Art Rangno – Page 76

The summer 2012 rain season by radar

I was thinking about you and thought maybe you would like to see these charts from NOAA concerning our “not bad” summer rain season, well the past 90 days, July, August and September. Maybe you’d like to see what the whole State of Arizona got, along with a percent of normal, so here they are. (It was a bit better here in Catalina than elsewhere around here where we were about two inches above normal (from a 36 year record).

As you can see, quite a few areas got 10-15 inches (brownish centers of yellow areas). As usual, the above and below normal areas are splotchy, with only a general assessment of usually wet along the Colorado River into southern Nevada (they’ll be talking about this summer for awhile in some of those areas!), and below normal in the eastern 25% of the State. But, if you look at New Mexico and southern Colorado, you should feel lucky since they really saw a lot of dry days.

Below are maps like the above for the whole US, so you can see how we fit in to the national summer rainfall pattern. It was great to see those droughty areas we heard so much about at the beginning of summer, say in Texas, come up with above normal rains.

You can make these maps yourself here at the NOAA national site for precip from radar.

I have a dream….

And here it is in the panel below, a pretty wet one, hmmmm, “rainy one”, for Catalina, one that came out from yesterday’s model run based on the 11 AM AST global data. The panel below is valid for 11 PM, Thursday October 11th, just 11 days from yesterday. That blue square over Catalina indicates that this model run calculated that 0.75 to 1.00 inches of rain would fall in the preceding 12 h of that Thursday, the 11th. How great would that be after this LONG boring and hot dry spell? I’ve had it with dry!

There is so much rain in this panel for us due to the remnants of another tropical storm whooshing into AZ from the Mexican Pacific south of Baja. That draw northward to us due to an upper low over southern Cal steering it northward.

I don’t want to talk about the new model run from last night’s later 5 PM AST global data. There must be a mistake of some kind in it not to show any rain here in Catalina in THOSE calculations. It falls all around us, but not here.

———–

Well, as we know, that Catalina rain in yesterday’s model run, rain that could fall anywhere from the 8-12th, or even on all those days if we’re really lucky, is likely to come and go in these model runs. The only thing we do know FOR SURE (and this from the “spaghetti” plots), is that rain will be nearby at some point during that period, it will be much cooler, and more typical of fall weather rather than the heat we have now.

The End.

No, update, here at 4:54 AM: the new model run based on still later data, that from 11 PM AST last night, has rain back over us! Its not nearly as much as the “dream map.” Starts on the evening of Wednesday the 10th and goes through evening of the 11th.

These “manic-depressive” NOAA model runs (ones that can be seen here) are likely to continue, one after another. So, a bull’s eye, dream rain is still possible. See lastest spaghetti plot below for confirmation of this assertion. Veterinarian spaghetti plot interpreters will plainly see what’s ahead around the afternoon of the 11 th of October in the plot below from the 5 PM global data…(you can see the whole series here):

Map discussion

The weather ahead

Since we have no weather/clouds to blab about now, it seemed like a good idea to look ahead at our fantasy weather, produced by models, and see what they have for us. And in these future weather charts, something once again for us here in Arizona to dream about. These maps below were produced from global data taken at 5 PM AST last evening. Check these rainy maps out, high points annotated like cartoons FYI:

Annotated 216h map — Valid for Tuesday, October 9th at 5 PM AST.

Annotated 240h — Valid for Wednesday, October 10th at 5 PM AST, 24 h after the first map above. Rain intensifies in Arizona.

And what do we look at to see if this has ANY chance of verifying?

A bunch of spaghetti!

First, the upper level map at 500 millibars that goes with all the rain on that map above, that one valid for the 10th. This is to see what the upper level configuration is like that is producing this wide area of rain in the SW US.

Aha! A low center is over the interior of central California at 500 millibars, and moist air (shown in green, of course) has been drawn up into it on its eastern flank, moist air that had been over us (take my word for it). OK, this looks good.

annotated 240 500 — Valid for the afternoon of Wednesday, October 10th at 5 PM AST.

Below is one of “ensemble” plots created by putting deliberate errors in to the global data to see what happens to the predicted patterns using the real data after small errors are introduced in the initial data–very clever technique.

Will the “perturbed” maps look anything like the ones I that were produced from the real global data taken last night?

Let’s look and make some kind of interpretation that will say “yes” to rain in Arizona, beginning in 9 days (Tuesday the 9th) and continuing off and on for several days!

2012101100spag_f240_nhbg — Valid for Wednesday, October 10th at 5 PM AST

Well, since you’ve been trained in the analysis of these “spaghetti” plots, you will quickly see that it looks pretty damn promising. It is virtually GUARANTEED that an upper low center will be in the SW US, cut off from the main flow pattern which has angled northward from the Pacific into northern Canada (blue and yellow lines up there). That yellow circle over central Cal is the actual prediction, and the clustering of blue lines in that same area shows that the “errorful” predictions also see that happening. So, in that clustering of blue lines, it can be seen that our “low” in the SW is a quite reliable prediction.

Does it guarantee rain here though? Nope, just that the chances are going to be good in that October 9-12th window.

Also very, very, very, evident in this plot is that the people in the eastern third of the country are going to be very unhappy with all the cold air that they are going to experience before the middle of October. That weather is, from this plot, “in the bag.” Notice how the blue lines cluster in that area and are extruded to the south, indicating that deep cold air will be extruded from polar regions into the eastern US then. I like the word, “extruded”, BTW. Sounds great, kind of like an onomatopoeia, like “thunder.” You can feel it.

Its likely that many low temperature records will be set beginning in about a week in the Plains States and eastern US. (Remember “air” is “cold”; “temperatures” are low).

An aside: It will be interesting to see how the media handles this upcoming cold spell. It has seemed, from this keyboard, that high temperature records get more attention than low ones. We shall see.

The End.

Summer and water year rain stats

Today, something useful….

Summer 2012 rainfall, June-September: 9.04 inches, average 7.27 inches.

Water year rainfall, October 1, 2011 through September 30th, 2012: 16.00 inches, average 17.04 inches.

cropped summer 2012 rainfall — No trend in summer rainfall at Catalina evident over the past 36 years. Yay!

Cropped water year 2011-12 rainfall — While water year rainfall declined after the very wet years when Catalina records began at Our Garden, the water year rainfall has stabilized over the past 10-15 years. Yay#2.

To see surrounding values, in some cases considerably higher than Catalina’s go to the U of Arizona’s rainlog.org and in the upper right hand corner, select, “date range.” This is an enormously handy tool to compare area totals. (Some stations, however, do not have a complete record, and so some totals are ludicrously small.) Its interesting to note the isolated contributors to rainlog.org who are in British Columbia, Canada and in the Mid-west. How funny. They must really like us.

The weather ahead

The models are still indicating a cold trough and rain chances here beginning on the 9th-11th (last evening’s 11 PM AST run of the WRF-GFS model. That’s it for the next 15 days.

Here is strong evidence that we will be affected by a pretty strong lower latitude trough coming across California and combining with another one dropping down from the Pac NW, this ensemble or “spaghetti plot” from NOAA:

Notice the lack of blue contours in the northern US, AND just inside the interior of the West Coast where there are “dark spots.” Those mean that there is a pretty reliable chance of a trough in the interior of the West on the afternoon of Monday, October 8th at 5 PM AST (October 9th, 00 GMT). The absence of contours in the northern tier of the US indicates that the jet stream will be south of its usual position (suggested by the green line).

The most reliable predictions in a spaghetti plot are where the blue lines are bunched together, such as in the central and western Pacific Ocean in this output map.

All this doesn’t mean its going to rain here for sure, but there will certainly be quite a change in the temperatures here about this map time (plus or minus a day or so) and a rain threat.

The End.

Miriam’s sunset

At least former hurricane Miriam gave us a nice sunset of mostly layer ice clouds (Cirrostratus; Altostratus (where thicker). Note portion of halo, upper center, above pointy-top cedar tree on the horizon. Looks a broken streak of droplet clouds (Cirrocumulus) just below that bit of halo.

Today’s overcast of Altocumulus and Stratocumulus, also associated with Miriam, develops some light rain to the south of us now. Wasn’t supposed to get here (from U of AZ model yesterday), but, there it is, SLOWLY heading this way. Will it make it? Don’t think so. If it does, it won’t be much, a trace? Dang.

Next rain here, sometime in October…. None now shown for the next 15 days. Maybe summer stats later today or tomorrow. (Correction, updated at 1:05 PM local based on the US WRF-GFS model run at 5 AM:

the almost “usual” rain has shown up, 324 h from now, that is, Thursday afternoon, October 11th. Below is the precip for the 12 h ending at 5 PM that day. Also, as “usual”, don’t count on it, but its not impossible either. There a tiny heavier rain blob over Catalina or so.

Didn’t get to a rain stat presentation yet due to being absorbed by former company team’s activities in SEA last evening where, at the conclusion of the match, there was a display of sport’s anarchy. The attendees of this event, in some kind of euphoric riot, lost control of themselves, climbed out of their seats and advanced onto the floor of the stadium where only the athletes and their entourages are supposed to be.

Two curious friends were at that game, my friend Nate, who got a big check (250 K$!) from Al Gore at the Whitehouse a few years ago due to being a science star, and my other friend Keith, who made a LOT of money photographing the explosion of Mt. St. Helen’s in 1980 because he was where he shouldn’t have been went it went off. Keith then quit the Ph. D. program in the geophysics grad school at the U of WA and started a company, Remote Measurements, due to all the money he made from that poster of the explosion.

Nate and Keith now share season tickets now to the Husky football games, as Nate and I once did, which I think proves something about fans of college fubball.

What does it prove?

Maybe its that you can like college fubball and still get a big check from Al Gore (who later went on from being Vice-president to a star in the movies).

Or, it just proves that you don’t have to be THAT bright to be a success in science (hahahahah-its just long, hard hours, not brillance, that counts).

And, it may prove that college fubball fans are sometimes not be who we think they are. Feeling defensive here about being so absorbed last evening, so let us not forget that the writer was thanked by the People of Earth with a small monetary prize, a “scroll”, AND…a trophy (!) for his and Peter Hobbs’ body of work in the domain of weather modification, all these goodies being presented in Capetown, SA, in 2006. So, there, IQ feels better now.

As a joke on that that latter thought, my friend and grad school officemate, Ricky, from Harvard U. no less, and I used to throw a football around at lunchtime on the lawn in front of the 7-story department of Atmos. Sci. Building at the U of WA. Before we went out the door to play catch, I warned Ricky that his perceived IQ would drop by 30 points when people look down and see him tossing a football, and, forget dating any of the women in the Department… :} Just kidding!

The End.

While waiting for the October rains….

Not much to report really. Things aren’t going quite as I expectulated yesterday afternoon in a burst of excitement about a good rain here beginning as early as October 3rd, so maybe I won’t say anything further about that, kind of pretend like I never said anything like that. I do still think it will rain in October, however; not giving up on anything quite yet.

Next, I will distract you, get your mind off that, by showing a NOAA “ensemble” (spaghetti) plot based on last evening’s global data and let you figure it out. That should do it; this is lot better than Sudoku. This one below is valid for 5 PM AST, Friday, October 5th. You might think about what teams are very likely going to be playing in really cold air for early October based on this map, baseball or football.

Hint: where the blue lines bunch up some and extrude toward the Equator is where colder than normal air will be. The more they are bunched together, the more reliable is the forecast. Where they are scattered around, like in the SW, the more dicey the forecast.

Maybe some summer rain season stats tomorrow.

The End.

A couple of cloud pics, and the next pretty big US-Canadian model divergence coming up (updated)

Updated-at-lunchtime bulletin

This is tremendous, filled with rainy portent for AZ. I am getty excited again as I perused the 6-day (144 h) mod output from Enviro Can, our friends to the north, most of whom live close to the US border because they like us so much and we like them: Take a look at this map, valid for 5 AM, Oct. 2nd. The main things to note and get excited about yourself is that the flow is “caving in” over the Pac NW. Our little low is sitting off Baja, awaiting the southward moving trough over British Columbia. As that trough edges south and southeastward, that low will “open up”, stop being a circle of flow and be a “trough” like its big brother over BC and eject to the northeast. And, if that is not enough, this model output also has a tropical storm that will, in the event these things fall into place, be swept up by the trough off Baja and rake Arizona with substantial rains! OK, so I have filled in some “blanks” here, but, with a victory in the weather computing wars by the Canadians vis a vis our USA model recently, why not ride their coattails into the next major AZ rain? Rain would get here most likely beginning on the 3rd. Could be a little floody here, too, if it works out the way I am projecting, but then I have just had some extra coffee and am a little overexcited right now. In fact, look at the size of this paragraph!

annotated_2012092612_12_054_G1_north@america@zoomout_I_4PAN_CLASSIC@012_144 — I’ve added arrows as one would drawing up a play in touch football. I’ve shown where I think things will go based on this output valid for 5 AM AST Ocotber 2nd. The Canadians don’t post longer range views from their model, so I had to become an weather offensive coordinator to show where I think they should go.

SONY DSC — 6:05 PM. Residual Cumulus clouds, no ice falling out because they are warmer than -10 C at top.

The weather ahead; will it rain or not in a week?

Still a chance of rain of rain between October 4 and 8th as two pulses were shown in yesterday’s WRF-GFS 5 AM AST outputs. Of course, those AZ rains are gone now in the 11 PM AST run from last night, but does that mean it won’t be back in a future model output? Of course not.

The computer models are flummoxed by these weak patterns we have now and we again have a model “divergence” between the USA! and Canada. While the USA NOAA WRF-GFS model has backed off rain in AZ as of last night’s run, the Canadian model, ironically is pointing TO RAIN in AZ (instead of taking it away, as it did with the remnants of poor hurricane Miriam, winding down, lost at sea). It will be interesting to see which one pulls the “trickeration” this time.

The conundrum involves whether a weak upper air circulation that could rotate tropical air in here by the 4th, stays along the southern California coast, or recedes to the west, as the latest US models are indicating. The Canadians think its going to hang around, not go west, at least so far.

upper air panel from ec prog — Environment Canada model has an upper low (at 500 millibars) hanging around off southern California at 5 PM AST October 1st (upper left panel). Westerly jet stream, shown by bunching of lines in western Canada on that panel, bulges ever so slightly to the south and a big fat high is west of the Duck-Beaver nations (Oregon). Note winds over AZ are from the SW, always a good thing.

144 h NOAA prediction — In the NOAA WRF-GFS model for the afternoon of October 1st, the same time as the Enviro Can map above, that upper center is a tad farther west, but is blocked from eastward movement by a big fat ridge of high pressure with no real center as was shown in the Enviro Can map. Also, here, the jest stream in western Canada bulges to the north. That jet stream “needs” to collapse toward the south to help bring that wandering low off California toward Arizona. In this US model run, it doesn’t shift southward until its too far away from that wandering low. Note, too, that the winds over Arizona in this prediction, are from the north-northwest, not from the SW as shown in the Enviro Can map. Air from the north tends to sink and dry out; air from the SW tends to have clouds and rising motion.

Yesterday, that rain for AZ predicted by the WRF-GFS model happened because that jet stream coming into the Pacific NW and western Canada collapsed southward and literally grabbed that low off California and threw it toward Nevada and its tropical moisture came roaring up into AZ as that happened. Last night’s run is not even remotely similar to yesterday’s! Oh, well. Such is weather forecasting in the modern era.

Hoping for another “retro” model solution today or down the road.

The End.

Models converge; less is none

Oh, me. I guess its great to be big enough to congratulate a people smarter than your people. The Canadian model, a version of that used by the people of Europe, has seemingly won the battle of the Arizona rain question. Almost no rain in Arizona is now predicted through the end of September in the last several runs of the USA! model, which now has the last of hurricane Meriam dying a quiet death off Baja, her moist remnants staying in Mexico, not getting here. This was the “solution” the Canadian model had predicted for several days for the end of September in Arizona that made a prediction of rain here very dicey anyway if you read what I had been blabbing about.

BTW, along with abandoning our tropical rains, the USA WRF_GFS model has the “usual” heavy rains 10-15 days out. I laughed out loud when I saw these new predicted rains in today’s run from 5 AM AST data. I guess we can hope again.

Well, congratulations to my relatives in Canada for “winning” the battle of the models, but I will NEVER go there again! I loved those now bogus rain maps for Arizona that the USA! model produced for several days anyway; SO much rain! Going to save them, and mope around about what could have been because that’s who I am.

In the meantime, we had some nice cloud patterns yesterday morning, and I will grudgingly post those as though I am quite happy and feel normal after looking at the latest model runs:

The End.

“Come together, right now, over me” (that is, those divergent computer models, please!)

Every morning when I get up, I start thinking about those old lyrics, reprised in the title, from the Beatles song about (USC) Trojan football, go to the internet, and hope that the Canadian model has changed course, and come together with our WRF-GFS model, which has had a lot of rain in AZ for several days now.

I haven’t looked yet, but thought as a game, I would blindly post the Enviro Can model run from last night and see what it looks like for 6 days out (144h), next Saturday afternoon when our model had so much AZ rain.

Answer? Nope.

Still no rain in AZ foretold by the Canadians based on last night’s run. What is the matter with them? I’ll try not to be sharp with my Canadian relatives.

annotated_2012092400_00_054_G1_north@america@zoomout_I_4PAN_CLASSIC@012_144 — The arrow in the upper panel points to the remnants of hurricane Miriam. The panel below the one with the arrow is the areas of rain predicted and has NONE in AZ for the 12 h ending at 5 PM AST on Saturday, the 29th. Pretty Discouraging.

Now I will go look and see if the WRF-GFS model (from IPS MeteoStar again) still has rain predicted for us. What if the models have “come together” and BOTH now show NO RAIN? How awful would that be? It would be exactly as awful as that Duck/Wildcat fubball game last Saturday evening; that’s how bad it would be.

The last time I looked, the run from 5 AM yesterday morning’s data, it still had a lot of rain coming into AZ, AND, it rained all over AZ for several days as the tropical air hung around and was “motivated” into forming showers and thunderstorms by an upper low center stalled over us. It could not have been a more joyful run! But with the Canadian model diverging in its prediction so vastly, it really wasn’t time to pop open the bottle of fizzy grape juice. OK, here’s my next surprise, holding breath. Adding some dramatic waiting music here, like the kind you hear on TEEVEE quiz shows:

2012092400_CON_GFS_SFC_SLP_THK_PRECIP_WINDS_144 — There it is! The WRF-GFS, valid for 5 PM AST on Saturday the 29th, still has plenty of rain falling here, and that rain even begins in this model run 24 h earlier, on Thursday afternoon, the 28th. Not only that, the tropical air that gets here gets hung up in a stationary upper low that helps wring out more showers and thunderstorms in this area through October 1st. How great is that?!

This dichomoty, this bifurcation concerning Miriam, now a hurricane, in these models, is troubling to be honest. You just can’t yet hang your hat on either model right now. I can’t remember two more divergent sets of predictions this close to the “real event”, beginning this Thursday.

Why this huge discrepancy?

Once again it involves the weak winds aloft, those ones that steer poor Miriam, who doesn’t know which way to go, and we probably won’t know for sure that she’s coming until a day or two before, like a surprise visit from a Canadian relative who comes because its too cold where he lives. So, and this is for me, too, don’t “fall in love” with this WRF-GFS forecast so fast. It may yet break your heart. Your favorite TEEVEE weather presenter should point this out, too.

Now some cloud babble

We’ve had several interesting days in a row, including today, from a science viewpoint. The atmosphere has pretty much remained the same, and our cloud top and cloud base temperatures and in otherwise virtually identical clouds, have changed only slightly.

First we had tops at -10 C to 11 C, and there no indication of ice forming in them for sure. That day was followed by almost exactly the same set of clouds, except that top temperatures were a just a few degrees colder, at -15 C (5 F) or so, and you could see that with that small decrease in temperature out came the snow virga, and even an isolated drop of rain to the ground here and there.

Yesterday was a perfect match for those prior two days because again, the clouds were virtually identical except that cloud top temperature was slightly warmer at -10 to -12 C (about 12 F), pretty much the same top temperature as two days before. maybe just a tad lower. And the “results” were the same as two days ago. Little or no ice formed in yesterday’s clouds, kind of what is expected here in AZ in “continental” Cumulus clouds (ones having higher droplet concentrations than ones over the ocean (maritime Cumulus clouds) and that have colder cloud bases. Of late, our cloud base temperatures have been colder than -5 C (23 F).

Here is a sunset shot, since the SD card was not in my camera until evening and I don’t have a single afternoon cloud shot!

Clouds and tropical storms

The USA! models continue, in run and after run, to revert back to the serious rains in Arizona that they had foretold a few days ago for the 28th-29th of the month. But then after that show of huge rains in SE AZ, and as I blabbed about yesterday, they took it away, but the chaos of the situation didn’t mean it was gone forever.

Sure enough, those heavy AZ rains have been back now for a couple of more runs including the one from last night’s 5 PM AST global data.

This is really exciting to see it come back. But, those “rainful” runs could be heartbreakers just like people are in real life when they don’t live up to your expectations, real or magical ones; the steering situation is just too weak to have a lot confidence in where tropical storm Miriam will end up, the one whose remnants bring AZ so much rain in the model projection below.

Remnants of Miriam enter AZ — Remnants of tropical storm Miriam are predicted to enter Arizona SW of Catalina on Saturday morning, September 29th.

Here’s another HUGE problem: our friends to the north don’t think much of the chance of rain here; in their numerical model outputs, a form of the one used by the Europeans, poor Miriam dies in the eastern Pacific, her rains fall in the ocean somewhere, not where they are really needed, like at my house.

While the Canadian model can be considered quite bad because of this, you have to give it some respect anyway. I guess we’ll know in a few more days.

In the Canadian 4-panel model, Muriam’s position, some 1000 miles different than in the US model, is marked by an arrow. Note in the panel below where the arrrow one is, NO RAIN at all is predicted for Arizona!!!

So, confidence has to be low for rain at the end of the month.

Yesterday’s clouds

With the temperature running toward 100 F, and Cumulus clouds popping up after the morning Altocumulus went away, it sure seemed like a summer rain season day. Cloud bottoms were too high, somewhere close to EIGHTEEN thousand feet above sea level (15,000 feet above Catalina) for much of a chance for virga to reach the ground. There was a considerable amount of virga as the capped cloud tops reached -15 C (5 F) and lots of snow formed in them. Looked like some rain reached the ground toward the border yesterday afternoon (where cloud bases would have been somewhat lower). Here’s a brief pictorial for yesterday. More can be see, of course, in the U of A timelapse here, always a fascinating study. You will see our ice producing Cumulus moving from the SE as they usually do in the summer, but the Cirrus