 AM yesterday.
I was lucky enough to capture some of the fun-loving, mischievous little creatures yesterday, with some Altocumulus clouds in the background for a good, contrasting backdrop. For your amusement and pleasure, these wonderful shots:
7:59 AM yesterday, close up7:05 PM. This astounding cloudy metaphor of the emergence of the flying ant yesterday evening. “Hail the new insect overlords!”–Kent Brockman, in Deep Space Homer.
Yesterday’s clouds
Did good up around Oracle Ridge, which got a remarkable 2.64 inches in a couple of hours late yesterday afternoon and evening. Cloud details below…. Not much rain elsewhere since the clouds kept redeveloping in the same area.
3:59 PM. After being inactive all day, the Catalinas began to spawn some heavy Cumulus clouds (congestus here), but for a hour or so before this time, they were the essence of “big hat, no cattle” (no rain). But then, blammo, they erupted like a swarm of flying ants out of the ground, reached up to the ice forming level and far beyond just about this time. Here, looking toward the Charouleau Gap. This was to be a monument outpouring, with 2.64 inches at Oracle Ridge, south of Oracle over the next three hours. 1.77 inches fell in ONE hour.4:09 PM. The upward explosion is now underway, and whole cloud scene is changing rapidly, and the first glaciating top can be seen on the left side.4:35 PM. New turrets shot up and kept glaciating over pretty much the same spot. Not a lot of thunder though, so tops weren’t exceptionally high.5:06 PM. The stream goes on, pretty much dumping in the same spot. It was about this time that the Oracle Ridge ALERT gauge had reported 1.77 inches in one hour, but almost nowhere else up there was getting any rain.
6:13 PM. Astounding, after the Oracle complex died away just after 5 PM, it seemed like that was it for the day. Then emerging from the house, I see this! I could not believe it, and it was so pretty in the late sun. But, surely it couldn’t do much. And look, too, how low the cloud bases are, topping Sam Ridge, meaning the moisture regime is still wet and tropical.
6:22 PM. Just 9 minutes later, the tops are surging upward. Can they really glaciate and cause another round of precip on the north side of the Catalinas? Didn’t seem possible, considering the time of day.
7:15 PM. This pastel beauty. A haze layer last evening through which the sun shone helped tint the clouds that yellowish orange, and later, as here, helped amplify the pink hues. Still, it was an unforgettable evening.
7:25 PM. The day ended with some of the most memorable scenes I have experienced here, those pastel colors on those cloud tops. And once again it was raining on the Oracle Ridge area.
Well, it finally happened, we got shafted royally (as CM likes to say, referring to getting rain shafted) yesterday afternoon with a badly needed 1.09 inches here in Sutherland Heights. More than 2 inches fell nearby, too, such as near the intersection of Hwy 77 and 79! The highlight of the storm was, of course, all of those several close lightning strikes between 2 and 3 PM yesterday. If you weren’t out watching them, here’s one for you, one that popped Lago del Oro. (Mr. Cloud Maven person reminds his reader that during lightning, do not stand outside by a tree outside as here. Hmmmph, a new thought…. Maybe that’s where the expression, “Death warmed over” comes from, a person unlucky enough to have been struck by lightning…and then somebody finds him right away!
2:06 PM. Looking northwest; a literal highlight of the day.6:17 AM. The remarkable site of a Sc lenticularis stack over Catalina due to strong easterly winds up there. This is more like a scene from the front range of the Rockies in wintertime. It hovered up there in place for a couple of hours before withering. One almost started looking for infamous “rotor cloud”, filled with severe turbulence. You can see this remarkable cloud for summer and the things it did, courtesy of the U of AZ time lapse film for yesterday, a real keeper! Still have that lenticular cloud over and downwind of Ms. Lemmon today. Interesting.6:23 AM. After a few drops, a little rainbow was seen off to the NW. Quite nice.7:56 AM. (Caution-long, sleep-inducing caption ahead. If you’re driving you’ll want to pull off the road.) Of concern after awhile is whether we might have a gloomy, but dry Seattle-type spring day, or maybe only light steady rains amounting to only a few hundredths or tenths as a disturbance moved toward us. Or, would that disturbance be potent enough to generate deep storms sans heating? For those who live here in the summer, we know that the sun is potent enough, even with dense clouds, especially ones that are NOT composed of ice crystals, to vaporize pretty heavy overcasts. This would be a good thing, because a little heating goes a long way when you have deep, and low based moisture as we had yesterday. Doesn’t have to get that hot. The clouds shown here are composed of droplets, not ice crystals, but, of course, I have just now insulted your Cloud Maven Junior cloud intelligence because you can see the sharpness and detail of the tiniest cloud features; they are not “blurry-looking as ice clouds would be, and more importantly there is no virga, a site that would mean there was ice inside the clouds, ice that would grow into major snowflakes, melt and fall out as rain. So, there is hope here in this sighting of droplet clouds, to continue this novella, for a “burn off” in spite of the heavy, and dark looking clouds because its early in the morning still and they probably have higher concentrations of droplets in them and that in turn cause more of the sun’s light to be reflected off’n the top, and that’s why they look so dark, a darkness that has been enhanced that bit by a little trick of photography called, “underexposing.” Oh, the cloud type? Stratocumulus stratiformis (the second descriptor because there’s so much of it.)
9:46 AM. Within only an hour or two, the thought of a heavily overcast all day could be jettisoned as the normal mid-morning to mid-day thinning occurred. But, now, would the storms be clustered enough to hit Catalina, or would they end up being too scattered as in the day before where big dumps missed us? It was, however, now in the bag, that huge clouds would rise up later in the day due to some heating. Note Ac lenticular slivers.1:47 PM. While doubts arose as the sky filled in again with dark, lackluster Cumulus and Stratocumulus clouds over Catalina, powerful storms were ripping across Tucson and points S leading one to believe that there was a chance these clouds would pile higher until reaching the ice-forming level in spite of moderate temperatures. Sure enough, one of the Great Moments in clouddom, is catching those first strands of rain/graupel that fall from such a cloud, as here. Really, its like seeing a marbled murrelet streaking in from the coast whilst in a redwood forest, its that rare (see Rare Bird, Marie Mudd Ruth, award winning author and friend who likes clouds a lot, in keeping with a “mud” theme here today. Remember, too, you only got a couple of minutes to catch this stage as the large drops and soft fall out at about 15-20 mph.1:59 PM. Moving rapidly westward, unloads west of Saddlebrooke. Worried here since it missed.2:00 PM. More rain and thunder appeared upwind on the Catalinas leading to renewed hope. In fact, the whole sky at this point seemed to be turning into one huge Cumulonimbus. It was great!
3:27 PM. An inch had fallen and it looked like we were going have a lake side property. Next time will get kayak out! Sometimes toads erupt from the earth when this happens, but I guess they like it darker than this.
4:01 PM. One of the prettiest sites after our major rains is this line of Stratus fractus clouds that cuddle up against Samaniego Ridge. Yesterday was no exception, and it was another memorable site of the day.
The weather ahead
Well, drying. Unfortunately we’re in for another long dry spell likely beginning after today. Hoping we can squeeze out one more day with rain this afternoon. Today’s storms will move from an unusual summertime direction from the south-southwest and southwest, so you;ll want to be watching toward the Tucson Mountains to Twin Peaks for stuff that might come in in the afternoon, more of a fall pattern as the winds are shifting aloft today to from the SW. The Catalinas get active with Cu and Cumulonimbus piling up by late morning, but they drift toward the north and not over us as they did yesterday, all this from the U of AZ model run from 11 PM AST last night.
Pretty boring lately…. No motivation here, even after caffeinating royally every morning. Have had some pro work to work on, too, like reviewing a manuscript for a journal–loosely translated, work that’s largely comprised of “finding fault in the work of others,” which I am pretty good at, to be a little immodest. Due this weekend, too…
11 PM U of AZ mod has late afternoon and evening rains in Catalina! Yay. Looks pretty wet, too, through the middle of next week, some lucky places (Catalina/Oro Valley) might get 1-3 inches during that time I suspect. (Neck out pretty far here.)
But…another longish dry spell takes hold after that. Seems to be the character of our summer; a couple good, wet days, then a long dry spell.
Still there were some great cloud sights yesterday, and I wanted to share them with my reader, wherever you are.
Down at second from the bottom is the rare sun pillar, and the last photo, a kind of an odd parhelia (sun dog) since the clouds were mainly Altocumulus ones in which it was occurring and it was darn bright.
Parhelia normally occur in icy Altostratus clouds. I would guess that this one might have been caused by ice crystals produced by an aircraft that passed through that Ac layer toward the horizon, right.
Catalina Area 1010 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.71 Golder Ranch Horseshoe Bend Road in Saddlebrooke 1020 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.08 Oracle Ranger Stati approximately 0.5 mile southwest of Oracle 1040 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.59 Dodge Tank Edwin Road 1.3 miles east of Lago Del Oro Parkway 1050 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.94 Cherry Spring approximately 1.5 miles west of Charouleau Gap 1060 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.04 0.31 Pig Spring approximately 1.1 miles northeast of Charouleau Gap 1070 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 Cargodera Canyon northeast corner of Catalina State Park 1080 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.14 CDO @ Rancho Solano Cañada Del Oro Wash northeast of Saddlebrooke 1100 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.83 CDO @ Golder Rd Cañada Del Oro Wash at Golder Ranch Road
Santa Catalina Mountains 1030 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.12 Oracle Ridge Oracle Ridge, approximately 1.5 miles north of Rice Peak 1090 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.16 1.38 Mt. Lemmon Mount Lemmon 1110 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.16 CDO @ Coronado Camp Cañada Del Oro Wash 0.3 miles south of Coronado Camp 1130 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.39 Samaniego Peak Samaniego Peak on Samaniego Ridge 1140 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.51 Dan Saddle Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge 2150 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.28 White Tail Catalina Highway 0.8 miles west of Palisade Ranger Station 2280 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.63 Green Mountain Green Mountain 2290 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.31 Marshall Gulch Sabino Creek 0.6 miles south southeast of Marshall Gulch
Most of the day was pretty quiet. I gave up on any rain just before it started raining. And then it rained some more. Total here in Sutherland Heights was 0.74 inches in last evening’s rain. Had a close LTG strike that knocked out the personal weather station for a few minutes. Sorry about that. I suspect you were pretty upset since it happened when the rain was piling up and you were likely watching my weather station reports online, so it was kind of like your TEEVEE failing when a last minute pass is thrown toward the end zone, but the TEEVEE blacks out before the pass lands and you don’t know how the game ended. Again, my apologies for that interruption.
Your late afternoon and evening cloud day, one that ended up with “rosy rain” (not a female singer from Seattle, but it would be a good name for one):
5:51 PM. Nice lighting on the mountains, but definitely no chance of rain.6:12 PM. Yep, nothin’ upwind toward the NE and beyond Charouleau Gap. Certainly, there will be no rain this evening.6:47 PM. Heard some thunder whilst looking at the Cat Mountains, though it seemed impossible. Must have been a jet…. Went over to look toward Saddlebrook, and my word, this! Where the HECK did that come from? Not long after this those outflow winds struck, blasting away at 25-35 mph from the NNE.7:09 PM. Nice base forming toward house due to those outflowing winds that pushed the air upward around the Saddlebrook cell. But will it get deep enough to form ice and rain on us? The overall situation was not so great since you may have noticed that prior to the cell appearing suddenly, there were no Cumulus clouds over the lower terrain away from the mountains, never a good sign for anything to propagate out away from them. But, they did!7:13 PM. A new rainshaft started falling out of one side of that dark base, indicating its top had sprouted upward and reached way beyond the -10 C level up there! Still, this one was a near miss, drenching Oro Valley and sideswiping Sutherland Heights.7:19 PM. Rosy rain. Looking again toward Saddlebrook, new cells kept forming to the north-north east and eventually one passed over Sutherland Heights with drenching rain, visibility briefly down to a few hundred yards, wind rushing out of the N. It was a fantastic moment after all the dry days that had preceded this.
El Nino Update
In some dismal news brought to my attention by a friend and El Nino expert with NOAA, Monterrey, our much looked forward to El Nino for next winter, likely to be accompanied by substantial rains here, one that was in development over the past few months, is starting to…..fade!
Check out this graphic for July 31, 2014, and note the awful “blue” areas (below normal temperatures) that have started to permeate the red and yellow above normal sea surface temperature band from Peru to south of Hawaii along the Equator.
From NOAA….
Compare this latest map above to the one just over a month ago (!), with all the great red and yellow across the eastern Pacific:
June 30, 2014 sea surface temperature anomaly map, the good one.
Feeling a little depressed now… Not sure once fading, an El Nino can make a come back. Let’s just hope our early August rains can revive some of our desert vegetation. As you know, we have a couple of days of great chances to get shafted again, rain shafted, that is.
In the meantime, here’s fascinating account of a sudden warming water off the central California coast recently that you might enjoy from this friend and El Nino expert. You might not have to wear a wet suit to surf The Mavericks, its so warm!
On the positive side, my friend doesn’t feel that the Washington Huskies fubbal team will have a losing season this year, as I do; you know, new coach, new system, new QB, at Washington this year, and this almost always means a tough year. So, I guess we can close out today with that positive note.
There are a lot of photos here of yesterday’s clouds, considering it was a day with no rain. Oh, well, pretty normal for a cloud-centric person where the least cloud minutiae is somehow “interesting.”
8:13 AM. Very gratifying and a little surprising to see the first tiny Cu spring up so early in the morning off’n Lemmon. But, would it be only shallow moisture?10:13 AM. Also a promising sign, a thin turret rising out of a blob of small Cu. Mr. Cloud Maven Person apologizes in advance if this shot is somehow offensive by suggesting a middle finger.10:52 AM. Clouds mass above Ms. Lemmon, BUT, can they reach the ice-forming level where the temperature is as low as -10 C (14 F) or lower so that they can rain? I’m thinking it’ll be close, but was not real hopeful.11:19 AM. Amazing! On this expected to be dry day, Ms. Lemmon and her environs have created a Cumulonimbus cloud! Nowhere within a hundred miles was there another cloud like this!11:19 AM. Zoom of the icy “calvus” top in the middle (its not very fibrous yet, but is clearly loaded with ice, unlike the crinkly turret at left. Sometimes that “calvus” look is compared with the look of “cotton candy.” Within about 10 s, there was a rumble of thunder! You remember, cotton candy don’t you?12:56 PM. Pretty obvious here that the day was done as far as Cumulonimbus clouds over the Cat Mountains are concerned as the drier air moving in the from the west began to take its toll, as well as the cooling of the mountains by the prior thunderstorm. Or was it done? CM thought so, but maybe I shouldn’t tell you that, causing you to lose confidence.1:50 PM. A truly shocking sight to CM. The Cumulonimbus clouds were able to start up again!2:04 PM. Mr. Cloud Maven Person enjoys showing you how fast cloud tops can glaciate, and this was a nice case (Cb calvus stage here).5:23 PM. Well, it was all over by this time, no more Cbs, but here’s a Cumulus mediocris showing crepuscular rays (ray features due to high aerosol loading of the air).7:32 PM. Nice pastel-colored Cirrus spissatus cumulonimbogenitus (I couldn’t stop with just “Cirrus”, I had to ruin it with a long unpronounceable part. Oh, well, that’s what cloud-maven person does.
Next and maybe last rain of the summer (kidding only a little) looks to be around August 3rd still. Flow aloft looking awfully grim overall for summer rain in Catalina mod longer term predictions… This may be the worst thing I have ever said to a desert people during their “wet” season. Let’s hope we have about 5 inches on August 3rd or so!
Check the starting conditions on the US Drought Monitor Map below for July 22nd. Then look at the next map showing the 7-day radar-derived rain totals (from WSI Intellicast), ending at 5 AM AST today that hit those red and brown areas of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
What a great 7 days it has been, even if us here in Catalinaland haven’t been as fortunate.
Didn’t group together as hoped, though a wind shift aloft did happen last evening (from SSE to SSW, seen here). But there was nothing with it. Too dry I guess, too stable, viz., air locked into place near the ground. Boohoo. When the venerable U of AZ model outputs came out later yesterday morning finally, they knew that virtually nothing was going to happen beyond isolated thunderheads yesterday during the day. Well, you can’t wait that long, until late morning; you have to go with your gut sometimes, even if it might be wrong.
Some photos from our quiet day:
9:34. Cumulus began massing over Ms. Lemmon 3 h earlier than the prior day, a good sign for much more action than the prior day, which had none.11:58 AM. A Cumulonimbus was in progress (note frizzy, icy top at left)! View zoomed here to make cloud appear larger than it really was. But, ignoring that trickery, it did rain over there underneath it.. Was very hopeful at this point since large clouds were shooting upward S-W, too (see below).12:19 PM. Cumulonimbus and Cumulus congestus pock the SW-W horizon. Maybe they’ll form a line as that upper level windshift approaches….4:19 PM. Yes, finally, it appears that a line of Cumulonimbus and heavy Cumulus clouds are organizing upwind as I drove steeply downhill on Oracle Road.4:42 PM. But the clouds were also speaking to me, as they often do, sending a different message: “Help me! I’m drying up! Dry air is right behind me.” So, too much dry air, no clustering factor, in fact, and we were left with isolated, though pretty clouds at sunset (see below).7:22 PM. Shadow from a distant, lonely Cumulonimbus clouds provides a shady relief for a patch of Cirrus. Very dramatic scene, even if it was now obvious that the thought of a line of clouds moving in with rain was highly bogus. HOWEVER, an amazing amount of instability (as measured by CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) went overhead quietly last night (over “1900”) as the wind shift aloft approached; had it happened during the daytime, I think we might have had something to talk about. Hardly goes over “1900” in the daytime! Darn. You’ll know that something changed when you see the anvils go off toward the east, and not the west as happened yesterday.
Today’s clouds
Enough water in the air yet for isolated Cu and a Cb, probably much like yesterday. U of AZ mod sees a little afternoon rain in the Catalinas. But, really nothing good in sight now with the exception of around August 3rd. Poor desert. The Canadian model has a Big Rain Day (BRD) on August 3rd as remnant tropical storm moves up the Baja coast and the US model, too, has rain chances picking up then for just a day or two (only). This is getting to be a hard summer.
Another “awesome” display of lightning flashed over the Cat Mountains east of Catalina early last evening, accompanied by gusty northerly winds, but that fierce thunderstorm couldn’t make it over those mountains, but rather died on the way. Only sprinkles occurred here, giving us yet another “trace” of rain day. Kind of discouraging after the prior night’s nice little rain of 0.18 inches, one that also occurred after night fall. But as we know, weather never repeats itself exactly.
———-Yesterday’s major cloud mystery———–
Many of you, I am sure noticed the remarkable cloud scene below, perhaps as you came out of the house, or during your lunch hour, and likely puzzled over it the rest of the day. I, too, wondered how that little dot of cloud got so separated from its early Mt. Lemmon spawning grounds and brothers and sisters hovering over the mountain, trying to grow up. Notice that it seems like a puff of cloud, ragged on the bottom, a little rounder on the top. Could it be the top of a “smokestack” Cumulus that somehow we missed, whose connecting parts to Mt. Lemmon have evaporated? Its an important question that we shall try to answer.
12:51 PM. Cumulus humilis and fractus begin gathering over Mt. Lemmon. Recall, btw, that this kind of cloud scene began a little after 8 AM on the thundery day before, for perspective–we’re late here, not a good sign of active rain day.)
To solve this mystery, Mr. (he’s not a doctor, nor does he have an advanced degree of any kind!) Cloud Maven Person went to the U of Arizona Department of Atmospheric Meteorology and looked at yesterday’s cloud movie. These are top rated movies, and, if you’ve ever looked at them, you can understand why clouds and what the weather does can be hard to predict; locations of storms missed, etc. No computer model can see all the remarkable little cloud wiggles, sudden comings and goings, that you see in these movies, thus introducing slight errors that tend to degrade those model predictions over time. And lots of the time, the locations of the clouds at the outset of the model run is even markedly off! Below, yesterday’s complex cloud movie linked for you in the word, “Movie”:
You will barely be able to read the time of the day in the lower left hand corner, which adds further complexity in solving this problem, but if you look closely you will see that a minute or two BEFORE the shot above at 12:51 PM, and slender tower rose up from Ms. Lemmon, its trunk evaporating almost immediately, but the last thing to evaporate was the little puff above that sped westward toward Samaniego Ridge.
In conclusion, I think we have solved yesterday’s cloud mystery.
——————-end of cloud mystery module——————–
That such a cloud could shoot up and out from Mt. Lemmon like this one did was a sign that there was great environment for much larger clouds, at least in the fall of the temperature with height (lapse rate), but that more humidity was needed to keep them from evaporating as they tried to grow. It wasn’t long before the hopeful sign of a Cumulonimbus calvus (anvil not formed yet) appeared beyond the Catalina Mountains, and the chance of evening rains, as the models had predicted, began to look better.
2:05 PM. Cumulonimbus calvus top makes its appearance to the SE, likely 70 miles or more, and hours away.
5:33 PM. Threatening clouds and thunderheads were now moving into the Oracle/Mammoth areas, and the chances of a significant rain here were growing by the minute as major radar echoes approached from the east. I remember thinking how how happy I was that such a dreadful Cumulus day over the Catalinas was now going to be reversed by this onslaught of storms as the U of AZ model had predicted.
7:05 PM. Thus far, only “debris” clouds from the thunderstorms upwind had crossed the Catalinas, spreading westward toward the setting sun. But those dark clouds did provide the contrast as the setting sun lit up the Catalinas for this great scene.
7:22 PM. Multiple layers of clouds provide multiple sunset colors.
7:32 PM. That extra brightness in the center of the photo, if you noticed it, is called a “sun pillar”. Its due to a fall of plate-like, hexagonal ice crystals that fall face down and that enhances the reflected toward us. The sun set exactly below this bright spot. For a bit more on sun pillars, go here.
What seems to be ahead…..
The U of AZ mod hasn’t been updated as of this hour….so, being in a hurry, we’ll do an “SOP” forecast (you have to see Bob for a good one. I like Bob, too) but we have plenty of lower level humidity, and there appears to be a weak upper trough passing over us today, and that “should” help to collect storms into larger masses instead of just isolated ones. Oops, let me not forget our TUS NWS computer forecast for the Catalina area, too.
So, today might be the last day for a reasonably good chance of a major rain here in Catalina. After today, and for the next two weeks, the circulation pattern is not so great for summer storms, according to the NOAA spaghetti factory plots, seen here.
It seems more and more like we’re doomed to a drier than normal summer, darn it. (Missed those first great storms, too, that started our summer rain season.)
That’s about it for my cloud world. Camera will be ready for the black shafts of summer today!
Thin Cirrostratus overspread the sky at dinner time from the east, thickening into Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus mammatus (you can breath now), toward the Catalina Mountains and in the direction of Oracle. What a gorgeous sight this was!
While the storms that spawned this icy blob were mostly dead by this time, undercutting Altocumulus castellanus below the mammatus formation (barely visible in the photo below) gave hope that the day was not done as far as rain was concerned. And it wasn’t.
Round about midnight, the wind and one of the more intense lightning shows of the summer crept over the Catalinas and into Catalina, sparks flying. Strikes too close for CM to feel comfortable on the front porch in metal lawn furniture.
Sutherland Heights was watered with 0.18 inches, an OK amount, enough to revive some of the wilting desert weeds of summer. The Cat Mountains, not surprisingly, got the most. Ms. Sara Lemmon got 1.02 inches, Sam Peak, 0.83 inches. Hope they weren’t having an astronomy show at the Sky Center!
You can see the list of Pima County gauges here. LTGICCCCG1 still out there to the distant SSW at this hour, and major rains are still in progress in western Arizona, all good. (Those low lying areas of western Arizona such as along the Colorado River, have a “bi-modal” peak frequency of late evening and early morning rains, btw. Not much happens in the middle of the day to mid-afternoon out there.)
No clouds during the day yesterday, even over Mt. Lemmon, was a surprise, and is rare in my seventh summer here, and is a testimony to how dry the air was aloft over us even with some humidity near the surface. Things quickly changed during the night, and this morning, we’ve got it all, significant humidity at the ground all the way up to Cirrus levels. Perhaps due to the low starting temperatures associated with the rains in the area, the U of AZ mod doesn’t think Cumulonimbus clouds will form over our mountains until late afternoon into the evening hours.
In any case, should be a great day visually; lots going on. Thinning clouds this morning, then the rise of the Cumulus, and we hope, as the mod projects, another blast of rain in the evening and early nighttime hours.
7:26 PM.
6:00 AM. In case you missed it just now, this beauty.
The Weather WAY ahead
The NOAA spaghetti factory still is not showing patterns that are fruitful for generous rains overall in the next 15 days or so. So, anything we get should be considered quite a blessing during this time. Another giant trough is going to affect the East Coast and Midwest (the last one, a couple of weeks ago, brought the coldest July day in the 140 year history of Memphis records where for the first time the high temperature did not reach 70 F in July! Wow.) Those east of the Rockies may well wonder in the times ahead, what happened to summer? Of course, those cool temperatures might well be welcomed in late July and August, but the circulation pattern that brings them is also not so great for summer rains here. Oh, well, hoping for the best.
Sincerely, your CM.
——————– 1Weather text for “Lightning in the cloud, cloud-to-cloud, and cloud-to-ground.” A weather report amended with this comment, LTGICCCCG, was always one of the most exciting that you could see reported from a station, especially if you lived in lightning-deprived areas like California and Washington as did CM.
6:22 AM. Ridin’ tall on “Jake” yesterday morning with riding pal, Nora B, on “Dreamer.” It was a pretty dusty ride1 due to all the dust in the air, to be redundant. We set out around dawn. It was a ride amid the sad summer grasses and weeds we now have due to the “furnace” weather of late. Can they come back with a some decent rains? Hope so.
Now for some clouds, ones that spurted up awful fast yesterday. Movie here; still shots chronicling your cloud day below:
8:42 AM. First cloud shred forms over Ms. Mt. Lemmon. This early shred is a good sign for large buildups to develop early in the day.
10:06 AM. The vertical rise of this small cloud is another good sign that the atmosphere is “cocked” so to speak, to produce large storms. Got pretty excited and hopeful seeing this tower shoot up from The Lemmon.
11:04 AM. The top of this Cumulus congestus overhang began to show ice about this time and a few drops fell out here.
11:34 AM. First cloud to ground strike just about the time of this photo and came down from the overhang directly down in the center of the photo to that slanting ridge lline. Now here’s an example where the LTG strike is not where you might think it should be, perhaps closer to the lower cloud base to the right. Sometimes when the tops lean over as much as they did yesterday (see prior photo), it has seemed like you can get some rogue strikes way out away from the rain areas upwind. And so great caution is required when you see our tops streak out away from the main body of the rain and lower cloud; you might think you’re safer than you really are under that non-precipitating overhang.
2:01 PM. Cumulus congestus top with ice top tip just behind it, and an converting-to-ice Cumulonimbus calvus (“bald”) top in the upper center. Can you pick them out? Next photo has writing on it for clarity.2:01 PM. Same photo as above but with writing on it.
3:43 PM. Scene of the day, the “waterfall” near the Charouleau Gap. Lightning was extremely frequent, and thunder continuous.
3:52 PM. A similar dump hit Marana Avra Valley with one gauge reporting 1.97 inches!
Today?
U of AZ mod run from last night, surprisingly, has showers around today, but nothing near Catalina. Hmmmm. Can that be right? Hope not. In fact, I am going to wish that it is totally wrong! Don’t forget to check out what Bob says, too. He’s our resident expert on storms, and a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, a huge honor.
Tomorrow will be better, the model sez.
———————-
1“Dusty Ride”? Hmmmm. Once again, another great name for a western singer–I can’t believe how many I have come up with! “Dusty” this, “Dusty” that! The creativity just goes on and on.
