We saw some great shafts yesterday, and their content did not disappoint where they landed; 1.61 inches fell at a Saddlebrooke Ranch site, though only 0.06 inches in The Heights. Also, this piece contains a footnote.
8:15 AM. The usual summer Altocumulus perlucidus deck.
10:56 AM. Cumulus begin to form under a layer of Altostratus translucidus. Now some people would call that higher layer “Cirrus”, but remember that in our cloud definitions, only one variety of Cirrus can have gray shading in the middle of the day, and that’s Cirrus spissatus, which besides is in much smaller patches that this. I know its crazy, but there it is.2:19 PM. Some darkening of the sky to the S–SSW toward Tucson. Its best if you don’t look at radar to see if there’s anything down there if you want to enhance your cloud interpreting skill set. Just let it come, if it is. Maybe its a spiral band around H. Norbert! (There was a big line of echoes heading this way….) Not much was going on over the Catalinas.3:01 PM. Earlier darkening not disappointing! “She’ll be comin’ ’round the mountain when she comes”! What a great and dramatic scene this was.3:28 PM. Things are happening fast as the rain shafts from this system tumble down Samaniego/Pusch Ridges! Winds in those shafts likely exceeded 50 mph where you see them racing down those slopes, Nice, promising base forming on this side of the mountains, too.3:56 PM. Stupendous shafts slide along Sam Ridge, while gusty SE winds blow in the Heights, pushing clouds up over and to the north of us.4:05 PM. One of the new cloud bases cut loose, but just to the NE of Sutherland Heights. Oh, me, so close.6:43 PM. Day clouds with an OK sunset on the several layers of debris clouds leftover from those great storms.
The weather ahead….
Just glimpsing the mighty U of AZ mod seems to suggest that there are two more days with substantial rains in the area ahead. Great! So, more great clouds and shafts to shoot, to be a little alliterative there at the end. Charge camera battery. Check weather service and what Bob has to say as well. Haven’t got time to make a good forecast…. hahaha, sort of.
The weather WAY ahead
In the long range, I found this important plot from last night interesting, and I know I speak for you as well:
A true “spaghetti” plot from the NOAA factory based on last evening’s global data. Its valid for Sunday, at 5 PM AST, September 21st.
Now it does appear from this plot that there is a ridge in the future along the West Coast, manifested1 (what a great word) by that hump in all those multicolored lines along the West Coast), a trough in the East (MANIFESTED by the dip in those same lines east of the Rockies). That means that the summer rain season, might actually be extended some instead of ending completely with the current rejuvenation. The summer moisture can extrude farther to the north when a ridge is present in the West. In the daily forecast maps, showers do return to this area after the present tropical regime ends, and that scenario is that bit reinforced by what “spaghetti” says.
The End
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1To sound more erudite, you might use that word today when discussing the outcomes of yesterday’s NCAA college football games with your sports friends. An example: “The Washington Huskies defense is not as good as we had hoped it would be as MANIFESTED by the FIFTY-TWO points in gave up to the Eastern Washington Eagles, a lower division team.”
3:56 PM. A little dessert, another shaft for you, a real good one over there on the Gap.
Thank you, second burst of rain after about 8:15 PM. And what a great total on The Lemmon! Fantastic, unless some roads were washed out. 1.93 inches fell in only an hour up there. 1.85 inches fell in an hour at White Tail over there by the highway.
Catalina Area 1010 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.28 Golder Ranch Horseshoe Bend Rd in Saddlebrooke 1020 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.28 Oracle Ranger Stati approximately 0.5 mi SW of Oracle 1040 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.43 Dodge Tank Edwin Rd 1.3 mi E of Lago Del Oro Parkway 1050 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.43 Cherry Spring approximately 1.5 mi W of Charouleau Gap 1060 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.55 Pig Spring approximately 1.1 mi NE of Charouleau Gap 1070 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.87 Cargodera Canyon NE corner of Catalina State Park 1080 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.24 CDO @ Rancho Solano Cañada Del Oro Wash NE of Saddlebrooke 1100 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.51 CDO @ Golder Rd Cañada Del Oro Wash at Golder Ranch Rd
Santa Catalina Mountains 1030 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.75 Oracle Ridge Oracle Ridge, approximately 1.5 mi N of Rice Peak 1090 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 3.07 Mt. Lemmon Mount Lemmon 1110 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.63 CDO @ Coronado Camp Cañada Del Oro Wash 0.3 mi S of Coronado Camp 1130 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.69 Samaniego Peak Samaniego Peak on Samaniego Ridge 1140 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.94 Dan Saddle Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge 2150 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 2.72 White Tail Catalina Hwy 0.8 mi W of Palisade Ranger Station 2280 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.59 Green Mountain Green Mountain 2290 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.18 Marshall Gulch Sabino Creek 0.6 mi SSE of Marshall Gulch
Looks like scattered showers today; a typical sequence after something major happens, like last night, is for the atmosphere to compensate with some drier air. So, today should be GORGEOUS in Cumulus clouds that pile up here and there on the mountains, but don’t expect to get shafted unless you’re real lucky. Wider spread rains expected tomorrow….
Yesterday’s clouds, if you care
Of course, you can the whole day in a hurry here, courtesy of the U of Arizona Wildcats Weather Department, in case you’d like to avoid all the cloud blather below….
6:20 AM. I/m calling this Altocumulus. Don’t see any ice falling out here, but some did off to the SW. Being an all water droplet cloud, I hope you were telling anyone that you were with, that, “Hell, this layer will burn off fast” since you know that water droplet clouds are more vulnerable to evaporating in sunlight than ice clouds like Altostratus, or Cirrus. And when this layer burns off fast, the Cumulus will arise in a hurry. Its great that you might have said that.9:13 AM. That layer is mostly gone, and there come the Cu!1:03 PM. The inevitable Cumulonimbus capillatus incus has arisen over there by Kitt Peak. But this photo is special for you because if you look closely, as I know you will, there is also a big dust devil near the Tucson Mountains (center of photo). I’ve noticed a LOT of dust devils form in nearly that same spot where this one is. Must be exciting to live down there!1:30 PM. Another daily benchmark, “First Ice” on the Catalinas. The ragged turret remains on the left have some ice underneath them if you look closely again, as I know you probably will. If you had an aircraft with cloud physics instrumentation and you were looking for the amount ice that formed in those ragged turrets, ones that once looked like the one in the center, nice and puffy, you would best fly toward the bottom of the rags, not at the top since as the droplets in the cloud shrink due to evaporation, the ice-forming stops. Thus sometimes the coldest part of the cloud in those rags has the fewest ice crystals, and more are found lower down, ones that formed by the freezing of those once larger drops, as would be starting to take place in the puffy parts.3:56 PM. The rarely seen pileus cap which I seem to photograph everyday on a Catalina mountain Cumulus congestus cloud top. Very pretty, and SO DELICATE! Things had kind of stagnated as far as Cumulus development went at this point over the Catalinas. Lots of small Cbs, but nothing really shot up, as it was beginning to do to the southwest and west.4:15 PM. Another rarely seen pileus top on a Cumulus congestus converting into a Cumulonimbus calvus; ice in a fading, glaciated turret is visible on the left (that smooth portion). Still, these tops ain’t much in height.5:57 PM. Now the big boys to the SW are approaching with huge “plumes” of Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus–you knew that, though in fading versions it appeared. Note dust plume on the right obscuring part of the Tortolita Mountains. And with their approach, and with the dust plume over there, you could easily figure that the wind was gonna blow pretty hard.6:00 PM. Only four minutes later, the dust was moving in and the wind was blowing from the SW at 25 to 35 mph. When the wind starts up, look up! That wind will be pushing the air over you up, and often existing darken as their tops rise, or new clouds form. Here, and in the next shot, that SW wind is pushing the air up on the slopes of the Catalina Mountains. Was hoping to see the strands start to fall from these bases near us, maybe feel some “rain plops” as we call them, those giant drops first out the bottom, but that didn’t happen here, but over there on Ms. Lemmon and Samaniego Ridge after that. Oh, well.6:06 PM. Another example of the clouds that piled up on the Catalinas as that SW wind was blowing. Wasn’t long after this that Ms. Lemmon was obscured in rain.
Our last cloud chapter was rudely interrupted by drought, with the last “rain”, an embarrassing one, of just 0.01 inches here in Sutherland Heights a week ago. Areas around us, of course, got more.
6:40 AM. “Etched glass” Cirrus fibratus. The flocculent patches (center right) are newly formed ones in which the larger ice crystals that are falling out of the stranded regions, have not yet gotten big enough to fall out, but they will follow that same course.
7:08 AM. CIrrus fibratus/uncinus radiatus, or at least the perspective makes it LOOK like its converging in the upwind direction. Had to pull off for this shot, it was SO NICE!1:32 PM. Surprise of the day was seeing real Cumulus (mediocris) clouds forming over our Catalina Mountains underneath patchy Cirrus and Altocumulus clouds. Note the rarely seen pileus cap cloud, indicating a good updraft.1:32 PM. Close up of the rarely seen pileus cap cloud. Would really like to have been in it, and then feel the bump when the Cu top rises through it!2:04 PM. Nice to see some unexpected shafting around, even if they were weak, indicating the tops were not terrifically high. With bases at the freezing level yesterday (14 kft above sea level), ice would not form until lower than normal temperatures, maybe around -15 C (5 F), but then would increase with each lower temperature. Here guessing were likely around -25 C, 25,000 feet or so above sea level due to the weakness of the shaft. Got a higher later. Very iffy discussion here, but that’s what CMP thinks.4:31 PM. Evening closed out with R— (“triple minus”–hardly noticeable RAIN not drizzle, please) from mid-level clouds, Altocumulus being the lower, lumpy gray patches, and Altostratus Cumulonimbogenitus, being the one producing the sprinkles, not drizzle.
Today’s weather….
Well, its no fun telling folks what they already know, but will say it looks tentatively, relying on the U of AZ 11 PM AST run of last night, like a day similar to yesterday, except a cloudier morning, which I just saw was the case by looking outside right now at 5:49 AM. Cu develop, tops should get cold enough to produce ice-hence-rain and shafting. Hope its measurable today. Also, as you know, moisture levels increase over the next couple of days with substantial rains likely.
In a model curiosity, three consecutive runs of the US WRF-GFS model, beginning with the 5 AM AST, 11 AM AST, and 5 PM AST runs, all from yesterday, had the remains of tropical storm Norbert passing directly over San Diego with substantial rains there. What made it even more likely to happen was that the Canadian model run from yesterday’s 5 PM AST global data, ALSO had the remaining little center of Norbert passing over San Diego, Tuesday, September 9th! Amazing since Norbert is such a tiny feature in our models, at least by the time it gets near San Diego.
As reported here, a month or so ago, the newly discovered oscillation in ocean temperatures, called the “California Niño”, is helping to keep Norbert going longer as it trudges to the NNW just off the Baja coast. Water temperatures off Cal are warmer than usual this summer due to weak onshore flow for the past few months. When the flow is normal, it not only sculpts plants and trees along the Cal coast, but also causes upwelling of COLD water, horrible for beach goers.
Below, examples of wind sculpting1:
Bodega Bay, CA, just north of Frisco, that windy, foggy, “Stratus-ee”, and cold summer city. Note Stratus in the background hwew.rolling in off the cold offshore waters. No summer thunderstorms here! Imagine how awful it would be to live at this spot. Winters are pretty nice, though, often with frequent rains and wind….to balance things out some.
Also near Bodega Bay.
The End.
———————————— 1When a realtor shows you property with scenes like these around it, you don’t want to buy there, even if its not windy that day. If you’re a realtor, you’d want to have bushes and trees like this trimmed up real good. hahaha.
A measly 0.01 inches is all we got here yesterday in a Seattle-like rain from an overcast that sputtered drops drown over a couple of hours, one that could barely wet the pavement, if we had any here in Sutherland Heights. Of course, we surely drooled at the close call that drained Saddlebrooke yesterday afternoon (see below). Probably washed more golf balls into the CDO wash like that storm did last year…
Also, 0.75 inches fell, too, where Ina crosses the CDO wash yesterday, “so close, and yet so far away”, as the song says. Oh, well, another missed rain that I have to crybaby about1. Will get some final pictures of the 2014 summer greening today before it fades away in the many dry days ahead to help make me feel better now that its over.
Here’s your cloud story for yesterday. It was pretty neat one, full of hope, even if that hope was eventually dissipated unless you lived in Saddlebrooke… The U of AZ time lapse film for yesterday is great, btw.
6:31 AM. I am going to say these are Altocumulus castellanus clouds, though they are a little low and large for that genera.
6:33 AM. This was a pretty scene… Here an isolated Ac cas rises up. Distant small Cumulonimbus clouds, weak ones, can be seen on the horizon.
9:18 AM. Before long, those pretty Cumulus clouds were springing to life off the Catalina Mountains, the sky so blue behind them.
9:19 AM. A rare “High Temperature Contrail” (HTC) slices through some very thin Altocumulus perlucidus. This aircraft phenomenon has also been called, “APIPs” for Aircraft Produced Ice Particles.) Recall that Appleman (1953) said that an aircraft couldn’t produce a contrail at temperature above about -35 C. But, he was WRONG. They can do it in a water-saturated environment at much higher temperatures, even as high as -8 C (see Rangno and Hobbs 1983, J. Clim. and Appl. Meteor., available through the Amer. Meteor. Soc. for free, an open journal kind of thing.)11:48 AM. Before noon, all thoughts of past glory were gone as the Big Boys arose in a hurry. What a dump here! The cloud, since it is not showing an anvil nor obvious fibrous appearance, still pretty cauliflowery even though the discerning CMJ would not be fooled by its icy composition, it would be a Cumulonimbus calvus (“bald”).3:40 PM. Probably THE most hopeful scene of the day. A large complex of Cumulonimbus clouds was emerging from the Tucson mountains, heading in this direction. But more importantly, were the cloud bases forming over Oro Valley ahead of it, likely, it seemed to be pushed upward by the outflowing winds ahead of the distant cells. Also, that cloud bases were forming and extending westward from the distant cells offered another rain-filled scenario that could happen as they approached from the SW.
4:14 PM. When the southwest wind arrived, it did in fact cause the clouds overhead to swell up like aphids on a Seattle rose bush, but as bad luck would have it, they were piling up just to the north of us and over Saddlebrooke where they all all those amenities and don’t really need a lot of rain.
4:40 PM. After the first base dropped its load a little beyond Saddlebrooke, another cloud base darkened and expanded over Saddlebrooke, but this time, began to unload there. Here, like the seldom seen pileus cloud, these strands of the largest drops being to pour out of the collapsing updraft. You have about two minutes to see this happen because if you look away, the next time you look there will be nothing but the “black shaft.”
4:45 PM. A remarkable transformation. How can so much water, you wonder, be up there in a cloud?
6:05 PM. As the threat of any significant rain faded away, there was at least some “lighting” excitement, produced for just seconds as the sun shone on this….Stratus fractus cloud. Again, you must be watching at all times to catch these little highlights.
6:58 PM. Time to say goodbye to Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds like these, until maybe next summer.
The End. Probably will go on a hiatus now.
——————–
1Its good to remember that there is a little crybaby in all of us, isn’t there?
First, this sight yesterday afternoon was interesting to me and I thought you should see it.
2:09 PM. Multi-strands of rain (aka, “dancing strands”) pour out of large, firm cloud base in Oro Valley. You won’t see such tiny features like this very often. Usually represent very large drops, formerly hail or soft hail we call graupel up higher. There are in this type of cloud always very tiny strands of graupel and hai aloft like this, but not so separated and so dense as here. The ones aloft might only be 10 yards (“meters”, if you’re thinking outside of football) wide. The rest of the rain shaft on the far right is in the fading mode, decreasing as the Cumulonimbus cloud above has exhausted its liquid water fuel (the part above the rain; its just rain, its “rained out”, no real cloud until much higher up when you get into the ice part, snowflakes.)
Second, it would appear that I hit the “publish” button before I intended to, before I really got going and figured out what I was going to say. I was no where near that button!
Third, this will be an assembly job, if anyone is out there, this piece will be gradually coming together, the nuerous errors being corrected on the fly, if it ever really does come together….
Maybe I will deflect attention with a spaghetti plot, get people wondering about that. Yeah, that’s a good idea. They won’t know what to make of it while I think up something to write.
Valid September 9th, 5 PM AST. I think you should really consider this today; talk to your friends about it. You might want to go to NOAA and look at all of them, to see how this one gets to this point. I strongly recommend that you do that.
Next, here is some rain data from Pima County. Then, some from the USGS. Dan Saddle, up there on Oracle Ridge looks to have gotten the most in a nearby gauge in the Catalinas, with 0.83 inches measured. Was that really the most that fell up in our mountains yesterday. Of course not! Not enough gauges to hit all the cores that struck those mountains, and its without doubt than 1-2 inches fell in the best ones.
2:10 PM.2:10 PM. Looking at a second core.2:17 PM. Combining cores.2:21 PM. Dancing strands storm joins the fray from the west, dark base about to unload.
In conclusion, Q. E. D.
In spite of the numerous heavy shafts of rain around yesterday, none formed above Catalina, except at the north end of town over there by Edwin Road where they had quite a dump in the middle of the afternoon. Only 0.12 inches here in the Heights of Sutherland. Still it was nice to see those Cumulonimbus blossom into such majestic clouds yesterday. So, today may be it for them, at least close to us. Here are a few more sights from yesterday’s fine day:
6:06 AM. Day started with some fine-looking Altocumulus castellanus, which, according to my cloud chart, one that can be found in fine school catalogs everywhere, it might rain within 6-96 hours. Worked out pretty well yesterday.9:34 AM. Of course, the best indicator of a good Cumulonimbus day ahead is tall spindly clouds like these. Shows the atmosphere is loaded with instability, or, if you really want to get fancy, CAPE (Convective Availiable Potential Energy). Clouds are going to mushroom up very easily, and way past the ice-forming level where rain will form.10:32 AM. And within the hour, rain was falling beyond the C-Gap.11:34 AM. A siting of the seldom seen “pileus” cap cloud on top of a rapidly rising turret. They were all over the place yesterday, but are “seldom seen” since they last only a few seconds as the turrets punch through them.12:18 PM. This pretty sight of Cumulus congestus with a remnant of a thin tower that had shot up and glaciated.12:34 PM. Within a few minutes, those two congestus clouds had erupted into this beauty with another pileus cap toward the north end of town.
Day went pretty much as planned for us by the models, with Cumulonimbus (“Cbs”, in texting form) clouds arising early and often, moving in from the SW, more of a fall pattern (which is approaching too fast for this Cb-manic person). If anything, those clouds arose earlier than expected with dramatic morning results;
But those storms that got here divided as they approached The Heights yesterday; cell cores went right and left with places like Black Horse Ranch down by Golder Drive getting 0.53 inches, and a place in Saddlebrooke, 0.94 inches yesterday, while we only received 0.23 inches.
Seeing this happen in real life was tough. Still, there was a last rain burst after only 0.14 had fallen that was really great as the sky began to break open and the sun was almost out when it happened. That last parting shower dropped a final 0.09 inches in just a few minutes. So, maybe we were a little lucky.
BTW, you can get area rainfall from the Pima County ALERT gauges here for the past 24 h. And, also, from the U of AZ rainlog network here. USGS. Coco. NWS climate reports. (Editorial aside: (earlier cuss word, “dammitall”, has been removed)—WHY don’t they gather all the rain reports into one comprehensive site???!!!)
7:04 AM. Soft top Cumulonimbus protrudes high above other clouds producing a long shadow on a lower Altocumulus perlucidus layer.7:04 AM. “Soft-serve” Cumulonimbus calvus top emerges above lower Cu and Altocumulus clouds. This kind of top goes with weaker updrafts, likely less than 10 mph.
10:04 AM. Showers and heavy Cumulus (Cumulus congestus) continued to range along the Catalina Mountains toward Oracle. These were nice clouds.10:14 AM. Looking in the upwind direction from Catalina, not much going on though storms are raging in the Catalina Mountains. That farthest line of bases, with that fat one out there toward I-10, though, drew your attention yesterday, I am sure, given the explosive conditions we had for storms.10:36 AM. OK, this is looking potent. Finally, tops have reached the ice-forming level and precip is beginning to eject out the bottom of the one on the right. So big, high, top visible, which was of concern, thinking it might only be a light rainshower. Generally, the higher the tops, the more that falls out the bottom1. 10:57 AM. A two part panorama of the incoming, broken line of storms. Part A above, looking SSW with Pusch Ridge on the far left.
10:57 AM. Part B of panorama, looking at this exciting line of showers and thunderstorms toward Twin Peaks, Marana, and Oro Vall
11:07 AM. A strong shaft has developed, indicating much higher tops than in the earlier scene above at 10:57 AM. 11:07 AM. Close up for instructional purposes. Let’s say you’re hang gliding and want to go up into the clouds. That lower extension next to the rain shaft is where the strongest updrafts would be, and, on top of it, the fastest rising top. Have a nice ride!
11:14 AM. Hole in rain aiming for house! This could be bad! Will cloud roll ahead of rain areas, buoyed my outflowing winds ahead of them develop new rain shafts?
12:23 PM. By this time it was all over, the 0.23 inches had fallen, leaving some evidence of flooding. In a change of pace, I wanted to get that evidence in combined with a sky photo so that you could see that there were still clouds around. Cloud has some ice in it, too.
3:53 PM. A final threat of rain appeared as the winds turned briskly from the north and new turrets formed above it and, for a time, headed toward Catalina. It was a dramatic scene, to be sure, but one that disappointed. The clouds forming about the outrushing wind from heavy rain to the north, diminished in size as they approached, no longer reaching high enough to form precip. Partly this is because of our lower temperatures yesterday afternoon, and because when the air goes southbound from areas to the north, its always moving a little downhill and that works against new clouds, too.
3:59 PM. While the dissipation of those clouds to the north was disappointing and not unexpected, to be honest, still it was good to be out and see how green the desert has gotten since the end of July.
The End
Oops today is supposed to be drier witih isolated Cbs, more tomorrow as moisture from TS Lowell leaks into AZ.
The extremely strong hurricane that forms after TS Lowell is sometimes, in the mods, seen to go into southern or central Cal (!) as a weak remnant circulation or stay well offshore, as in the latest 11 PM AST run from last night.So, lots of uncertainty there. Check out the spaghetti below for the bad news:
Valid in ten days, Aug. 19th, 5 PM AST. Those blue circles WSW of San Diego represent a clustering of the most likely position of that hurricane then. And, that cluster is too far to the west to us, or maybe even southern Cal any “good.”
—————————–Historic footnote—————————— 1“TIme to be distracted from the task at hand…. “Generally”, of course, is a fudge word. For example, in the tropics, it was learned back in the 1960s that rain fell as hard as it could about the time the tops reached the freezing level, and before ice had formed. Didn’t rain any harder even if the tops went to 30 or 40 thousand feet! These results were confirmed in aircraft measurements in the Marshall Islands, oh, back in ’99 (Rangno and Hobbs 2005, Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc.).
Some of the biggest rain drops ever measured (5-10 mm in diameter!) were in clouds in the Hawaiian Islands whose tops that had not reached the freezing level–see Bob Rauber’s 1992 paper in J. Atmos. Sci., with Ken Beard, the latter who tried to get rid of intercollegiate athletics at UCLA when he was there in the turbulent late ’60s, as did the present writer at San Jose State (a story for another day). But then, BOTH me and Ken went on to become science weathermen, not the radical kind of Weatherman, i. e., those under Bernadine and Bill, because we left our radical roots and reggae back behind in the ‘1960s, 70s, and/or 80s (well, maybe not reggae…)
Been looking around at quite a number of model runs (well 2, anyway) trying to find the best one for you. Here it is. Its yesterday’s WRF-GFS run that was based on 11 AM AST global data. Has some great rains for us here in Arizona. Those rains, and that incredible hurricane that saunters up the coast of Baja in about ten days, aren’t depicted as well in later model runs, so there’s not much point in showing them. If you want a great, OBJECTIVE forecasting, you know, go to Bob, or the NWS, or wait for Mike L’s detailed one from the U of AZ later this morning! You’re not going to find “objectivity” here when it comes to forecasting rain for a desert region1. Let’s look at two examples of weather excitement in that now-obsolete-run-but-doesn’t-mean-it won’t-happen-anyway-just-because-its-a little-older-run”1: 1) Lotta rain in Arizona (that’s a different near-hurricane over there in the SW corner of the map, one that in one model run from Canada, formerly went over Yuma! Sorry Yuma, and all of Arizona, both of which would have gotten, in that event, a bigger dent in the drought than shown below. Oh, well.
Valid on Thursday at 11 AM AST. Green pixels denote those areas where the model thinks rain has occurred during the prior 6 hours. Most of AZ covered in green pixies! Sweet.
2) Fascinating near-hurricane just off San Diego on the 29th of August, likely surviving so well due to the California Niño mentioned here lately. BTW, this particular hurricane is predicted to be exceptionally large and intense out there when it revs up in a few days, maybe a Category 4 at its peak, looking at some of the model runs. “Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learnin’ how….” The Beach Boys, 1962, sayin’ it like it was for us near-beach bums way back then when the summer hurricanes in the Mexican Pacific sent huge waves poleward on to our southern California beaches, as the one below will2.
Valid in ten days, Friday, August 29th at 11 AM AST. Near hurricane brings rain to San Diego. Colored regions now denote where the model thinks it has rained in the prior TWELVE hours (coarser resolution because its not going to be that accurate in the placement of highs and lows anyway, so why waste time over-calculating stuff?
Yesterday’s clouds
What an outstanding, if surprising day it was! After it appeared, in later model runs available late yesterday morning, that the late afternoon/evening bash from the high country wasn’t going to happen after all (producing local glumness), we had a remarkable in situ explosion of cloud tops. Those clouds just erupted from an innocuous, patchy group of Stratocumulus that invaded the sky around 5 PM. Still, even with the early turrets jutting up there, it didn’t seem possible, at 7 PM, there would be much more growth into showers, let alone, thunderstorms with frequent lightning lasting several hours that happened. Eventually rain even got into Sutherland Heights/Catalina, with 0.17 inches here, and 0.12 inches at the Golder Bridge, and that didn’t seem possible since the rain shafts were so locked onto the Catalinas, and east side for so long. Dan Saddle, about 5 mi S of Oracel, counting the mid-afternoon thunderstorms that locked in upthere, got a 2.68 inches over the past 24 h! That should have sent a little water down the CDO. BTW, a location in the Rincons is reporting 4.09 inches in the past 24!
5:50 AM. Day started with “colorful castellanus.” Hope you saw this.12:26 PM. After a late morning start, the Cumulus congestus tops were streaming away from the origin zone of Mt. Lemmon to over the north part of Saddlebrooke and the Charouleau Gap. No ice evident yet, but it was just about to show itself. BTW, the “51ers” have a nice baseball team in Vegas (of course), this brought to my attention by neighbors recently, showing that a degree of strangeness permeates American life, as also shown in these blogs.
12:44 PM. Ice virga now seen in the right hand side falling out as I passed the budding wildlife overpass now being constructed on Oracle Road. I guess scents and signage will be used to direct wildlife to the overpass.
1:49 PM. Took about an hour more of rain and development for the thunder to start from these locked in turrets that kept springing on The Lemmon.
4:54 PM. Long before this, it was “all over’, the rains no doubt up there had helped to put the fire out, so-to-speak, and with no anvils advancing toward us, there was even hardly any point to remain conscious. It is finished.6:54 PM, 2 h later. Shallow grouping of Stratocumulus provided a nice, if boring, backdrop to the setting sun’s light on Samaniego Ridge.7:04 PM. Only ten minutes later, and I’m out wondering around in the backyard looking for a nice sunset shot, when I see this shocking sight for the time of day, a protruding turret far above the other tops. Still, I pooh-poohed anything happening but a ragged collapse in the minutes ahead. It was too late in the day for heating or anything else to generate rain in situ from these lower clouds (now topping Mt. Lemmon). Nice pastel colors, though.
7:32 PM. Though “pinkie” in the prior photo did fade, new turrets kept bubbling upward, and in disbelief, this one reached up beyond the ice-forming temperature threshhold (is probably topping out between 25-30 kft, not huge) and a strong rain shaft emerged on the Catalinas. After a little while longer, lightining began to flash to the east as the Reddington Pass area started to get hammered. Eventually in the early nighttime hours. these cells propagated to the west, giving us that bit of rain here in The Heights of Sutherland. How nice, and how mind-blowing this whole evening was!
Today
Got some Stratocu (castellanus in some parts) topping Sam (Samaniego Ridge) this morning, an outstanding indication of a lot of moisture in the air, moisture that’s not just at the surface. U of AZ has thunderstorms moving toward Catalina during the late morning (!) and afternoon from the SW, not the usual direction we’re accustomed to. So, keep eyeball out toward Twin Peaks or so for exciting weather today! Oh, my, towering Cu top converted to ice, must be 25-30 kft up there right now at 7:06 AM! Also, notice nice shadow on lower Ac clouds.
The End
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1“Truth-in-packaging” portion of web blog statement.
1Its chaos in the models due to errors in them we don’t always know about, chaos that we try to get a handle on with plots from the NOAA spaghetti factory. But you know all that already, so my apologies for repeating myself again and again. I thought I would see what would happen if I put TWO “1” footnotes….
2Of course, in those days, we had little knowledge about how many hurricanes there were down there due to the lack of satellite data and ship reports. But when the “Weather Bureau”, as it was called in those days did know, there was always good surf on the south facing beaches, like Zuma Beach. So going to the beach, unlike now where wave forecasting is so good, was a real crap shoot. You’d come over that first viewpoint of the ocean on Malibu Canyon Road, on your way to Zuma. one that over looked the ocean a little offshore from Malibu, and either go, “Holy Crap!”, or hope for the best. It was a swell time for lightly employed youth. Below, the best “Holy Crap!” view coming around to that viewpoint, early September 1963 (never saw anything like it before or afterwards; swells were never visible so far offshore from this spot, meaning Zuma would be gigantic). Still remember those Zuma waves, so far out to sea, as the height of small telephones…
Nearly drowned that day at Zuma, me and my pal ignoring lifequard’s advice not to go in. HELL, we’d been body surfing the biggest ones we could there for years by then. Fortunately, he didn’t have to come and get me, which saved a lot of face.
One of nature’s true miracles, one that we Catalinans look forward to every summer, is the “Time of the Ant.” After the first substantial rains, ants burst forth from the ground like little angels with wings, forming tall columns of swirling, joyful creatures that hover above a favorite place above the ground for an hour or two each morning, in acts of conjugation. Sadly, the male participant dies after his reproductive act, while the female and new queen, goes happily off to try and start a new colony, one that may bring us joy in the summers ahead. Its really quite something.
Many nature lovers rush to Arizona from non-flying ant climes to see this remarkable event, which may only last a day or two following the rains. The first episode usually contains the greatest masses of flying ants, and so many come to Arizona at the beginning of July so that they do not miss the “festivities.”
Swarms in the first emergence of the flying ants in summer may number in the tens of thousands, seemingly in a swirling mass of chaos to us. But to them, it is EVERYTHING that they have dreamed of; oh, to fly! Imagine YOU wake up one morning with wings (!), and then had the urge to fly out the door and have sex somewhere, like over someone’s carport! Of course, many would consider this untoward behavior, but I was just trying to get you inside the mind of a flying ant on their wonderful day of emergence, maybe see things in a different light.
After the big rain of the day before, 1.09 inches here, I was ready for them!
7:59 AM yesterday.
I was lucky enough to capture some of the fun-loving, mischievous little creatures yesterday, with some Altocumulus clouds in the background for a good, contrasting backdrop. For your amusement and pleasure, these wonderful shots:
7:59 AM yesterday, close up7:05 PM. This astounding cloudy metaphor of the emergence of the flying ant yesterday evening. “Hail the new insect overlords!”–Kent Brockman, in Deep Space Homer.
Yesterday’s clouds
Did good up around Oracle Ridge, which got a remarkable 2.64 inches in a couple of hours late yesterday afternoon and evening. Cloud details below…. Not much rain elsewhere since the clouds kept redeveloping in the same area.
3:59 PM. After being inactive all day, the Catalinas began to spawn some heavy Cumulus clouds (congestus here), but for a hour or so before this time, they were the essence of “big hat, no cattle” (no rain). But then, blammo, they erupted like a swarm of flying ants out of the ground, reached up to the ice forming level and far beyond just about this time. Here, looking toward the Charouleau Gap. This was to be a monument outpouring, with 2.64 inches at Oracle Ridge, south of Oracle over the next three hours. 1.77 inches fell in ONE hour.4:09 PM. The upward explosion is now underway, and whole cloud scene is changing rapidly, and the first glaciating top can be seen on the left side.4:35 PM. New turrets shot up and kept glaciating over pretty much the same spot. Not a lot of thunder though, so tops weren’t exceptionally high.5:06 PM. The stream goes on, pretty much dumping in the same spot. It was about this time that the Oracle Ridge ALERT gauge had reported 1.77 inches in one hour, but almost nowhere else up there was getting any rain.
6:13 PM. Astounding, after the Oracle complex died away just after 5 PM, it seemed like that was it for the day. Then emerging from the house, I see this! I could not believe it, and it was so pretty in the late sun. But, surely it couldn’t do much. And look, too, how low the cloud bases are, topping Sam Ridge, meaning the moisture regime is still wet and tropical.
6:22 PM. Just 9 minutes later, the tops are surging upward. Can they really glaciate and cause another round of precip on the north side of the Catalinas? Didn’t seem possible, considering the time of day.
7:15 PM. This pastel beauty. A haze layer last evening through which the sun shone helped tint the clouds that yellowish orange, and later, as here, helped amplify the pink hues. Still, it was an unforgettable evening.
7:25 PM. The day ended with some of the most memorable scenes I have experienced here, those pastel colors on those cloud tops. And once again it was raining on the Oracle Ridge area.
Well, it finally happened, we got shafted royally (as CM likes to say, referring to getting rain shafted) yesterday afternoon with a badly needed 1.09 inches here in Sutherland Heights. More than 2 inches fell nearby, too, such as near the intersection of Hwy 77 and 79! The highlight of the storm was, of course, all of those several close lightning strikes between 2 and 3 PM yesterday. If you weren’t out watching them, here’s one for you, one that popped Lago del Oro. (Mr. Cloud Maven person reminds his reader that during lightning, do not stand outside by a tree outside as here. Hmmmph, a new thought…. Maybe that’s where the expression, “Death warmed over” comes from, a person unlucky enough to have been struck by lightning…and then somebody finds him right away!
2:06 PM. Looking northwest; a literal highlight of the day.6:17 AM. The remarkable site of a Sc lenticularis stack over Catalina due to strong easterly winds up there. This is more like a scene from the front range of the Rockies in wintertime. It hovered up there in place for a couple of hours before withering. One almost started looking for infamous “rotor cloud”, filled with severe turbulence. You can see this remarkable cloud for summer and the things it did, courtesy of the U of AZ time lapse film for yesterday, a real keeper! Still have that lenticular cloud over and downwind of Ms. Lemmon today. Interesting.6:23 AM. After a few drops, a little rainbow was seen off to the NW. Quite nice.7:56 AM. (Caution-long, sleep-inducing caption ahead. If you’re driving you’ll want to pull off the road.) Of concern after awhile is whether we might have a gloomy, but dry Seattle-type spring day, or maybe only light steady rains amounting to only a few hundredths or tenths as a disturbance moved toward us. Or, would that disturbance be potent enough to generate deep storms sans heating? For those who live here in the summer, we know that the sun is potent enough, even with dense clouds, especially ones that are NOT composed of ice crystals, to vaporize pretty heavy overcasts. This would be a good thing, because a little heating goes a long way when you have deep, and low based moisture as we had yesterday. Doesn’t have to get that hot. The clouds shown here are composed of droplets, not ice crystals, but, of course, I have just now insulted your Cloud Maven Junior cloud intelligence because you can see the sharpness and detail of the tiniest cloud features; they are not “blurry-looking as ice clouds would be, and more importantly there is no virga, a site that would mean there was ice inside the clouds, ice that would grow into major snowflakes, melt and fall out as rain. So, there is hope here in this sighting of droplet clouds, to continue this novella, for a “burn off” in spite of the heavy, and dark looking clouds because its early in the morning still and they probably have higher concentrations of droplets in them and that in turn cause more of the sun’s light to be reflected off’n the top, and that’s why they look so dark, a darkness that has been enhanced that bit by a little trick of photography called, “underexposing.” Oh, the cloud type? Stratocumulus stratiformis (the second descriptor because there’s so much of it.)
9:46 AM. Within only an hour or two, the thought of a heavily overcast all day could be jettisoned as the normal mid-morning to mid-day thinning occurred. But, now, would the storms be clustered enough to hit Catalina, or would they end up being too scattered as in the day before where big dumps missed us? It was, however, now in the bag, that huge clouds would rise up later in the day due to some heating. Note Ac lenticular slivers.1:47 PM. While doubts arose as the sky filled in again with dark, lackluster Cumulus and Stratocumulus clouds over Catalina, powerful storms were ripping across Tucson and points S leading one to believe that there was a chance these clouds would pile higher until reaching the ice-forming level in spite of moderate temperatures. Sure enough, one of the Great Moments in clouddom, is catching those first strands of rain/graupel that fall from such a cloud, as here. Really, its like seeing a marbled murrelet streaking in from the coast whilst in a redwood forest, its that rare (see Rare Bird, Marie Mudd Ruth, award winning author and friend who likes clouds a lot, in keeping with a “mud” theme here today. Remember, too, you only got a couple of minutes to catch this stage as the large drops and soft fall out at about 15-20 mph.1:59 PM. Moving rapidly westward, unloads west of Saddlebrooke. Worried here since it missed.2:00 PM. More rain and thunder appeared upwind on the Catalinas leading to renewed hope. In fact, the whole sky at this point seemed to be turning into one huge Cumulonimbus. It was great!
3:27 PM. An inch had fallen and it looked like we were going have a lake side property. Next time will get kayak out! Sometimes toads erupt from the earth when this happens, but I guess they like it darker than this.
4:01 PM. One of the prettiest sites after our major rains is this line of Stratus fractus clouds that cuddle up against Samaniego Ridge. Yesterday was no exception, and it was another memorable site of the day.
The weather ahead
Well, drying. Unfortunately we’re in for another long dry spell likely beginning after today. Hoping we can squeeze out one more day with rain this afternoon. Today’s storms will move from an unusual summertime direction from the south-southwest and southwest, so you;ll want to be watching toward the Tucson Mountains to Twin Peaks for stuff that might come in in the afternoon, more of a fall pattern as the winds are shifting aloft today to from the SW. The Catalinas get active with Cu and Cumulonimbus piling up by late morning, but they drift toward the north and not over us as they did yesterday, all this from the U of AZ model run from 11 PM AST last night.
Pretty boring lately…. No motivation here, even after caffeinating royally every morning. Have had some pro work to work on, too, like reviewing a manuscript for a journal–loosely translated, work that’s largely comprised of “finding fault in the work of others,” which I am pretty good at, to be a little immodest. Due this weekend, too…
11 PM U of AZ mod has late afternoon and evening rains in Catalina! Yay. Looks pretty wet, too, through the middle of next week, some lucky places (Catalina/Oro Valley) might get 1-3 inches during that time I suspect. (Neck out pretty far here.)
But…another longish dry spell takes hold after that. Seems to be the character of our summer; a couple good, wet days, then a long dry spell.
Still there were some great cloud sights yesterday, and I wanted to share them with my reader, wherever you are.
Down at second from the bottom is the rare sun pillar, and the last photo, a kind of an odd parhelia (sun dog) since the clouds were mainly Altocumulus ones in which it was occurring and it was darn bright.
Parhelia normally occur in icy Altostratus clouds. I would guess that this one might have been caused by ice crystals produced by an aircraft that passed through that Ac layer toward the horizon, right.
