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.
Worn out from yesterday, which resembled the day before with the late “bloom” of fabulously photogenic Cumulonimbus clouds, much lightning, and an equally fabulous sunset. Took too many photos (200 plus I think) kind of out of control, due to excessive excitement again; hard drive filling up. Locating brain now in this cup of coffee.
First, before the cloud photo diary for yesterday, this wonderful, uplifting look at the weather way ahead from NOAA’s spaghetti forecasting machine last night, calculated from global data taken around the world, to be redundant, at 5 PM AST last evening, valid for 5 PM AST Friday, August 30th:
Isn’t this great?! One of the best maps I’ve seen this summer. Looks like the summer rain season1 hereabouts will be in pretty good force through the end of August now after abosrbing this NOAA check of chaos theory. Maybe Sutherland Heights will catch up to our average rainfall for July and August by the end of the month, 6-7 inches. Now sitting on only 3.2 inches since July 1st.
Yesterday’s clouds and storms
Here’s how it all started:
10:38 AM. Cumulus specks began to appear over Ms. Lemmon an hour or two earlier than the previous day, always a good trend.11:21 AM. Early sign of an aroused atmosphere, one ready to produce deep clouds. Thin, spindly clouds shooting upward rapidly, sometimes, as here, in the formation of an obscene gesture.12:57 PM. And before 1 PM, this early Cb (calvus) off the mountains to the NW! I was really preparing for giant storms ALL day in the area. But, that’s NOT what happened. They faded soon after this. Ms. Lemmon, never mind the raging heat, became devoid of clouds. It was nothing less than astonishing that it could be cloud free in the middle of the afternoon with such an “auspicious”, if rude, early start of Cumulus clouds.
3:08 PM. Its 106 F in Sutherland Heights. This view of piddly-pooh Cumlus clouds over the Catalinas didn’t seem possible, in a sense, an amazing sight. All the day’s early promise was somehow gone, drier air was moving in, and that thought made the heat even more intolerable, though I don’t mind it myself, adding a personal note here.3:25 PM. Its a 107 F; cloud drought over the Catalinas continues. May seem silly, but this was just an incredible sight I thought.5:51 PM. Within half an hour, the Cumulus began to perk up. Could the same thing happen, that sudden explosion of Cumulus into Cumulonimbus like yesterday occur AGAIN? Yes
5:51 PM. “Muffin” Cu congestus, center, has top high enough already to produce ice and precip!6:13 PM, 22 min later. “Muffin” Cu cong has grown into a small Cumulonimbus with this pretty rainshaft. But LOOK at how the clouds have filled in toward Sutherland H.!
6:53 PM. By this time more clouds were building upward, joining the fray, as here, and the whole sky was filling in. There was some stupendous cloud to ground lightning strikes with this one, but didn’t capture them.
7:05 PM. Hard to put into words how pretty a sight this was, and so dramatic, full of portent.
7:18 PM, 13 min later, the dump has come. This was the cell that produced almost continuous lightning toward the west into the early evening.
7:14 PM. In the meantime, this cloud base was expanding in the upwind direction toward Saddlebrooke-Charoleau Gap, eventually to be our rain-producer last evening just after 8 PM AST.
Today’s weather? You’ll want to see Bob’s view and, of course, that of the TUS NWS, or your favorite TEEVEE forecaster’s. U of AZ experts though today would be better than yesterday!
The End.
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1Sometimes confused with the “monsoon” of India and south Asia, which is really a MONSOON with a giant low center circulating air around it for millions and millions of square miles. Hey, Jabalpur had 17 centimeters of rain yesterday, 6.70 inches, and the rain is supposed to get heavier in the next couple of days!
Yesterday was interesting because Mr. Cloud Maven person1 gave up on ANY rain around here as late as 5:30 PM yesterday, when the sky was punctuated by only Cumulus mediocris clouds. Sure, there were large, and quite pretty Cumulonimbi to the NW-NE over the distant high terrain, but it seemed Ms. Lemmon could not take part in producing the rainfull joy those distant clouds indicated as she so often does; was a real Cb wallflower. See below.
5:21 PM. Under 104 F skies, Cumulus mediocris over the Cat Mountains having bases way up at about 14 kft above sea level (of course, less high above sea level in future decades) produces a yawn.5:23 PM. Nearly solid mass of Cumulonimbus tops line N horizon.
Within half an hour, things began to change. What happened? Sometimes when you see changes taking place all around you its a sign of some upper level trigger, some pattern in the upper level winds that is causing the air below to come together under it, and produce large areas of clouds and thunderstorms, a little cyclonic swirl. I can’t really see anything to explain the suddeness, so I will quit this topic rather than leaving you hanging. I think I will show you two ant cones now.
Thought break: 7:57 AM, before the cloud development mystery, two symmetric ant cones. But why? There are many mysteries in life that can’t be solved, so I’m not feeling bad at all.5:45 PM. Nice, but still, at this size can only produce sprinkles and virga. Note slight bit of virga above Pusch Ridge. This WAS a sign that these modest clouds with high bases were beginning to reach upward to the glaciation level, where ice forms, a level that changes in height from day to day generally because it is partly dependent on the aerosol content in the air. This began happening in several clouds almost simultaneously! I am sure you started to get worked up, as I did.5:58 PM. Cute narrow shaft falls from a glaciated turret that has also climbed that bit farther from the prior photo. You also can see that while there is a big fluff of ice up there above the base, the rain that falls out represents only a tiny portion of where ice formed in the cloud. This would be the graupel/hail region of the cloud, melting of course on the way down because its so friggin’ hot, to be colloquial there for a second.
Cutting to the chase, these surrounding cloud eruptions that occurred simultaneously, suggesting some help from above:
6:01 PM. Rainshaft fibers began emitting from this pile of Cumulus crumpulus. It was amazing since it now seemed everything was starting to rain! And rain reached the ground under this in Oro Valley. Stupendous, because now you’re looking everywhere for something to go over you.
7:02 PM. Great looking oval base about to “unload.”
7:11 PM. The hammer is down. Likely 0.50 inches or so in this short-lived water bomb.
6:51 PM. “Man with hat and beer”; sun illuminated rain in background.
7:01 PM.
7:11 PM. Part of the spectacular electrical show last evening.
I wasn’t going to blog today, but rather than disappoint my reader, and seeing a ooupla photos that were kind of nice, I pushed through the laziness. I hope you’re happy now….
Also, humid air is pushing up from the S today, and while it hasn’t gotten here yet (dewpoint here in Sutherland Heights next to my gravel driveway being but 36 F now, its in the 60s at Yuma, Nogales and Douglas. With that invasion of water vapor molecules comes a slightly better chance of a shower, or at least SEEING one somewhere! You might hang out some wash today to further increase the moisture content of the air; it would be a more basic form of “cloud seeding”, maybe “cloud doping.”
Sunset to sunrise, because they imported that way:
7:19 PM. Cirrus spissatus, in the distance; foreground and center, Cirrus uncinus, if you care.6:48 PM. Cirrus fibratus and spissatus. This was kind of funny to me. Looks like a flying ghost or something with outstretched arms trying to grab me, or maybe something else.5:36 AM. Cirrostratus fibratus instead of CIrrus because of the all sky coverage.
Factoid: The amount of rain that continues to fall in the formerly severe drought areas of Kansas and Oklahoma continues to astound. Here, from WSI Intellicast, their 7-days of radar-derived totals. Also note the substantial rains in eastern Colorado and New Mexico. Good news for all.
Radar-derived rainfall totals for the 7 days ending August 13th. Areas of dark green to yellow indicate totals of between four and TWELVE inches.
:
(colon deliberately left above at left to provide some tension, some anticipation in case you’re bored already)
5:55 AM. Flakes of a droplet cloud, Altocumulus, rather suddenly appeared or moved in.
Those morning Altocumulus clouds (no ice) were pretty yesterday! Took too many shots, as usual. Here are a couple:
5:56 AM, looking SSW.7:36 AM. A little later.
5:56 AM. A little earlier. Puffed up enough over here to designate them as floccus and castellanus.
The temperature at the top of these clouds, located at about 14,000 feet above sea level: 2 C, 35 F.
2:48 PM. A mid-afternoon mammoth Cumulonimbus capillatus incus arises in the distance toward the Rincon Mountains as closing time at the Marana Landfill Dump nears. Dumps, as you likely know, are one of the great research sites in America, as they are to anthropologists sudying the ancients. You can’t imagine how excited anthros get when find a previously undiscovered dump used by ancient peoples. Its the same today by those who refer to themselves as “trashologists.” Sez a lot about the society of the time, and what they did. Think of how important to us the plastic bag will seem to our society by future anthros and trashologists! Let’s face it, we LOVE the plastic bag! I noticed quite a few here, too, kind of blowing around all over. Gritty-not-pretty photo: $2,500. (Cost $10 to get in and take this photo, so passing along some of the cost to consumers.) Photographer’s note: This may be one of the most important photos in the GNP collection.
7:14 PM. Residual Stratocumulus clouds supply targets for fading sunlight.
Some pie, H-pie: Whereas a modest push of moisture into Tucson and central Pima County was deemed insufficient to produce rain here yesterday, some drops DID fall here producing a trace late yesterday afternoon.
But some areas of the Catalinas got clobbered with White Tail, over there around Sabino Canyon, collecting 2.17 inches (!) and Samaniego Ridge over thisaway, 0.47 inches, the latter from a pile of Cumulus congestus clouds that blossomed into a Cb with a dense rain shaft right before the writer’s eyes. This after he had opined to his wife that he doubted those dark clouds would rain on the western side of the Catalinas…. Hmmmm.
They thundered and rained a plenty, and the wind that came out of that shaft dropped the temperature some 15 degrees here in Sutherland Heights with wind gusts to more than 35 mph. Furthermore, that outflow, spreading out across Oro Valley and parts NW, and went on to launch one new thunderstorm north of Saddlebrooke, which was very nice, of course. Didn’t think that would happen either as very dry air was working its way in already from the SW.
As the clouds massed over Catalina-Sutherland Heights, was returning from a fabulous tour “investigating” the results of 8-12 inches of rain in Jul of the area around Sierra Vista-Fort Huachuca along HWYs 90 and 92 then through Coronado National Memorial Park (about 10 inches fell at Visitor’s Center in July), then over Montezuma Pass (6575 ft) and on to Sonoita.
Holy Smokes was that gorgeous; highly recommended. Traveling down HWY 90, With Stratocumulus topping the green, forested Huachuca Mountains, and the green in the foreground, one thought of Hawaii. Some photos from that trip FYI. It’ll be a LONG time before this happens again! Also, some summer wildflowers are in display as well.
10:12 AM, Sierra Vista.10:20 AM, Sierra Vista. Some kind of flower. I am a cloud maven, not a flower maven.11:13 AM. Entrance sign to the Park, in case you didn’t believe that I went there to see the effects of a lot of rain.11:13 AM. Another view going in, one from the viewpoint of driving on the wrong side of the road for the purpose of startling you, getting your attention here.11:22 AM. Rain gauge at the CNMP Vistior’s Center. I thought you would like to see that. Looks a little too enclosed by vegetation, and unless the rain is falling straight down. If its windy, its likely to under catch the precip. Should be in an opening twice the distance as the nearest high thing, something like that, quite an opening.11:55 AM. View of small Cumulus from the top of Montezuma Pass (elev. 6575 ft) in the CNMP. Temp was 81 F is all.12:07 PM. A view of the Pass environs, with moderate-sized Cumulus clouds. So green.12:24 PM. Another flower of some kind, who knows what? There were a lot of these things on the way down the Pass toward the west.12:56 PM. Hell, its beginning to look like KS here. What is with that? Also, it was disheartening not to see any cars for long stretches, cars likely containing people looking at the effects of historic July rains.4:52 PM. Got back just in time to see this thunderstorm develop. The blast of wind came about ten minutes later. A day doesn’t get better than this one.
5:45 PM. So pretty, this Cumulonimbus northwest of Saddlebrooke resulting from the outflow from the rain shaft shown above.
Hot dry days ahead for awhile, as you know. May have to generate some filler material….
Yesterday at this time it appeared that we had a good chance of a few high-based Cumulonimbus clouds with some virga and the chance of a sprinkle making it down to the ground. Well, the precipitating clouds were even higher than expected, but with some nomenclature razzle-dazzle, I think we can say that the forecast of Cumulonimbus clouds in our domain did, in fact, verify. Below, the first use of the cloud descriptor, “Nanocumulonimbus.”
6:57 PM. Zoomed view of “Nanocumulonimbus capillatus” or maybe “calvus” (center; too small to tell which species for sure) producing a snow flurry aloft (virga) as it drifted toward Catalina.
The early morning clouds were spectacular full of promise for yesterday, promise that went mostly, well, entirely really, unfulfilled. Here are those sweet morning clouds, more like Altocumulus castellanus, though some reached sizes that they would have to be termed, Cumulus congestus and Cumulonimbus, the latter with some virga and light rainshowers to the ground.
5:51 AM. Distant Cumulus congestus or Cb calvus NNW of Catalina. Held a lot of promise for the remainder of the day. But was just too dry in the end.5:51 AM Tall, sunlit Altocumulus castellanus line SSW of Catalina.
6:04 AM. I thought this was a great scene because that little wedge of brilliant white, center, tells you that one turret from this grouping has shot many thousands of feet higher into the thinner air where the sun’s light has not been diminished by the passage through the lower denser atmosphere that results in the brownish colors of the surrounding clouds. Very pretty I thought.
Today’s clouds
U of AZ WRF-GFS mod thinks there’s a better chance of showers and thunderstorms here in Catalina today, but this is dependent on a easterly surge of moist air this morning. Don’t get your hopes up too much, since we’re kind of on the westerly edge of this surge, and then it goes away. SO, everything really has to come together, and right now, our dewpoints are really down (37 F here) and the moist air is still east of TUS. But, as you know, some of the fun of weather forecasting is weather watching and seeing what Nature is actually going to do.
The weather way ahead
Mod outputs, including spaghetti plots, not looking that great for a full resumption of our summer rain season.
But, with a trough tending to recur along the West Coast in these plots, there’s the chance of a tropical storm being steered this way late in the month. Hey, remember August 1951? Maybe that will happen again in AZ to make August a more respectable rain month after sputtering most of the month…. Dreaming, of course, of the unlikely.
Not expected by this brain yesterday, but several of those many more Cumulus clouds than expected also fattened up to heights where ice began to form, also not expected. As you know, that means precip fell out, at least up there. As a weatherman-cloud person, there are always surprises every day (!) to delight and disappoint you. Its quite and exciting life we lead.
How cold were those tops?
Well, you know, colder than -10 C on a day with very high and COLD cloud bases1. How high and cold were the cloud bottoms yesterday. Oh, about 0 C (32 F, of course) at 14,000 feet above the ground, 5,000 fee above Ms. Mt. Lemmon, the taller tops extruding upward to between -15 C and -20 C (5 F to -4 F), about right for the amount of ice that developed, “eyeballed” concentrations of a few to 10s per liter of air in those clouds (for size, think of a liter size plastic bottle of Bud Light with some ice crystals in it). (Remember, a LONG time ago in another area of the Universe2,3, Mr. Cloud-Maven Person flew into such clouds with instruments aboard his Cloud and Aerosol Research aircraft and can say things like this with what appears to be some authority.)
Here are those clouds from yesterday, which I am sure you logged with excitement in your weather diaries:
2:55 PM. While out plant shopping at DS (Desert Survivors Nursery) this. Can you find the dead completely glaciated turret remains?
3:57 PM. OK, I’m making it easy on you here to find the ice. Wasn’t there a song like that back in the 60s? “Make it easy on myself, oooo?” I will look on the internet; it has everything!
4:59 PM. Largest of the the ice-producing, “Cumulus virgae”, or are they, having precip, “Cumulonimbus mediocris.” I like the latter better, not that you would care that much.
7:18 PM. Nice sunset, though.
Today the cloud bottoms are 1,000 feet lower than yesterday afternoon. But is it a diurnal effect where bases are always lower in the cool mornig (“morning”; intentionally spelled wrong to see if you’re paying attention) than in the afternoon? BTW, if you like soundings, go to the “Happy State of Wyoming, the nation’s happiest4, to see all the soundings you want at the University of Wyoming
But, we have a windshift in the middle levels traipsing over us late this afternoon (U of AZ TUS sounding forecast here), and that will be, we hope, something like a fork lift; help to push cloud tops up just it goes by. (However, I can find no evidence of such a windshift in larger scale models, so MAYBE I have mistaken a diurnal shift induced by our mountains as a “trough”. A trough would be a lot better, a diurnal turning of the wind, not so great a weathermaker. Another one of those “surprises”; they can come from all quadrants.
SO, high based Cumulus, some growing into Cumulonimbus clouds here and there, with some sprinkles because the bases are too high for a really good rain. But, hey, if you want a really good forecast, not a crummy one like this, see Bob and the NWS.
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1Remember cloud bases can be cold, but NOT temperatures, which are high and low. The AIR is warm and cold.)
2Remember the solar system is speeding along (45,000 mph or so) in the Universe around the Milky Way Galaxy to god knows where (the constellation Hercules, according to the Stanford Solar Center).
3Quite fond of footnotes; they add a scholarly aura to trashy writing like this.
4OBJECTIVE HAPPINESS BY STATE We’re not THAT happy in AZ, BTW, but people are really happy in Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota. Huh.
Thought maybe a nice distraction from yesterday’s rain disappointment would be looking at some file boxes from the University of Washington’s Atmos. Sci. basement. This shot taken a couple of days ago.
Enjoy thinking about what might be in these boxes, and what you would do with the contents. Have some extra coffee, talk it over with friends, think about how much you might offer if one of these boxes was something on a quiz show, and you had one thing you knew what it was, but had to take your chances on what might be in one of these boxes1? Or if saw them in storage locker you were bidding on. How much? Lots of possibilities to think about.
———weather part——
You started to get a bad feeling about yesterday, in spite of the juicy clouds on Samaniego Ridge, bases around 15 C, extremely warm for AZ, meaning full of extra condensed water compared to our normal clouds, when the north wind began to blow, and the temperature was struggling to go beyond 80 F.
Usually, when the cloud bases are low, it doesn’t take a LOT of heating to power them up into Cumulonimbus (Cbs) clouds because the condensation itself releases heat. But struggling to reach 82-83 F here was just too little heat.
Late in the afternoon we did have a nice, if weak, Cb on the Cat Mountains (no thunder, of course, it was that weak). They did get half an inch on top of Mt. Lemmon and a couple of other places, so at least SOME rain fell near us.
And, not only did we have the “juice”, high amounts of water in the atmosphere over us, but also a nice cyclonic swirl passed overhead yesterday, too, something we normally look to cluster Cumulonimbus clouds into large groupings with major rains. From the U of WA, you can see it go by here.
To finish off thoughts of yesterday, some mood music to go along with those thoughts, I would like you to now hear covers of “pretty songs” by the Circle Jerks.
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Here are your clouds from yesterday, I know you’ll want to see them again, mope around some more about what could have been. We will begin our review of yesterday’s clouds with today’s morning rainbows:
6:00 AM. Sloping rain shaft tells you that the drops are very large, rain not too heavy.6:02 AM. Bow over the Oro.11:03 AM. Those oh so promising Cumulus congestus clouds lining the Catalinas!4:19 PM. Finally a Cumulus congestus that looked like it would exit the juvenile stage and mature into an adult (Cumulonimbus).4:36 PM. And it did grow up. This is what produced the half inch on Ms. Lemmon.
No real chance of rain now for a few days. Oh, me.
The End.
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From 30 years ago or so…. Wonder what historians would say now?
1Example of a quiz show where you bit on a mystery box if you want, or take the thing that’s offered in front of you.
Let us first begin first by NOT exulting too much over our own rain, but let us revel in that rain that has fallen in the Plains. New Mexico, too. From WSI Intellicast this beauty for the past 7 days:
A radar-derived sum of the rain that has fallen in the past seven days over the USA. Please observe the yellowish and orangy areas in Kansas, indicating that between 8-16 inches has fallen! Oh, my. Let us remember, too, that July and August are supposed to be relatively dry months in these areas; the wetter times in May and June.
Below is our national drought status at the onset of the week above (for July 30, 2013), and indicates why so many of us should be thankful for this past weather week:
The national picture of drought as of July 30, 2013. It will be updated later today.
Well, they didn’t get so big, so soon over the Lemmon, as foretold by one model referred to yesterday, but there was something later in the afternoon near the top of Lemmon. Can you detect whether that the turret shown below is mostly “glaciated” or not? You know, that’s why I do this, to learn you up on clouds and when they got ice and therefore are precipitating out the bottom even though here you can’t see the bottom. It all for YOU. Its no problem for me, of course.
5:04 PM. A Cumulus turret has protruded above the others behind Ms. Lemmon. If it’s glaciated, it might be better be termed the head of a Cumulonimbus calvus (“bald”) and would have rain underneath it. What do you think? Only the C-M knows for sure. Sounds like something from a radio program I’ve heard somewhere. But, you should try anyway. Answer at the bottom if I remember to put it there.6:31 PM, Swan and Trotter, with metaphorical “Dead End” road sign, lower right. While to the uninitiated this Cumulonimbus capillatus anvil may have appeared to be heralding a storm, overspreading the Catalina sky the way it was, the lack of cumuliform portions, the fraying edges, not hard ones, indicated it was in its dying phase. Photo of anvil with metaphorical sign; yours for $2,000 (more than usual because some mental effort was expended). Now that I am thinking about money, I think I will demand a million dollars to continue blogging, and see what happens.
2:47 PM. RIght here you knew that the model run that had an echo by 3 PM on Ms. Lemmon was going to be off as we see but a Cumulus mediocris forming after the usual mid-day clearing.
Nice sunrise this morning….
5:48 AM today. Sunrise over the Charoleau Gap. Mulitple layers of Altocumulus, some fine virga.
Another morning of remnant rains moving through right now, rather than the full blast. As usual, these clouds and rain showers are likely to be dissipating in the later morning before doing much.
Looks like one last day of possible big showers here….check this out from the U of AZ, 11 PM run (WRF-GFS mod).. Lets hope so, cuz its gonna be dry after this for a few days.
