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.
There’s the “artichoke capital of the world” in Castroville, CA, but here in Catalina we’ll the “wind capital” of all of North America tomorrow afternoon. Its great to be the “capital” of something, anything! Thought you would like to know about the wind, maybe glue on your baseball cap in preparation for extreme winds tomorrow, especially later in the day just before “Joe Cold Front” arrives with his blustery blasts from the west and northwest tomorrow evening and overnight.
No rain in “Joe”, but during the following couple of days as the unusually cold air for April makes itself at home here, we’ll probably see some Cu with ice (tops colder than -10 C, to continue a refrain here), and that could mean enough virga for a sprinkle at the ground here. Likely some measurable snow on Ms. Lemmon during that time.
Here’s what happens as rendered by IPS MeteoStar, these cool looking wind maps for tomorrow. Not much to begin day at dawn, then “pow” by mid-late morning:, then wind reaching a crescendo (a great word, you can feel it) during the mid and late afternoon. Gusts likely to better 50 mph in brief puffs here in Catalinaland.
Valid at 5 AM AST. No wind here yet, mod sez.Sun ignites ground wind machine by 11 AM AST tomorrow. Dust raised to our southwest by 25-30 kt steady winds likely to invade area during late morning and early afternoon, gradually thickening. Horizontal visibility may be less than 10 miles, which is unusual for here.
Valid at 5 PM AST, tomorrow April 8th. Gust here in Catalina, likely to exceed 50 mph. Hang on to your hat and toupee, likely need a lot of hair gel if you don’t hat up. And, park your car on the south side of tall trees.
Guest Statement/retrospective on March 2013 for Tucson by Mr. Mark Albright, a mostly temperature-centric climatologist specialist from the University of Washington:
“March 2013 was the 2nd warmest March in the past 65 years (1949-2013) at the Tucson Airport (KTUS) with an average temperature of 65.7 F which was +5.6 F above the 1981-2010 normal of 60.1 F. The only warmer March was 9 years ago in 2004 with a mean temperature of 66.6 F. By contrast, the coldest March occurred in 1973 with a mean temperature of only 51.6 F.
March 2013 precipitation totaled 0.01 inches at the Tucson Airport, the driest March since 1999 when ZERO precipitation was recorded in March. In the past 65 years ZERO precipitation has been observed in March 5 times: 1956, 1959, 1971, 1984, and 1999. March normal precipitation for the Tucson Airport is 0.73 inches.”
Mark may contribute more material in the future in the form of guest blogs when CM’s brain is fried.
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How about them Altocumulus castellanus/floccus virgae clouds yesterday?
9:07 AM. Long trails of snow made these Altocumulus floccus clouds exceptional yesterday. In the foreground, riding pal, Nora B, who talks mainly about birds and wildflowers (she and hubby have a book out on the latter, Wildflowers of Arizony) while I talk mainly about clouds and snow aloft on the rides, so there’s no real communication on the rides (hahaha). I thought you would want to know that.
The wildflowers were better than expected along the trail, considering our once a month storm frequency for the past three months. Here are some for you. Can you name them?
Dry, windy, dusty blast coming on Monday, followed by air that’s too cold for April later that day into the middle of the week, but you knew that already. More on weather tomorrow.
Wasn’t going to blog, gets boring after a while with only dry conditions ahead, but then saw this and got pretty excited, as you will, too. Might not need that extra cup of joe to get going today.
Its valid for Wednesday, April 17th, at 5 PM AST. Pretty cool, huh?
Its unusual to see a strong signal 312 h from the model start time as here, but especially so as we get later into the spring when the jet stream is slowing down all over the northern hemi and the troughs in it smaller, spaced more closely together, slower moving, too. (Summer is really goofy in that regard.)
Here, both the 00 Z (yellow lines) and 12 Z (gray lines) model runs in the past 24 h are indicating a big fat trough in the Southwest, and the bunching together of the red lines suggest a lot of confidence in that forecast. It would mean another real chance for rain here near this time, plus or minus a day or so.
The weather just ahead, Monday
In the meantime, our very next big trough, cold slam, and stupefyingly large low center, one that explodes from a tiny “Tonopah Low1” early on Monday morning, to one whose circulation extends from southern California to Missouri, virtually covering the entire western US! In spite of its gigantic extent, it still looks dry here, any rain accumulation here very “iffy.”
On the other hand, a half inch of dust accumulation is quite likely since it’ll be darn windy that day, dramatically windy. Likely to see more than 40 mph here in Catalinaland and visibility noticeably reduced in dust later on Monday.
BTW, its quite normal for low centers that are weak over the ocean to erupt into deeper lows as they move inland, during the spring. Just the opposite happens during the deep winter period when ocean lows move inland and weaken or die over the cold continent because they lose the temperature contrast that drives them. In the spring, the warming continent is “food for lows”, like spinach for Popeye (you remember Popeye, don’t you?). Ok, then in more modern terms, like that Hulk guy that got so gigantic when he got mad or something. That’s what happens in the spring to little lows and their troughs when they move inland, especially into the warm Southwest from the Pac NW.
The great news here, and I am so pumped about it, is that this giant low will be a whopper in terms of precip for so many droughty areas of the mountainous West and the central and northern Plains States. Check out the Canadian model here as an example of what’s coming to the Plains States. Just what the weatherman ordered. I’m sure it will make the news.
For reference purposes, a before you, if you will, here is the awful drought situation from the drought monitor folks in Lincoln, NB, in the central and Southwest US as it stands today:
US drought status as of April 2, 2013. Ugh
Yes, this Monday’s low will be a billion dollar baby for some. And here’s where storm chasing is truly fun because of all the happy people you’ll meet in the rainy areas, not like those storm chasers who relish seeing tornadoes and destruction, as might happen farther to the south in Texas and across the South2.
Yesterday’s clouds
Cirrus, thickening into a dull, kind of lifeless layer of Altostratus by late afternoon and evening, the latter a deep all ice cloud; no opening in it to the west for a great big sunset, nope, just gray all the way. Staring with sunrise:
5:59 AM. Cirrus/Cirrostratus over Samaniego Ridge.10:41 AM. Cirrus fibratus (the thicker patches might also be termed spissatus, but who cares? :}) There also appears to be a high thin layer of Cirrostratus. There are definitely multiple layers where clouds are located.6:08 PM. Altostratus opacus. Note the mottled look due to virga, demonstrating that its a precipitating cloud (light snow); just doesn’t get to the ground
Today’s clouds
We’ll see the end of our pretty Cirrus and Altocumulus clouds that we have this morning by mid-day to early afternoon. Enjoy them now. Might get a good sunrise bloom here in a few minutes, too. Hope so.
————— 1Usually located on top of Tonopah, Nevada
2 “Truth-in-packaging”: Mr. Cloud Maven person chased Hurricane Carla in 1961, one of the 20th century’s greatest, ended up in Seabrook, Texas, near Galveston, and let us not forget the song about Galveston (has some wind in it) as a kind of distraction, so he’s being just that tiny bit hypocritical here.
Those weather computing models, over Catalina, anyway. Who can forget those potent words from the Beatles about (USC) “he got Trojan football” and the demand about early weather forecasting model “divergences” to “come together, over me”? Most of us weather-centric people were pretty upset in those days with the vast amount of model “divergence”, and so it was great to hear that popular group speak out about it.
“Divergence” is where different models, or where consecutive model runs of the SAME model, predict different things, sometimes also called “delta model”.) We like to compare them; is the low deeper or weaker in this run compared with the one 5 minutes ago (hahaha)? Is the low in the still in the same location?)) Remember that song in Meredith Wilson’s Music Man about checking; “Check, check, check, talk a lot, check a little more…” That’s what we weatherfolk do, check stuff constantly. We probably talk too much, too.
The two weather computing models viewed here (the USA WRF-GFS) and the one from Canada which I like, have “come together”, indicating just a cold blast in a few days, but not much more, except for passing virga-ish Cumulus and Stratocumulus. That’s about all we can manage, clouds with tops colder than -10 C (14 F) out of a situation that looks like the ones shown below for 5 PM AST April 9th. Its not the greatest outcome, but we’ll have to live with it I guess.
Range of possible max and min amounts here in Catalina during the passage of the cold blast on the 8-10th, according to this keyboard: 0 to 0.01 inch.
First, the USA output from last night:
Now the Canadian one:
Canadian model was off base before, and has now corrected itself, shifting the course of this “incoming” to a trajectory that is more eastward than the “wetter” prior runs, and now, like the USA model, shows our trough’s trajectory too far to the east for precip here (see upper left panel above and compare that to configuration in first image; they’re virtually identical now).
Spaghetti told us this was going to happen yesterday, that the wetter looking Canadian one was likely goofy.
Oh, well, moving on, as we must when hope dies, hope that was unrealistic anyway.
The weather way ahead; growing more hope
Looking ahead, here’s some more of that hope. Look at this for 5 PM AST, April 17th, only about two weeks away! (Already too excited over likely bogusness, but, what the HECK, what’s life without some unrealistic dreams, like former Washington Husky pitcher, little Timmy Lincecum of the SFO Giants who I saw pitch at Husky Ballpark many times, having a good year?):
The trajectory of this is more to the west and would scoop up some of that Pacific air and shove it into the interior of the whole SW. While this is an extremely cold event, we are in: 1) the climatological trough bowl, and 2) except for brief passing exceptions such as today and tomorrow when an upper level ridge goes by, we are going to be in a real trough bowl for the next two to three weeks (a place where troughs like to congregate and reach their most southern latitudes, like the ones shown in these panels.
There are several other weaker troughs that go by over the next two to three weeks time period (go to IPS MeteoStar to see them), so the chances of getting an extra strong one as shown for the 17th is pretty real. That’s about as much hope as I can generate here at 5:29 AM.
Today’s clouds
Seems to be some Cirrus moving onto the West Coast and overhead now, ones that will give us some chances for nice sunsets/sunrises over the next couple of days.
This from Canada last night for April 8th at 5 PM AST: appropriate descriptor for AZ; “juicy.” This was such a great find early this morning!
Note deep upper low at 500 mb in eastern Cal (upper left panel) and gigantic surface low centered in Four Corners area (upper right panel). Would almost surely mean rain here in Catalina 24 h after these panels (the last one in the forecast series). If these maps verify this would be another billion-trillion dollar value storm in drought relief for the Southwest AND Plains States over the days following this map.
However, you will be as moribund as I was after looking at the USA WRF-GFS model output for the SAME moment in time, 5 PM AST April 8th below. I had hoped both models would show the same thing, which would build confidence on what’s going to happen on the 8th-9th, but they are vastly different! Take a look at THIS upper level pattern: no low in eastern Cal, just a strong jet pouring down from the Pac NW with cool air. No moisture of consequence here in Catlandia with a pattern like the one below.
Also valid at 5 PM AST April 8th, for the 500 millibar pressure level.
So who you gonna call when these kinds of things happen? Spaghetti!
Well, if you know anything at all about “spaghetti” you will only get more moribund, maybe start crying when you see it for the same time as these models. The Enviro Can mod is clearly an outlier “solution” even if though are dealing with different models. Inserting some “chaos” in form of “bad balloons” (bad data) at the start of the USA model run does not reveal a pattern with a low in eastern Cal in any of the “ensemble” model runs, but only results in a strong signal (line bunching) for a jet to whoosh down the interior of the West Coast that then loops back toward the northeast over and east of us–not good for precip here, just a rush of cool-cold air.
However, it WILL still be a pattern that’s great for Texas and the Plains States in general, so let us not be selfish in our dryness and begrudge others who get rain, but rejoice with those droughty others who will get so much relief beginning around the 8th as shown here–and that relief lasts for about three days, too. Just hope there aren’t too many tornadoes in Texas and eastward…
As an aside, it might be worth the drive to central Texas to see some of those Big Boys out there, get some perspective on Nature’s power.
Valid for 5 PM AST, April 8th.
Yesterday’s clouds, those small Cumulus, almost beyond the curvature of the earth to the north-northwest
Only the truly great cloud maven juniors of our time would have observed and logged in their weather diaries those tiny Cumulus clouds (humilis and fractus) that appeared momentarily off to the north-northwest horizon, barely visible, from Catalinaland around 5:12 PM. Since I had foretold some distant Cumulus to the north yesterday, I damn well was looking the whole afternoon, straining eyeballs, and was starting to feel sad until I saw this one cloud, and then I was SO happy, euphoric really. I think this one, and a couple of others needing a microscope to see, were there for about 15 minutes is all. Here is that photo-documentation of a small, distant Cumulus humilis. I’ve added some writing on this photo to help you find it, but you will have to blow it up.
Also, its OK to log things you missed in retrospect into your weather diary; it helps make it more complete. BTW, there were also a few little patches of Cirrus.
On going theme here: excessive excitement over not much. Might need binoculars to see them, but they’ll be up there over the higher terrain I am pretty sure, maybe even a 2-minute Cumulus fractus over Ms. Lemmon.
Today will be one of those days you write home about, if your home is not here, and you haven’t gone back to Wisconsin yet. The sky should be so blue today as it dries out aloft and the Cirrus goes away, with the temperature “just fine” as a weak trough passes by over the next day taking the temperature down some.
No rain in the “Big Trough”, the one that sits on Catalina in about a week (April 8th and 9th), sorry to say. It crashes down on us a little too far to the east, so there’ll just be real cold air for April here, and a sky dotted with a few clouds, ones likely to sport virga. This will be a good time to tell your eastern and northern friends, or ones in Europe1, the latter place where they are having one of the coldest springs ever, that it will be brutally cold here, so cold that the high temperature might only get to 73 F (21 C) during the afternoon of the coldest day, Monday or Tuesday of next week). (OK, its a cruel joke…but kind of fun anyway. I tell my brother in NC things like that all the time.)
Still pretty green in isolated spots in the desert, though most everything looks stressed now. Here are some examples of how green it is in those isolated spots. When you’re walking around in places like this, there’s hardly any sunlight that gets through the canopy, and in some area, the purple flowers are the size of helicopters at the top of it (view from hot air balloon). Amazing.
Jungle-like vegetation seen on a recent hike/ride near the back gate of Catalina State Park.
For comparison, a photo by the author of the jungle in the northern state of Rondonia, Brazil, 1995, taken while skimming tree tops in U of WA research aircraft collecting data on biomass burning. Of course, the jungle’s likely gone now, but… (and what a sad thought):
Near Porto Velho, Rondonia, Brazil, 1995. No flowers at top of canopy here, just bugs, birds and smoke.
Yesterday’s clouds
Cirrus!
Our desert, even in drought, showing its tinge of spring green, followed by a nice sunset.
6:12 PM.
6:55 P. M.
The End.
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1Unintended consequences, described here when we’re planning for later warmth, much later, when brutally cold weather is still going to occur from time to time, and always will, as in Europe now. I thought it was a pretty fair read so am passing it along (this from Mark Albright, climate folk hero from the U of WA). Some models predict that while the Arctic warms over the decades, the land masses nearby will still see extreme cold (as the Chinese scientists recently asserted concerning THEIR extreme winter cold); we don’t want to forget those susceptible to cold. What a mess this planet is in! Dammitall! End of editorial content.
I don’t know. Got burned last time because of overconfidence in spaghetti assessment, so being more circumspect seeing the same strong signal ahead in that stuff today. Here’s NOAA’s best spaghetti from last night (leftovers) for you this morning:
Valid for 5 PM April 8th. Means it will be cold for April. Some rain? You would think so, but then again, we live in a desert and its hard to have rain in a desert, especially in April, May, and June. How will I make it? I need some motivational rain for blogging! See how the red lines dip halfway down Baja! Even a few blue ones in the Southwest indicating this could be a very cold event for April.
Cirrus to pass over Catalina today!
Its not like the space station, or Comet Panstarrs, but as a CMJ (cloud maven junior) you should pretend to be pretty excited anyway. That’s all we got for awhile. That exclamation mark should be treated as like a cup of coffee, should get you going, excited about anything.
An example of yesterday’s sunset Cirrus/Cirrostratus:
6:51 PM yesterday, in case you weren’t looking, though to me, that would be quite odious.
Well, at least much of today anyway. The title for today is from Gershwin, of course, and the version of a song he later changed to “Blue Skies” (really old version here)–this was after he moved from New York, an extremely cloudy state, to southern California (“Hollywood”, in 1936) where weathermen can sleep for six months due to soporifically boring weather, to emphasize that weather aspect there with redundancy since “soporific” means boring as well. I lived there in so. Cal., myself, San Fernando Valley, growing up and I know first hand. Slept out in the backyard with doggie in case a sprinkle fell out of Altocumulus in the summers and didn’t want to miss it1 That’s how bad it was weatherwise.
Continuing, Gershwin didn’t think “Gray Skies” was so uplifting as a song, and he eventually changed the title to something more “accessible” as a popular song (who wants to think about Altostratus, or, Stratocumulus???).
BTW, you won’t find facts like this on other blogs; in fact, to be redundant with the word “fact”, won’t find this kind of information anywhere else at all!
We got us some more of that Altostratus overhead today, and in places, embedded or separate patches of Altocumulus (droplet clouds), and you know what this means. Its snowing up there above 15,000 feet above ground level, and if Ms. Mt. Lemmon was only a few thousand feet higher, there would be PLENTY of snow on top. There could be some spectacular sunrises/sunsets today and tomorrow as this stream of tropical moisture aloft passes by. Be ready.
Yesterday’s clouds
First, a couple of “action” shots, ones where glaciation is taking place:
6:48 AM. You know the drill, (the cloud) used to be this, and now its that. “Droplets to ice; its a natural thing.” The droplet cloud on the right side is Altocumulus perlucidus (looks somewhat like a honeycomb).
6:47 AM. Some more of that over there. Sometimes I have called the icy small patches, “The Ghosts of Perlucidus.” (Happens because the clouds are not only real cold, but damn cold (usually less than -25 C (-13 F).
The weather ahead
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The End.
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1 In case you don’t believe me, maybe I just made that up about sleeping out, only pretending to be some kind of weather fanatic in this blog, this picture for the doubters out there from those summer days with doggie in the backyard; hoping for a drop so I could enter it in my weather diary. Oh, yeah, I had one.
I hope you’re happy now. I put it in full size so that you could see it was me, not someone else.
You had yer Altocumulus lenticulars, your Altocumulus floccus with virga, some castellanus in there, too, Cirrostratus, Cirrus spissatus, Cirrocumulus with tiny ripples, numerous contrails (not so good), a couple of distant Cumulus humilis, and likely a nice sunset that I didn’t see because we had dinner guests and I couldn’t run out every 45 seconds to see how it was developing as I normally do. So, all in all, it was a pretty satisfying cloud day for you I thought. I was imagining that maybe you might have had some trouble logging all these different types of clouds in your weather diary as I thought about what to write today.
Let’s review them:
6:37 AM. Tiny lenticular remains downstream of Ms. Lemmon.7:20 AM. Altocumulus lenticularis cluster forms in the NW quadrant from Catalina.7:21 AM. Cirrocumulus sporting iridescence (some color). A very thin veil of Cirrostratus appears to be above it.7:21. Cirrocumulus undulatus (tiny ripples along the direction of the wind). Wasn’t there a song by that Hawaiian guy about “tiny ripples”? Also, we haven’t done this manuever in a while so be careful, but you will have to hoist your monitor over your head to get that actual perspective of this shot.9:12 AM. Overhead Cirrus spissatus, or as we call it, “Cis spiss.” Again, be very careful hoisting your monitor into the overhead position. Note how the delicate fibers seem to be going “every which way and loose.” Overhead views can look that way though off in the distance the same cloud would look more organized by the prevailing wind shear.
Then this fabulous grouping of Altocumulus floccus with a couple of castellanus came marching over Oro Valley! These were great to see with their proud “tails” drooping down, and they tell you where that overhead “Cis spiss” really came from. Yep, it was formerly an Altocumulus!
You can see that this group of Ac floc clouds are not nearly as high as that old, faint contrail far above them stretching from right to left, likely one or more hours old.
9:42 AM. What a great sight this was! I put some writing on this one to help you out a bit.10:12 AM. Gorgeous “little snowstorms in the sky, think I’d like to have some pie.”10:16 AM. Ac floc with Cirrus above, maybe Cirrostratus. That tuft at the top is composed of droplets, ones that soon disappear as ice crystals form, like many of those in the preceding photos.From the Cowboys, this TUS sounding for 5 AM AST yesterday morning suggested that those icy Ac floc cloud tops, initially composed of liquid droplets, were colder than -30 C, -22 F (it happens). Back in the 1950s, they called the often observed droplet cloud at the top of clouds producing snow, the “upside down storm” since the coldest portion was liquid, with all ice underneath at higher temperatures. Amazing. Bob and Ali (finally) wrote a paper about it.
More high clouds in route after a clearing this morning.
Lots of intermittent troughiness ahead, and cooler weather with them, especially out around 10 days from now, but sadly, but no rain, mods say.
This whole situation, in spite of the inclinations seen in “spaghetti”, has gone to pot. Well, actually, to the north more than foretold days ago. No rain is now foreseen here for another week or two.
But instead of discussing in minutiae what went wrong, and why CM fell for it, that is, go through a bunch of hand-wringing about how bad our models are, even with some chaos thrown in (produces “spaghetti”), let us instead change direction for awhile, a diversion really, and consider the two forms of anarchy today: good anarchy, and bad anarchy.
We begin our discussion with an example of “good anarchy”, shown below:
Here, at an entrance to the University of Washington, conscientious citizens exhorting their fellow citizens to be as good as they can be and not break laws. While it was illegal to write on the wall, you can see that they were good-hearted people, ones that might pick up litter as well.
In contrast, below I present an egregious example of quite “bad anarchy.” Please note the clear message by the authorities on the sign at right:
This was horrific, shocking. Here people, but not me, violate a clear edict about walking past a sign with a black pole marking the point you are not supposed to go past. And the violators seem to have no remorse about they have done, but are just kind of ambling along. What has happened to us? Perhaps the woman on the left is bowing her head in shame. Maybe THAT is the only thing we can take away to boost our spirits over this sad scene of otherwise happy, non-chalant acting people in violation of the law. I will never forget this scene.
Yesterday’s clouds
We did have a nice sunset; so many here. Hope you saw it. Pretty much an all daymlollipop lentiular cloud downwind of Ms. Lemmon yesterday, too. Here’s the U of AZ time lapse for yesterday. You can really see how these clouds hover, shrink and expand, disappear, reappear, as the moisture grade changes.
6:45 PM. Altostratus with virga, lit from below due to a distant hole that allowed the fading sun to illuminate this portion of the As clouds and the light snow falling from them (virga).
7:03 AM. Ac len downstream of Lemmon.1:13 PM. Still there.4:43 PM. Some more over there, too.
