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.
Cloud tops in those deeper Cu reached -30 C (-22 F) yesterday, plenty cold enough for lots of ice, with a few scattered very light showers reaching the ground, even a few drops here in Sutherland Heights a little before 5 PM, qualifying for a day with a trace of rain. Imagine! Rain! What izzat?
Here is that day below (if you want the short version, go to the U of AZ time lapse film department, online here).
Day Summary: Sunny with Altocumulus castellanus/floccus virgae in the early morning, then in the late morning, Cumulus humilis and mediocris, the latter with virga; Cu grew into shallow, but very cold Cumulonimbus capillatus (lots of “hair”-ice), with virga and RWU (rain showers of unknown intensity) in a couple of spots. Sunny again in mid-afternoon, but Cumulus re-developed in mid-late afternoon with more virga and some Cu reaching the shallow Cb stage with sprinkles here and there.
That’s it, in kind of a jumbled form. Hope you logged all these clouds and changes yesterday.
9:55 AM. Altocumulus castellanus/floccus virgae11:06 AM. Cu developed rapidly over and downwind of the Catalinas. Lots of ice at far left, indicating how cold those clouds were, likely around -20 C (-4 F) at cloud top by this time. Bases, too, below freezing by this time.11:10 AM. A classic, gorgeous example of Ac castellanus and floccus (the latter has no base, just a turret). No ice visible here.2:07 PM. Cold Cumulus and Stratocumulus filled in as trough apex was about to pass overhead (wind shift line, one you can see in the movie linked to above).2:08 PM. Rain showers reach the ground toward Marana whose city limit is pretty much everything you see in this photo I think…2:36 PM. Snow on The Lemmon!4:00 PM. Clearing developed for awhile in the mid-afternoon, but then Cu were quickly reforming. Lots of ice again in this one at left, the oldest portion of the cloud where droplets are evaporating, but the ice becomes visible because it doesn’t evaporate as fast as the droplets do. BTW, air flows THROUGH the cloud, youngest portions on the upwind side, oldest portions downwind. You want to know that if you’re flying around with a research aircraft because if you’re only targeting the young portions, you’re not going to find the “correct” amount of ice that developed in that cloud. Some researchers apparently did this and reported in journals anomalously low ice particle concentrations for the cloud top temperatures that they sampled. For the sake of courtesy, I will not mention their names. But this is why at Washington, we always found a LOT of ice because C-M /we knew where to go!14:31 PM. This was probably the deepest cloud of the day, and there is some suggestion of soft hail (“graupel”) falling out as would be an indicator of some higher liquid water contents before it converted completely to ice. Graupel comes from ice crystals or snowflakes that have bumped into a lot of supercooled cloud droplets that then freeze instantly on the crystal, helping it fall faster and collide with more droplets on the way down, a process called “”riming.” Pilots know full well about riming.6:24 PM. Nice sunset color in clouds and on the mountains.
Don’t see any weather ahead that I like, and so not talkin’ about that today.
—————————————- 1One of the many pioneering innovations here at “cloud-maven” is the novella-sized figure caption.
Virga here and there, chance of sprinkles through early afternoon, then blammo, clearing as wind shift aloft makes it way across Oro Valley/Catalina. CLouds will consist of Cumulus mediocris virgae, small Cumulonimbus capillatus virgae. Cloud bases will be below freezing and higher than Ms. Mt. Lemmon, so will be tough to get rain down to the lower elevations, though a virga trail may hit The Lemmon. Tops of Cu, -15 C to -25 C, i.e., cold enough for ice formation, of course. Crystals will be mostly stellars and dendrites with some clustering into aggregates we would normally call “snowflakes.” Some of the very coldest tops will contain some solid columns, maybe some prisms and hexagonal plates.
If you’re having trouble here because you’ve forgotten a few things, you might well want to get your Magono and Lee (1996) ice crystal “bible” and review crystals types and the temperatures they form at. Heck, maybe I’ll just put the first couple pages here for you…Magono and Lee (1966). Everybody had one back then. Very important to have that with you. As a further challenge, I have not rotated two pages to the upright position to make it too easy for you.
I suppose, too, that you COULD hire an small aircraft to go up there and check on these predicted types using the old “black glove” technique of the early 1960s, where a scientist would stick out a black-gloved hand from the passenger side of the aircraft and then report/log the ice crystals he found. Not making this up.
Yesterday’s clouds (something’s “wrong”)
Day started out dusty; ended up dusty.
8:16 AM. Dirt roads ‘n’ dust; that’s who we are. Got some Altocumulus, but they are so high and cold (-30 C) that they transformed into patches of Cirrus (ice) clouds almost immediately. Pretty normal, even at temperatures that low, for a liquid drop to form first, followed by freezing. Weird.
8:23 AM. Here, a real bird, not a fake one, begins to notice something extraordinary; the virga trails from the parent cloud are going the “wrong way”, toward the northeast!8:35 AM. “What’s going on here?”, the photo asks. Well, the virga trail is going FASTER and leading the head or “generating cell” from which it issued, meaning the wind increases with velocity going down, not UP, as usual! Incredible, really! Hardly ever see this. Is it due to global warming/climate change, the polar vortex has maybe turned upside down? I think so. Has annotations on it.
12:07 PM. Then I saw this, a cloud with no name above the Catalinas. Could be the silhouette of a polar bear, eyes and head at lower left looking downard, asking what have we done to it? Its white, too. Can’t be Cu fractus, though a thermal has pushed a damp layer up here, causing the concave shape. You don’t want to fly that small plane in or below this cloud, looking for ice. It would be real bumpy.
Above, through the dust, for some perspective of our ghost “bear.” Pretty cool, huh? I hope there are some left by the time I get done with this blog! Maybe I should check….let’s see what the Canadians (well, one Canadian at U of Victoria) has to say about this dire sitiuation, get informed about stuff. Here’s a link provided by the climate provocateur, and former WA State Climatologist, Mark Albright, who forwarded it to me for my own illumination. I found that post interesting, unexpected…maybe you will, too.
12:39 PM. Iridescence in Cirrocumulus patch. Very pretty for a minute or two, then gone.
3:24 PM. Day ended up cloudy and dusty with some areas looking like sprinkles could have fallen out and reached the ground, but nothing here, and echoes on radar were awful weak when present.
Rain continues to show up on the forecast horizon, which is about 8 days
Best chance of rain, 21st-23rd, mods fuzzy on which day has the best chance. If you love spaghetti, you’ll love this one below. The vast change in the pattern, indicated for almost two weeks now, is just about here. Some mod runs have rain as this “trough bowl” develops, and a strong trough passes through from the west. Seems more likely than not from here that rain will fall as that happens.
Valid for 5 PM AST March 22nd.
The End. (Nice sunrise, lots of Ac cas, Sc, virga around!)
..will be playing your favorite western tunes in the inimitable style of Johnny Cash at the Whistling Cactus Bar and Hitching Post this Friday and Saturday… :} (Hahahaha; “inimitable style of Johnny Cash”; that means Cash’s style can’t be imitated!)1
6:37 AM: I see now that there’s a lot more dust than last evening! Wow. Dusty Sunrise!
4:13 PM. Cumulus fractus. Dust is visible if you look hard on the horizon. The back scattering of sun light from dust aerosols makes them hard to detect looking away from the sun. But looking toward the sun, the sky has a whitish, gritty look as we had yesterday. When smoke aerosols are present, the sun can appear very orange or reddish, not white in the mid-day-afternoon hours. See the photo below, taken in the forward scattering direction, that whitish look near the sun. For those who want to go deeper, this. Images here.4:12 PM. Whitish, gritty dust exits Tucson and envelopes Mark Albright’s house in Marana/Continental Ranch, carried on a SE blast of wind from Texas and NM.
6:11 PM. Same view as above but most of the sun’s white light has been scattered out leaving the longer yellow and orange wavelengths to carry on.6:20 PM. Classic appearance of a dusty sunset.
Satellite image of aerosol content as seen from above (:}. Green area is the dust plume that appeared to originate in SW Texas and southern NM, then blew into Tucson town yesterday afternoon. Looks like its still here this morning. Go here to see more jpegs of aerosols.
Today’s mix of clouds and dust
Cloud action today, likely some small Cu and Ac later today as a weak upper level trough approaches and passes over us. Should be enough clouds around to pose a sprinkle threat. Imagine.
Should be an especially interesting day for cloud watchers since the dust aerosol should get into the small Cu. Sometimes that can lead to much larger cloud droplets in them because the dust particles are so much larger than the usual aerosol stuff that gets into our clouds.
What does that mean?
Will help those lower Cumulus clouds to form raindrops, since the larger the cloud droplet, the higher the temperatures at which ice forms. Sometimes, even drizzle drops, formed from just droplet collisions can result in Cu mediocris clouds with large dust particles in them (no ice involved). Would sure like to have an instrumented aircraft in the clouds of today!
Normally, ice would be expected to form at temperatures below about -10 to -12 C here in AZ. Today, it might be higher with virga falling from shallower clouds than usual.
The weather ahead
Found some rain for ya… March 21st. See those green areas in SE AZ? Been quiet on rain lately. Don’t like to talk about rain when there’s none indicated for two weeks at a time. The rain shown for us on the map above has been coming and going around this date in the model runs, mostly going, actually, but scored one here based on yesterday’s 5 PM AST global data and that has allowed me to take the rain muzzle off.
So….in sum, we can look forward to another chance of rain in March, one just ahead, and, of course, more of “Dusty Sunset” in the meantime leading up to this chance.
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1Saw a vinyl record album with those EXACT words on it in the Durango Market on Main Street, Durango, back in the ’70s when I lived there. Pretty funny, because you KNEW that imitating Johnny Cash was exactly what that singer was going to do!
First, it behooves me1 to point out that there remains a considerable amount of uncertainty in the weather WAY ahead. This is demonstrated below by the map from the NOAA spaghetti factory from last evening, one that churned out a LOT of “spaghetti”, perhaps making the point about how chaotic weather is:
Valid at 5 PM, March 26th, two weeks from now. Doesn’t matter where Arizona is; although, although… when I look really close….I think I can see some rain for us. The lines are selected contours of the height of the 500 mb surface, after slight errors have been introduced to the initial state of the forecast model. The actual forecast of those contours is in their somewhere.
Yesterday’s Cirrocu
Late yesterday, a thin moist layer moved in and produced, where the air was lifted that bit more, a little patch of Cirrocumulus, our most delicate cloud.
5:09 PM. Cirrocumulus. No ice apparent, something that would blur the spaces between the tiny cloudlets. Height was about 17 kft above the ground, temperature, -15 C. So delicate!
6:28 PM. Line of Altocumulus enhances sunset. Too thick, elements too large to be Cirrocu, though they were both at the same height yesterday.
I think that covers just about everything.
The End.
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1What an odd expression, to “behoove oneself” in effect, as in becoming a perissodactyla, while doing something you feel you must do as a responsible person. Imagine, before issuing a responsible statement, that it was normal for people to put on hooves, or to wear them when coming out to a news conference to announce something responsible, correct the record, etc. Perhaps, if it wasn’t that bad, you would wear only one hoof…
Web crawlers: This is not about Rocky Mountain Silver Bullet Beer1.
Lotta wind last night. Gusts to 50 mph here in Sutherland Heights, stuff all over the yard. I didn’t mention anything about excessive wind coming last night, and so there’s no point in mentioning it now. I’m a cloud-maven, not a wind-maven….
Here’s yesterday afternoon’s sounding from Tucson, around the time we had all that ice pouring out of just about every Cumulus humilis and mediocris around:
The TUS vskkppm sounding, launched around 3:30 PM AST. A quite fascinating finding just now, is that when you type letters on the keyboard when you’re not looking at it, and miss by only ONE letter to the one you are targetting, you get a quite different word. Above, the Polish word, “vskkppm”, which was meant to be “balloon” in English2. The arrows denote bottoms and tops of those small Cumulus yesterday, -17 C and the deeper ones (a km or 3 Kft thick), tops maybe around -25 C,respectively; the bottom temperature exceptionally low for Arizona.
The high cold ones of yesterday afternoon
9:53 AM. Reminiscent of a summer’s day, Cumulus begin taking shape over the Catalinas. At this time, tops are near freezing, too warm for ice. As the day worn on, the bases and tops of the Cumulus clouds both rose, a pretty normal sequence.
1:47 PM. Not much happening yet, though Cu are now reaching “mediocris” in size. Nice lighting on mountains, though.
1:46 PM. Even flatter Cu to the NW-N at that time. I’m thinking, by this time “Where’s is the ice?”
2:40 PM, about an hour later, ice began to appear in several Cumulus clouds. Here in the distance (just above the house), some sprinkles likely reached the ground.
3:52 PM. Hardly a cloud around without a veil of ice crystals around it. Its likely that cloud tops (and bases) rose to temperature below -15 C during the mid-afternoon hours. Here, even Cu humilis are emitting little, hazy-looking ice plumes!
5:25 PM. A snow flurry even touched the Catalinas.
5:32 PM. Iced out! The little cloud that gave out the flurry on the Catalinas in its dying phase, no more liquid water in it, and so all of the ice crystals and snowflakes in it fall out or evaporate and in 20 min, it was gone.6:23 PM. Its not windy at this time. Wind hits just before 9 PM. Here tiny shred clouds, remnants of somewhat larger clouds, show their ice (veil on the right). BTW, its still windy this morning. Should die out during the morning.
There are really no good names for the clouds we saw yesterday. Maybe Cumulus humilis virgae? Cumulus mediocris virgae praecipitatio (to keep the Latin discriminators)? They have all the ingredients of miniature Cumulonimbus clouds, some vertical development, fall streaks and little shafts at times. So, these kinds of clouds, that are COMMON in the interior of the West during the cooler half of the year, really don’t have a good place in our cloud atlases. In fact, you won’t even find one in any cloud atlas! (Tell your friends how special yesterday was…)
The End.
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1 In fact, a legendary beer from Colorado, sung about below by no less than John Denver, or someone who sounds an awful like him, while also describing some football coaching history at the University of Washington Huskies.
2You should try this and see what other languages might be recovered from your keyboard by making just the slightest of errors.
3:05 PM. Classic Cumulus humilis (aka, “pancakeus”). Its not a bad thing to be humilis.4:03 PM. Here you got yer corral, yer horse poop and pee (dark area of soil in foreground), and off on the NW-N horizon, glaciating Cumulus tops; shallow Cbs most likely. Some rain up that way, of course. Don’t needa radar once you detect that ice. You did detect it didn’t you?
In case you don’t believe me again, see below! You can also find a few small amounts here in the USGS network.
24 h radar-derived precip totals for AZy (from WSI Intellicast) denoted by bluish regions. Not much more than a tenth was reported in USGS gauges, which is what’s indicated here by radar.
Today
More bigger Cu, likely some ice/virga visible. U of AZ mod thinks rain will be to the east and south of us. Darn. But, if you’re horny for rain, might be worth a family trip to, say, Douglas, take in a few drops. Nice town, Douglas.
WAY ahead
Big changes still ahead, though lately mod runs haven’t had as big of a wet change here as I would like to see, so not reporting on that.
Let us begin today’s cloud lesson by examining the perfect example of Altocumulus perlucidus translucidus:
9:11 AM. I am sure many of you were exulting over being able to add such a grand example to your perlucidus collection. Quite satisfying.5:02 PM. That Ac perlucidus got a little exuberant, thickened up to lines of Ac opacus (dense gray lines in the distance, topped by Altostratus and Cirrus to make the scene pretty gray. Kind of amazing how many gray days we’ve had in the midst of drought.6:27 PM. The aforementioned clouds led to a nice pastel-ee sunset.
The rains of March
From NOAA’s WRF-GFS model run based on last evening’s global data, this beauty below. A model cannot calculate more areas of rain and snow in, and west of the Rockies, than this one! So, headin’ for a big change here in the West, as we deserve, after our AZ non-winter. See caption for details.
Valid at 5 PM, March 22nd. The colored regions are those in which the model has calculated precipitation during the PRIOR 12 h. Its way out there, and could be “March Model Madness”, but, odds are we WILL be seeing rain here in Catalina after mid-month when the jet pattern changes. Rain also indicated here overnight on the 16th-17th, and a few isolated light showers around tomorrow afternoon and evening! “Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes”, as David Bowie might say, or was it The Who1 or both? Oh, well. I like to leave you with something to think about all day.
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BTW, Science mag, in their tradition of catchy, amusing titles in their plain-language summaries of peer-reviewed technical articles that appear later, ones that are generally not comprehensible, used this The Who song excerpt when titling an article about the Argentine “tawny crazy ant” (I did NOT make that name up!) invasion now affecting the southern US: “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss”, a title cribbed from the great The Who song, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Feb 28th issue, p974.
BTW, its hard to write a sentence that sounds grammatically fluid and correct when writing about the works of the great The Who band.
Speaking of ants, I used to collect big red ants when I was a kid and try to transplant them into my back yard; kind of start a local big red ant invasion. I thought you would like to know that about me.
Valid two weeks from now, Thursday, 5 AM, March 20th. Massive trough, at last, settles into the West for awhile, more in keeping with climo. Keep jackets at the ready. Rain? Dunno yet, but probably on the correct side of 50-50 beginning around the 17th. Changes! Warm and dry for a coupla days, followed by a parade of troughs, quite a few minor ones over the next week or so, before the Big One forms. Above, this is a VERY strong signal in the spaghetti for two weeks out, and so got pretty excited when I saw it, as you are now, too. So, when mid-March arrives, get ready!
Was going to close with this NWS forecast for Catalina (might be updated by the time you link to it), but then saw just now that Saturday, the day a cold, dry trough is over us, it’s predicted to be 76 F here in Catalina, too warm. I would prepare for upper 60s.
Canadian model has even had rain near us at times as this trough goes by on Saturday, but only here in the 11th hour (from yesterday’s 5 PM AST run) has the US model indicated that the core of the trough and rain near us on Saturday, as the Canadian one had for a few days before that. Hmmm…
The fact that any trough is ending up stronger than it was predicted, as the one on Saturday, is a good sign of being close to the bottom (farthest S lattitude) of the “trough bowl”, that location where troughs like to come and visit. So, maybe this is a precursor for us, this unexpected little cool snap on Saturday. Maybe climatology is beginning to work its wonders at last in the West.
Powerful storms begin affecting the interior of the West and Great Basin in 10 days, and that pretty much marks the time when the winds here start to pick up to gusty at times as strong low centers develop to the north of us, and the major jet stream subsides to the south toward us.
It will be the end of the warm winter era for us, too. While cold settles in the West, it will mean very toasty weather back East from time to time, something those folks will greatly enjoy.
———————–Climate issue commentary; skip if you’re happy with the climate as it is now—————————-
As you likely know, much of the upper Midwest had one of its coldest winters ever, and just a few days ago Baltimore (locally, “Ballimore”, as in “Ballimore Orioles”) had its lowest measured temperature EVER in March, 4 F!
“RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
0930 AM EST TUE MAR 04 2014
…DAILY AND MONTHLY MINIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDS SET AT BALTIMORE
MD…
A DAILY RECORD MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 4 DEGREES WAS SET AT BALTIMORE MD TODAY…BREAKING THE OLD RECORD OF 5 SET BACK IN 1873.
THE MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 4 DEGREES FROM TODAY WAS ALSO THE LOWEST MINUMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDED ON ANY DAY IN MARCH FOR BALTIMORE. THE PREVIOUS RECORD MINIMUM TEMPERATURE FOR MARCH WAS 5 DEGREES ON 4 MARCH 1873.”
(Thanks to Mark Albright for this official statement; emphasis by author)
If you’ve followed some media reports, the exceptional cold of this winter has been attributed to global warming, a hypothesis that has been questioned by climo Big Whigs. However, if it is right (which even lowly C-M doubts), parts of the upper Midwest may become uninhabitable due to cold in a warming world, quite a weather “oxymoron.”
Also, if you’ve been hearing about weather extremes and global warming (AKA, “climate change”) you really should read this by a scientist I admire, Roger Pielke, Jr., at Colorado State Univsersity, his rebuttal to a Whitehouse science adviser’s characterization of his testimony before Congress about weather extremes (they’re not increasing).
What seems to be happening in climate science is the opposite of what our ideals are. Our conglomerate of climate models did not see the present “puzzling” halt to global warming over the past 15 years or so as CO2 concentrations have continued to rise. However, instead of being chastened/humbled by this failure, some climate scientists seem emboldened and only are shouting louder about the danger ahead. Presently we are struggling with a number of hypotheses about why the hiatus has occurred (e.g., drying of the stratosphere which allows more heat to escape the earth, more aerosols in the stratosphere in which incoming sunlight is dimmed some as it was due to the Pinatubo eruption in 1991, ocean take up of extra heat, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current slowing down, causing northern hemisphere continents to cool off.)
UPdating at 8:28 AM: This from the “current”issue of Science (Feb 28th) about the Global Warming Hiatus (GWH): It might be due to the cold waters of the eastern Pacific, now reigning year after year almost for the whole time of the “hiatus.” (BTW, you’ve heard of it, haven’t you, that hiatus in rising global temperatures? If not, write to your local media sources about this. Its pretty important.) Science mag is $10 if you want to buy it off the newstand.
What ever the cause of the puzzling hiatus in warming, it was not accounted for in our best models right from the get go, and so, naturally there SHOULD be caution on everyone’s part until we know what happened and can get it right in those many climate models..dammitall! Unless we know what done it, how else can we have confidence that they are going to be very accurate 100 years out????
———————————————end of climate issue/rant module————————–
Here are a couple of nice sunset scenes from March 4th, that same day it was SO COLD in Ballimore, these to help you cool off personally after I got you pretty worked up with climate issues. Hope I didn’t spoil your day, and try not to be mad at work thinking about it.
6:19 PM. Row of Cirrus lenticulars appears below CIrrus/Altostratus layer. I think they were too high to be Altocumulus lenticulars, and dissipated into ice puffs right after this shot.6:31 PM. Cirrus spissatus (thicker parts) with strands from Cirrus uncinus under lit by the sun.
3:53 PM. Three little rows of clouds are emitted from the Tortolita Mountains to the west, drift over Oro Valley. These kinds of “streets” are there, and usually emit form the same spots, every time we have a moist, but shallow layer of air, and there’s a bit of wind. We met men would call this situation a “cloud-capped boundary layer” where air rising to form these clouds doesn’t get any higher, usually due to a stable layer like an inversion. The visual divergence, where one of the streets looks to be going to the left, and the one on the right going to the right, is due to perspective. Cloud streets are virtually parallel to one another. The flow at cloud level was toward the photographer, me. You got Cirrostratus on top of these Cumulus/Stratocumulus clouds. (Where clouds like these are more isolated, we call them, Cumulus, when the same clouds group together into masses, we start calling them Stratocumulus. Its kind of a fuzzy area in our fuzzy classification system (see Catalina cloud maven’s cloud classification article in the Encyclopedia of the Atmospheric Sciences, 6 vols., yours for $2258.20, “only one left in stock”, Amazon says, and the great Judy Curry, is Ed.–better get it before its gone!
5:03 PM. That little zone (center, here) on the Tortolitas is still pumping out the clouds. Compare the back edge of this larger mass (which now would be Stratocumulus) with the origin point of the previous photo. The cloud street is the one on the left that goes off the screen.5:32 PM. That high Cirrostratus layer steadily thickened, becoming Altostratus here, as the afternoon wore on. Seemed like another storm was moving in. Those isolated Cumulus clouds and their “streets” filled in, too, becoming large, dark areas of Stratocumulus, adding to the false anticipation of a rain as a storm skirted Arizona.
The weather way ahead after the upcoming heat wave
I have been staring at this weather Rorschach test for a few hours now, and there’s not much to say about it, except that there seems to be two eyeballs near the North Pole, and maybe one of the yellow lines forming a jaw down there toward Greenland, possibly a tilted drivers cap toward Russia.
Clearly the global patterns are “unsettled”, to use one of our favorite forecasting words. (“We will have ‘unsettled’ weather over the next few days”, as one might say in Seattle most of the year.)
Below, “troughing” is suggested in the SW, but not much. The Asian trough, anchored along the coast of Asia, is shown moving offshore here as it should during the spring, and that in turns helps form a trough downwind in the SW US, as we see happen in the spring over the long term (in climatology). So we can only hang our hat on climo, that these uncertain times shown below in the plot below will resolve into something better than more drought.
We can also ponder the larger question of, “How’s come we can put a man on the moon and various space junk on Mars and can’t forecast the weather beyond about a week?” Its crazy.
Or even the vastly larger question concerning chaos theory, a theory that rests on the phenomenon that small perturbations in the initial state of unstable systems are able to make huge changes over time, thus:
“Will a space probe, going off into deep space, as is happening now, an artifact that’s not supposed to be there, unsettle the unstable Universe?”
Valid for 1700 AST, March 17, 2014.
Pretty thoughtful blog today, I thought. Usually don’t go this deep, but it just kind of happened.
…weren’t quite realized1 in the rain totals that our storm produced; the very exciting prediction of several inches of water content foretold for Ms. Lemmon didn’t happen (see ALERT gauge listing below, saved for pretty much the maximum 24 h period of our storm.)
Still, rains were substantial, the occasional morning lightning was great, and in a few places in PC (Pima County) the rain total did exceed 2 inches, with amounts of an inch and a half in the Cat Mountains. Good, better, but not as “great” as in expectations, except maybe at Park Tank, Reddington area, where the ALERT gauge says, 3.78 inches. Also, if you didn’t catch it, a stupendous sunrise and sunset; see pics WAY below.
Here in Sutherland Heights, 0.60 inches fell, by far most of that during the middle of last night when strong storms bounded in and abounded all over eastern AZ with a final rainband. Here’s what that 3rd and final rain “act” looked like on radar and in the satellite imagery last night (very exciting weather shape, BTW; “the curl”):
Radar and sat imagery from IPS MeteoStar for 1:15 AM. The heaviest rain fell just to the north of us. This “curl” configuration indicates that a potent part of the trough was passing by, causing clouds to explode upward from the tip of the “tail” near Rocky Point on their way to the NE from there. Got even bigger as they passed by us and headed toward Miami-Globe area. You can also see the three bands of rain that affected us, more or less still intact.
Precipitation Report for the following time periods ending at: 03:59:00 03/02/14 (also learn where stuff is) (data updated every 15 minutes) Data is preliminary and unedited. —- indicates missing data Gauge 15 1 3 6 24 Name Location ID# minutes hour hours hours hours —- —- —- —- —- —- —————– ——————— Catalina Area 1010 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.28 0.43 Golder Ranch Horseshoe Bend Road in Saddlebrooke 1020 0.00 0.00 0.24 0.43 0.67 Oracle Ranger Stati approximately 0.5 mile southwest of Oracle 1040 0.00 0.00 0.16 0.31 0.51 Dodge Tank Edwin Road 1.3 miles east of Lago Del Oro Parkway 1050 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.28 0.47 Cherry Spring approximately 1.5 miles west of Charouleau Gap 1060 0.00 0.00 0.35 0.55 0.83 Pig Spring approximately 1.1 miles northeast of Charouleau Gap 1070 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.20 Cargodera Canyon northeast corner of Catalina State Park 1080 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.24 0.35 CDO @ Rancho Solano Cañada Del Oro Wash northeast of Saddlebrooke 1100 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.20 0.31 CDO @ Golder Rd Cañada Del Oro Wash at Golder Ranch Road
Santa Catalina Mountains 1030 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.43 Oracle Ridge Oracle Ridge, approximately 1.5 miles north of Rice Peak 1090 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.39 Mt. Lemmon Mount Lemmon 1110 0.00 0.00 0.39 0.71 1.02 CDO @ Coronado Camp Cañada Del Oro Wash 0.3 miles south of Coronado Camp 1130 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 Samaniego Peak Samaniego Peak on Samaniego Ridge 1140 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.08 1.46 Dan Saddle Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge 2150 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.30 White Tail Catalina Highway 0.8 miles west of Palisade Ranger Station 2280 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.20 1.34 Green Mountain Green Mountain 2290 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.12 1.54 Marshall Gulch Sabino Creek 0.6 miles south southeast of Marshall Gulch
Santa Catalina Foothills 2090 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.75 TV @ Guest Ranch Tanque Verde Wash at Tanque Verde Guest Ranch 2100 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.16 0.43 DEQ Swan Swan Road at Calle del Pantera 2160 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.31 Sabino @ USFS Dam Sabino Creek at USFS Dam 2170 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.59 Ventana @ Sunrise Ventana Canyon Wash at Sunrise Road 2190 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.20 0.75 Al-Marah near El Marah on Bear Canyon Road 2200 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.71 AC Wash @ TV Bridge Agua Caliente Wash at Tanque Verde Road 2210 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.12 0.79 Catalina Boosters Houghton Road 0.1 miles south of Catalina Highway 2220 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.20 0.83 Agua Caliente Park Agua Caliente Park 2230 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.79 El Camino Rinconado El Camino Rinconado 0.5 miles north of Reddington Road 2240 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.16 0.91 Molino Canyon Mt Lemmon Highway near Mile Post 3 2390 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.39 Finger Rock @ Skyli Finger Rock Wash at Sunrise Road
Redington Pass Area 2020 0.00 0.08 0.55 0.67 3.78 Park Tank Redington Pass, 0.8 miles south of Park Tank 2030 0.00 0.04 0.28 0.39 2.09 Italian Trap Redington Pass, 0.7 miles east southeast of Italian Trap Tank 2040 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.16 1.14 White Tank Redington Road near White Tank 2050 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.16 1.14 Bellota Ranch Road Bellota Ranch Road near Redington Road 2070 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.24 0.87 TV @ Chiva Tank Tanque Verde Wash 0.5 miles south of Chiva Tank 2080 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.16 0.87 Alamo Tank Redington Road near Alamo Well
Rincon Mountains 4100 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 1.06 Manning Camp Manning Camp in the Rincon Mountains 4110 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.47 Rincon Creek Rincon Creek at X-9 Ranch
Greater Tucson 2110 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.71 TV @ TV Road Tanque Verde Wash at Tanque Verde Road 2120 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.20 0.59 TV @ Sabino Cyn Rd Tanque Verde Wash at Sabino Canyon Road 2300 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.16 0.63 Well D-37 Rosewood Street west of Harrison Road 2310 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.16 0.67 Well E-23 Rancho El Mirador north of Broadway Boulevard 2320 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.47 Beverly Well C-51 Beverly Avenue at Hawthorne Street 2330 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.08 0.51 Kolb Boosters Kolb Road at Golf Links 2350 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.39 Rillito @ Dodge Rillito Creek at Dodge Boulevard 2360 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.20 0.43 Rillito @ La Cholla Rillito Creek at La Cholla Boulevard 2370 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.28 0.63 Alamo @ Glenn Alamo Wash at Glenn Street 2380 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.35 DEQ Ruthraff Ruthrauff Road at La Cholla Boulevard 4160 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.12 0.55 E-8 Irvington Road near Pantano Road 4180 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.12 0.51 Pantano @ Houghton Pantano Wash at Houghton Road 6040 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.04 0.43 Santa Cruz@Valencia Santa Cruz River at Valencia Road 6180 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.39 ArroyoChico@Cherry Arroyo Chico at Cherry Street 6190 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.12 0.59 Arroyo Chico@Randol Arroyo Chico at Randolph Way 6230 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.12 0.55 Ajo Detention Basin Tucson Diversion Channel at Ajo Detention Basin 6240 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.12 0.63 DEQ Cntry Clb Country Club Road near Columbia Street 6250 0.04 0.04 0.16 0.20 0.75 Craycroft@Golf Link Craycroft Road at Golf Links Road 6260 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.08 0.55 Tucson Electric Pow Irvington Road at Belvedere Avenue 6270 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.16 0.59 Pima Air Museum Valencia Road at Pima Air Museum
Southern Tucson Area 6200 0.00 0.04 0.20 0.20 0.67 Summit Elementary Summit Street at Epperson Lane 6210 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.12 0.59 Franco @ Swan Franco Wash at Swan Road 6220 0.00 0.00 0.20 0.20 0.83 PC Fairgrounds Houghton Road at Dawn Road 6280 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.16 0.63 Wilmot Wilmot Road 2 miles south of Old Vail Connection Road 6290 0.00 0.04 0.55 0.55 1.42 Corona Sahuarita Road at Sewage Treatment Plant
Altar/Avra Valley Area Area 6370 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.31 1.77 Arivaca Las Guijas Mountains near Arivaca 6380 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.31 1.10 Altar Wash @ Hwy 28 Altar Wash at Highway 286 6410 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.24 0.59 Diamond Bell Diamond Bell near Stagecoach Road at Killarney Avenue 6420 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.20 0.31 Brawley@Three Point Brawley Wash at Highway 86 6430 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.28 Vahala Park Wade Road at Los Reales 6440 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.20 0.24 Brawley@Milewide Brawley Wash at Milewide Road 6450 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.16 0.43 Hilltop Rd Hilltop Road at Riveria Road 6460 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.28 0.35 Picture Rocks CC Picture Rocks Community Center 6470 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.35 Michigan @ Calgary Michigan Street at Calgary Avenue
Marana/Oro Valley Area 1200 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.20 0.28 CDO @ Ina Road Cañada Del Oro Wash at Ina Road 1230 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.24 0.31 Oro Valley PW Calle Concordia at Calle El Milagro 1240 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.28 0.35 Moore Rd Moore Road at La Cholla 1250 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.24 0.35 Pima Wash @ Ina Pima Wash at Ina Road 1260 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.28 0.43 Big Wash Big Wash at Rancho Vistoso Boulevard 1270 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.20 0.31 CDO @ Big Wash Cañada Del Oro Wash near Oracle Road 6020 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.24 0.35 Santa Cruz @ Ina Santa Cruz River at Ina Road 6110 0.04 0.04 0.08 0.24 0.24 Avra Valley Airpark Santa Cruz River 0.5 miles east of Sanders Road
Vail Area 4220 0.00 0.00 0.16 0.16 0.79 Rancho Del Lago approximately 1.8 miles northwest of Vail 4250 0.00 0.04 0.39 0.43 0.94 Pantano @ Vail Pantano Wash 1.5 miles southeast of Colossal Cave Road 4270 0.04 0.04 0.24 0.24 1.06 Salcido Place 6 miles north-northwest of Mescal 4280 Site temporarily removed due to road construction Cienega Crk @ I-10 Cienega Creek at Interstate 10 4290 0.04 0.04 0.20 0.20 0.91 Mescal 2 miles northwest of Mescal 4310 0.00 0.00 0.55 0.55 1.22 Davidson Canyon Davidson Canyon Wash 0.25 miles south of Interstate 10 4320 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.12 0.43 Empire Peak Empire Peak 4410 0.00 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.75 Haystack Mtn. Haystack Mountain
Green Valley Area 6050 0.00 0.00 0.47 0.67 1.61 Santa Cruz@Continen Santa Cruz River at Continental Road 6060 0.00 0.08 0.16 0.20 1.22 Santa Cruz@Conoa Santa Cruz River at Elephant Head Road 6080 0.04 0.08 0.12 0.12 1.34 Santa Cruz@Tubac Santa Cruz River at Tubac 6310 0.00 0.00 0.20 0.24 0.98 Keystone Peak Keystone Peak 6320 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.08 1.18 Tinaja Ranch near Caterpillar Proving Ground 6330 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.08 1.10 Anamax Mission Road north of Continental Road 6350 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.12 1.18 Elephant Head Butte near Elephant Head Butte 6390 0.04 0.20 0.35 0.35 2.80 Florida Canyon Florida Canyon Work Center
There were numerous storm totals over 2 inches throughout the State, mountain ones that can be seen in the USGS rolling 24 h archive here (amounts will diminish due to the continuous updating that goes on, as with the PC ALERT gauges), and in the rainlog network from the U of AZ, and in the CoCoRahs reports for Arizona, the latter two sites do not have complete 24 h totals ending at 7 AM AST until several hours after 7 AM AST.
Southern California rains exceeded 10 inches in several mountain locals over the past few days, almost 14 inches at one mountain site in Ventura County. So, SC’ans are quite happy, today anyway.
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Wow; those sunset clouds!
Good grief, there was quite the spectacular mammatus display late yesterday. Even resembled the great mammatus ahead of the El Reno tornado in OK last May. Then, as the sun set in a brief clearing to the west, the downward protruding bulges became lit, and the yellow-orange color of the fading sun light (as it passed through a great distance through the lower atmosphere and the shorter wavelengths of blues get scattered out) lit up the ground and foothills of the Catalinas. It was almost too gaudy to be real and not “shopped” as we say today.
6:51 AM. Sun burst on Stratocumulus bases.4:22 PM. Incoming Cumulonimbus mammatus. The core of this shower was far to the S beyond Pusch Ridge.
