Flash: Very light rain (R–) falling at 5:30 AM! Amazing… Won’t measure though, as thickest clouds are already sliding away. But still, great to see, to smell the scent of rain in the desert, and feel the drops in this little surprise sprinkle!
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Forgetting about that last big bust, namely the last big trough of the season that let us down by producing no measurable rain, let us now consider tropical finches, or rather, FETCHES, since an example is coming soon, one that might well bring rain. (I know what you’re thinking; you’ve heard that before, wrongly, I might add as in the LBT-LBB). Hope springs eternal I guess, though rain is predicted by both the USA and Canadian models, so there is some mathematical backing to this hope. See below, as rendered by IPS MeteoStar:
Green pixelation approaches Tucson-Catalina urban complex on Friday, May 29th at 5 PM,
5:59 AM. Virga falls from Altocumulus opacus. This can also be seen as like a little slice of the tops of many rainy days when cloud tops aren’t below about -30 C or so. As here, those tops are usually still comprised of mostly liquid droplet clouds in which ice crystals form, grow, and fallout. If the air is not rising to replenish the doplet clouds, then you will be left with a patch of ice and virga, a patch that will eventually die. Estimated top temperatures, -12 to -15 C, a little colder than shown on the TUS sounding for yesterday near this time because we are farther into the cold air aloft than TUS is. Also, it would be unlikely that clouds like these would produce ice at the indicated TUS balloon sounding top of Altocumulus at -11 C. With their geerally small droplets, it needs to be colder than that. Egad! This is way too much info! But what kind of ice crystals would you expect in a water-saturated enviroment at around -13 to -15 C? Yes, that’s right, pretty Christmas tree stellar crystals, maybe some aggregates of dendrites. Remember, too, for aggregattes to form that concentrations of the crystals must be more than about 1 per liter. Too, since they are falling through a droplet cloud with droplets larger than 10 microns in diameter, you would expect those stellar crystals and aggregates of dendrites to exhibit some riming, that is, have impacted some of the cloud drops as they grew and fell through the cloud, though keeping in mind that the crystals must attain a diameter of about 200-300 microns in diameter before riming commences, helped by the fact that stellar crystals (planar ones) fall face down like a clown does when he’s trying to make people laugh and trips over something. Also, I think someone in that big house on the right is about to have a baby.9:40 AM. With all the cool air over us, it wasn’t long before Cumulonimbus clouds began boiling upward, giving someone some rain.9:53 AM. While Cu boiled up quickly on the Catalina Moutains, and iced-out a plenty, they never really got the depth required to produce much more than sprinkles and virga. Can you spot the little bit of ice on the right side of this Cumulus mediocris?10:30 AM. Nice example of the tremendous amount of ice being produced by such modest clouds (see right side here–nothin’ but ice).1:01 PM. By early afternoon it was all over, the clouds too shallow, the tops too warm to produce ice even though they were still well below freezing. Just the way it is. Guess warmer than -10 C (14 F) at cloud top when you see a sky like this with no ice.6:47 PM. Sunset so-so as high clouds to the NW blocked the sun so it didn’t under light these clouds. Here, Cu flatten as the heat of the day, such as it was at 85 F, cold for late May, dies away,
Like you, my heart started pounding when that bank of thick clouds on the horizon got close enough to see that there was a rainshaft to the ground with a minor Cumulonimbus on top of it (ignoring the fact that you could’ve been hanging out by the radar all day).
6:47 PM. Cumulonimbus with rainshaft to the ground slowly approached near sunset yesterday. Big dust plume also visible to the right of the shaft a little later.
Today, the heart of the cold air and best moisture are over us and TODAY we will get those local icing-out Cu and small Cbs with sprinkles here and there. Measurable? Not so sure. Will be lucky. LTG in the area likely today, too.
If you’re a low temperature anomaly centric person at this time of the year (in texting, “LTACP”, or just “LTAC” for short), you will likely enjoy today’s 10 degrees or so below normal afternoon maximum, chillier even with outflows from virga and the scattered light showers around.
More later, photos, too… Behind on animal chores now.
Yesterday’s clouds
I thought it was a pretty nice day for you, though a little disappointing due to the late arrival of the minor rain threat mentioned above. You had quite an array of clouds to discuss in your cloud diary, which was good.
Below, I reprise them for you:
6:30 AM. Altostratus, the State Cloud of Arizona I think; Altostratus. We see a lot Cumulus, of course, but sporadically in the winter following a storm or trough like today, and in our summer rain season, but Altostratus we see year round.
8:49 AM. Mostly Cirrus uncinus (hooked, or tufted at the top).10:03 AM. Accas: Altocumulus castellanus. According to my cloud chart, it could rain with 6 to 196 hours after you see these clouds.
Moisture’s not flooding in quite yet, but just to see the dewpoint creep above 0 F lately has been satisfying. Here, from the U of AZ Weather Department, this plot from early this morning:
Plot of surface station data for 4 AM AST this morning. Numbers on the lower left are dewpoint temperatures; 18 F (!) at TUS, but 38 F over there in Yuma. Even higher dewpoints are headed our way!
Currently, ejecting out of equatorial waters toward Catalina, are banks of middle and high clouds, which, along with lower level moist air from the Gulf of California and waters to the south, will be moving into SE Arizona en masse tomorrow and Friday. You can see this process unfolding here from the University of Washington’s Weather Department’s western hemisphere satellite loop for the past 24 h. Take a look down in the lower right hand corner of these images, by the Equator, and watch those clouds begin to roll northward. Pretty exciting to think that clouds that were near the Equator will be here in 36 h or so.
US model has a paucity of rain, whilst the Canadian mod continues to have a much “juicier “solution for us as the big upper low now over southern Cal wobbles around for a day or then trudges east. The Canadian mod calculates, as it consistently has, that this low will be going slightly farther south as it passes over Arizona than the US model, with the center of the low eventually crossing directly over Catalina on Saturday at 5 AM AST.
A more southerly trajectory means more moisture is like to wrap into our low before it gets here. The best of the rain would fall just before the center arrives.
The start of scattered showers in the area is still later tomorrow and would continue through Saturday morning. The range of amounts for Catalina/Sutherland Heights is still probably “light”, in the range of 0.05 inches to 0.25 inches. However, with thunderstorms likely at times, a lucky hit might make that top end a much greater amount.
For quantitative predictions, go to the U of AZ mod output, ones that will be based on the US overall model, but downscales what the US model predicts a much finer grid of local terrain. So, those calculations, which weren’t done yet from the 11 PM AST data, are likely to be a little less even that what CMP sees. It will be interesting to see which of us has foreseen the more accurate future, the Beowulf Cluster at the U of AZ, or CMP in the game of “Beat the Computer.” (The human usually loses….) ((Oops, just saw now that there is no updated run from last night’s data, a shame, and may be due to lack of funding. How bad is that?))
Should have clouds similar to yesterday today, which is already what’s out there this morning.
Moving ahead to yesterday…
Yesterday’s clouds
Started appearing around mid-day yesterday, those non-Cirrus clouds we call Altocumulus. Some lenticularis here and there as well. I was pretty happy for you now that you could see some non-Cirrus for some excitement.
How high were they? Oh, about 17,000 feet above sea level, or about 14,000 feet above Catalina. Here’s the TUS sounding profile, launched about 3:30 PM. Where the two lines pinch together is where the clouds were, and, if you follow the sloping lines of temperatures to the lower left, you will see that the top temperatures of those clouds were pretty cold, -16 C, around 4 F, cold enough for some ice crystals to form, but not a lot. Below a few shots or your cloud day yesterday.
Tucson balloon sounding (“rawinsonde”) for 5 PM AST yesterday.
1:02 PM. Altocumulus lenticularis dot sky north of Catalina. No ice visible.1:02 PM looking south from Catalina. Altocumulus perlucidus patches with scattered lenticulars. Here’ where you should have been logging your first ice sighting. Look at the delicate, very transparent veils between the clouds. Of course, you would have been estimating less that one per liter concentrations of ice, too, in your cloud diary. The droplet clouds are easily detectable because “cloud condensation nuclei” are far more numerous than ice nuclei. Here, droplet concentrations are likely 100-200 thousand per liter; ice crystals, less than 1 per liter! Those factors make droplet clouds sharply defined, and ice clouds “wispy.”
4:38 PM. Droplet Ac clouds with ice falling out below. Interestingly, nature’s ice nuclei like to form a liquid drop that then freezes rather than form a crystal directly (except at really low temperatures, like -35 C or so).
7:24 PM. Ended up with a nice sunset again. Some ice falling from these Altocumulus clouds is visible, with a hint of a “sun pillar”.
Blazing heat still in the cards once our low passes on Saturday; temperatures will “recover” rapidly to max temperatures of 100 F or so for a good week beginning next week, but a an early June rain is also shaping up.
Some sprinkles/radar echoes passed overhead early this morning. Will check, as you will, for drop images in dust on solid outdoor surfaces to possibly report a trace due to drops that reached the ground. Going out now with flashlight, to heck with that coyote over there. Result: looks like there were a few isolated, larger drops that fell last night. Below, confirmation of echoes overhead from WSI Intellicast’s 24 h radar-derived rain for AZ:
Radar-derived precip ending at 5 AM this morning from WSI Intellicast
Nice sunset with late sudden bloom after looking like there might not be any color at all.
6:54 PM. Mammatus -haped virga hangs down from heavy patches of Altostratus providing sunset highlights. Dimly seen are flakes of Altocumulus clouds, as seen below as well.6:18 PM. Doesn’t look like much of a sunset will get through this solid-looking cloud cover of Altostratus, Cirrus, with flakes of Altocumulus below.10:13 AM. Bright patch of CIrrus is from an aircraft; the Altocumulus flakes with virga hanging down are natural. Only a greatest of the Cloud Maven Juniors would be able to make such a discernation, if there is such a word.10:12 AM. Over this way, a mix of Cirrocumulus and Altocumulus (larger globules).
Expect another middle to high cloud cloudy day with nice breezes. Weak jet stream to south (see map below) as upper level trough passes today, the main criteria for cool season rain in AZ (some 90-95% of all measurable rain in AZ falls only when the jet stream in the middle troposphere (about 18-20 kft above sea level) is south of us. However, while that criteria is met today, just not enough moisture has leaked in over the Baja and southern California mountains for clouds low enough to produce rain. So while its a virtually necessary condition, its not always sufficient.
Forecast winds at 500 mb (18.5 kft ASL) at 11 AM AST. Strongest winds at this level coming onshore in Baja, Cal.
6:05 AM. Pretty ripples in Cirrocumulus below some Cirrus. What a fantastic and subtle scene this herring bone pattern was!9:34 AM. Pretty much a whole Cirrocumulus morning, punctuated by a few Cirrus clouds. Why isn’t it Altocumulus? Granulation is too tiny; no shading. BTW, no ice evident though this layer was colder than -20 C (-4 F).10:30 AM. An aircraft has punched this very thin Cirrocumulus layer and left a tell-tale ice trail that looks like natural Cirrus. Same cause for that second, white ice patch farther to the west. Its almost impossible to detect something like this since the ice trail from the aircraft is almost exactly in the form of a Cirrus uncinus. The absence of natural Cirrus is a clue about what happened.10:34 AM. The aircraft-induced Cirrus is passing overhead, and if you look VERY closely you can see that tiny “supercooled” cloudlets of Cirrocumulus are still there around it. The ice crystals fell below the Cc layer and disappeared over the next 15 minutes.2:27 PM. Later that day….widespread natural Cirrus overspread the sky, with a very thin patch of Altocumulus on the right (granulation is a bit to large for Cc).3:44 PM. Those Cirrus clouds thickened and lowered some, trending (as we would say today) toward Altostratus (translucidus–the thin version).
Today’s clouds
Today our passing cold-core trough is overhead and in the middle of it, the moisture is low enough to trigger Cumulus and small Cumulonimbus clouds as the middle and high clouds exit “stage right.” Should be an interesting day since these cumuliform clouds will be so high-based (above the Lemmon summit) and cold that lots of ice will form, producing virga, and in some places, sprinkles. A hundredth or two is possible, but that’s about it. Heck, I guess there could be some lightning here in southern Arizona as well.
This will be the last interesting cloud day for awhile, as you likely know.
Below, your weather map for 5 PM AST when there should be plenty of ice action all around:
Rained, too, between 3:42 PM and 3:47 PM, actually 273 seconds, if you had your stopwatch out. It was great. I ran around trying to get wet, but couldn’t do it.
3:44 PM. Proof that rain drops did fall yesterday afternoon. Don’t forget to recycle stuff and also don’t forget that this kind of rain is NOT “drizzle”1. Drizzle are fine close together drops that almost float in the air. Tough to bicycle in drizzle if you wear glasses, in fact, I would say its impossible even if you’re wearing a baseball cap and helmet on top of it because the drizzle blows underneath the cap and onto your glasses so you can’t see anything right away. Rain drops fall too fast for this to happen. This from personal experience in Seattle. Always wear a helmet when bicycling.10:23 AM. After a completely clear morning, Altocumulus clouds formed rapidly over and downwind of Mt. Lemmon. Before long, most were shedding ice.11:45 AM. Distant Cumulus cloud forms just underneath some Altocumulus clouds. Here’s where you KNOW that the day is going to be pretty good as far as convection and virga go because these clouds were so cold, and its late March when the sun is strong.1:51 PM. Two hours later the sky was full of glaciating Cumulus clouds, and isolated heavy virga trails, ones heavy enough to reach the ground with a few drops. Looking SW over Oro Valley and toward Marana.2:31 PM. Thunder was heard just a minute prior to this photo, The storm was just west of the Tortolita Mountains.3:29 PM. Part of the cloud mass that brought the sprinkles (coded as RW–) to Catalina. Probably measured below that little streamer, dead center. The virga hanging well below solid young cloud bases told you that those bases were far below the freezing level yesterday. How cold? Sounding indicates that the bottoms of the Cumulus clouds were about -12 C (10 F). The higher tops were colder than -30 C (-22 F)6:36 PM. Residual Altocumulus cumulogenitus containing a lot of ice if you look closely..
Today’s clouds
Still enough moisture for very shallow Cu fractus, Cu humilis, hold the ice (tops too warm). Skies will also be overrun with Cirrus, maybe verging on Altostratus, as part of low and trough barging into northern California today.Will get nice and breezy this afternoon, as the low zips on into the Great Basin and makes its presence known here. Instantaneous puffs might reach 40 mph this afternoon. No rain possible with this system, darn.
However, deeper Sc and Cu with ice in them should be visible up toward the NW-NE horizon today since a little rain and snow is expected on the M-Rim today, this from the U of AZ super mod’s 06 Z (11 PM AST) run, here.
The End.
—————————- 1Here’s the interesting story behind getting THREE public service messages in a single caption/photo: I wanted to both better serve my public by getting some public service messages out there while at the SAME time, documenting some weather singularity, in this case, one of the rare rain events in the Catalina winter of 2013-14. Suddenly, in the midst of the rain I was dancing in, I noticed some shiny drops on the lid of the recycle bin, and things just “came together” you might say for a remarkable photo.
Cloud tops in those deeper Cu reached -30 C (-22 F) yesterday, plenty cold enough for lots of ice, with a few scattered very light showers reaching the ground, even a few drops here in Sutherland Heights a little before 5 PM, qualifying for a day with a trace of rain. Imagine! Rain! What izzat?
Here is that day below (if you want the short version, go to the U of AZ time lapse film department, online here).
Day Summary: Sunny with Altocumulus castellanus/floccus virgae in the early morning, then in the late morning, Cumulus humilis and mediocris, the latter with virga; Cu grew into shallow, but very cold Cumulonimbus capillatus (lots of “hair”-ice), with virga and RWU (rain showers of unknown intensity) in a couple of spots. Sunny again in mid-afternoon, but Cumulus re-developed in mid-late afternoon with more virga and some Cu reaching the shallow Cb stage with sprinkles here and there.
That’s it, in kind of a jumbled form. Hope you logged all these clouds and changes yesterday.
9:55 AM. Altocumulus castellanus/floccus virgae11:06 AM. Cu developed rapidly over and downwind of the Catalinas. Lots of ice at far left, indicating how cold those clouds were, likely around -20 C (-4 F) at cloud top by this time. Bases, too, below freezing by this time.11:10 AM. A classic, gorgeous example of Ac castellanus and floccus (the latter has no base, just a turret). No ice visible here.2:07 PM. Cold Cumulus and Stratocumulus filled in as trough apex was about to pass overhead (wind shift line, one you can see in the movie linked to above).2:08 PM. Rain showers reach the ground toward Marana whose city limit is pretty much everything you see in this photo I think…2:36 PM. Snow on The Lemmon!4:00 PM. Clearing developed for awhile in the mid-afternoon, but then Cu were quickly reforming. Lots of ice again in this one at left, the oldest portion of the cloud where droplets are evaporating, but the ice becomes visible because it doesn’t evaporate as fast as the droplets do. BTW, air flows THROUGH the cloud, youngest portions on the upwind side, oldest portions downwind. You want to know that if you’re flying around with a research aircraft because if you’re only targeting the young portions, you’re not going to find the “correct” amount of ice that developed in that cloud. Some researchers apparently did this and reported in journals anomalously low ice particle concentrations for the cloud top temperatures that they sampled. For the sake of courtesy, I will not mention their names. But this is why at Washington, we always found a LOT of ice because C-M /we knew where to go!14:31 PM. This was probably the deepest cloud of the day, and there is some suggestion of soft hail (“graupel”) falling out as would be an indicator of some higher liquid water contents before it converted completely to ice. Graupel comes from ice crystals or snowflakes that have bumped into a lot of supercooled cloud droplets that then freeze instantly on the crystal, helping it fall faster and collide with more droplets on the way down, a process called “”riming.” Pilots know full well about riming.6:24 PM. Nice sunset color in clouds and on the mountains.
Don’t see any weather ahead that I like, and so not talkin’ about that today.
—————————————- 1One of the many pioneering innovations here at “cloud-maven” is the novella-sized figure caption.
First, it behooves me1 to point out that there remains a considerable amount of uncertainty in the weather WAY ahead. This is demonstrated below by the map from the NOAA spaghetti factory from last evening, one that churned out a LOT of “spaghetti”, perhaps making the point about how chaotic weather is:
Valid at 5 PM, March 26th, two weeks from now. Doesn’t matter where Arizona is; although, although… when I look really close….I think I can see some rain for us. The lines are selected contours of the height of the 500 mb surface, after slight errors have been introduced to the initial state of the forecast model. The actual forecast of those contours is in their somewhere.
Yesterday’s Cirrocu
Late yesterday, a thin moist layer moved in and produced, where the air was lifted that bit more, a little patch of Cirrocumulus, our most delicate cloud.
5:09 PM. Cirrocumulus. No ice apparent, something that would blur the spaces between the tiny cloudlets. Height was about 17 kft above the ground, temperature, -15 C. So delicate!
6:28 PM. Line of Altocumulus enhances sunset. Too thick, elements too large to be Cirrocu, though they were both at the same height yesterday.
I think that covers just about everything.
The End.
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1What an odd expression, to “behoove oneself” in effect, as in becoming a perissodactyla, while doing something you feel you must do as a responsible person. Imagine, before issuing a responsible statement, that it was normal for people to put on hooves, or to wear them when coming out to a news conference to announce something responsible, correct the record, etc. Perhaps, if it wasn’t that bad, you would wear only one hoof…
That thick (likely more than 3 km, or more than 10,000 feet) and steady gray sky diet of Altostratus opacus clouds didn’t provide a lot of visual highlights most of yesterday, in contrast to the many Altocumulus flocculations of the day before. An example of yesterday’s sky for most of the day:
3:50 PM. Altostratus opacus. Or is it? Not much going on here1.
Virga hung down here and there, and some radar echoes during the day suggested a sprinkle here and there reached the ground, but none here.
Later, as usually happens, the tops of the clouds lowered, as did the bases, and we had some pretty Altocumulus again, some with long trails of virga, indicating a deep moist layer below cloud bottoms. For a time, as dewpoints rose, it looked like Ms. Lemmon might be topped with Sc, but those lowest clouds did not get quite low enough.
5:14 PM. Two layers of Altocumulus are present, the lower one having spires (Ac castellanus). Nice lighting on mountains.
5:08 PM. Two layers of Altocumulus are present, the lower one having spires (Ac castellanus), to repeat.
6:23 PM. Heavy virga issues from an old Altocumulus cloud, its once higher, pyramidal or mounding top has collapsed as snow developed in it and in essence, hangs down in an upside down version of what it once was (though not as tall as the virga is long here).The Tucson balloon sounding (rawinsonde) for 5 PM AST (launched about 3:30 PM, and rise at about 1,000 feet a minute.) BTW, takes about an hour and a half to get the whole depth normally measured, to around 100, 000 feet. During that time, or even during the first hour, the atmo is changing, so when its at 40,000 feet, what is measured at 3,000 feet isn’t the same anymore. Introduces slight error into models into which these data get fed. Models think its an instantaneous view of the atmo over Tucson at 5 PM AST (00 Z time). I think you should know this. Note tops of that Ac with heavy virga were about -30 C (-22 F)! Notice, too, that some of those higher, colder Altocumulus flakes are not showing virga in the sunset photo above.
Weathering just ahead….
Rain One (“Little Bro”) is moving onto California coast as I write. Residents in towns like the very-expensive-to-live-in Monterrey rejoicing as drops patter on rooftops now! The negative news here is that the Canadian model has lessened the area of rain in Arizona as Rain 1 passes over us, confines the rain to central and northern AZ mountains now, still light, but not as widespread as before.
At the same time, the US WRF-GFS model has been adding rain in AZ from Rain 1; previously it had NONE. Now, these mods have now come together over us2 to quote a song title from the last century, both showing about the same thing, so that’s probably what will happen. Just rain to the north of us. So, a little less of a close call to Catalina tomorrow as Rain 1 goes by. Just middle and high clouds for us, and probably some virga, nice sunrises and sunsets.
Rain 2, “Big Bro” moves into southern Cal tomorrow night, and still looks like a real and necessary pounder for southern Cal before moving on and drenching little Catalina. Will report on those SC amounts to see how big they get, too.
Rain should be falling here in Catalina by Saturday dawn and continue all day. Range of amounts, still a not-so-great quarter inch on the bottom (if things don’t go well), but top (if things go really well) still an inch! How great would that be? So, best guess about 0.60 inches here in Catalina, from averaging those two “extrema.” Later today, our U of AZ Beowulf Cluster model computations will start to have some quantitative amounts from actual calculations, not just a SOP guess from yours truly. Check here at the U of AZ later in the day for accumulated totals based on this morning’s 5 AM AST data.
Way out there
While our drencher on the weekend seems to be a one-shot wonder for at least a week after it passes, the longest view from our WRF-GFS, valid way out on March 13 at 5 PM AST, 360 h from last night’s model run, has another major storm moving into the SW, but this time it doesn’t come from the west, but from the NW. This is a climatological norm; storms tend to move from NW to SE during the spring months in the western US, and so there’s SOME climatology to hang your hat on that the rain forecast below for us may be a real event, not a fantasy storm, as so often happens that far into the future in our models. See the map below, from IPS MeteoStar’s rendering of the WRF-GFS to brighten your day that bit more, knowing one good rain is coming, and maybe, just MAYBE, the pattern is shifting to a normal one with an occasional rain here in Catalina beginning after mid-March.
Valid at 5 PM, March 13. Green areas denote those regions where the model thinks it has rained during the prior 12 h.
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1
3:50 PM. Actual Altostratus opacus. I’ve been talkin’ clouds here for quite awhile, and in a clever kind of a test, wanted to see if you could tell the difference between the side of my gray car and an Altostratus cloud. Its pretty important to me that you get this right.
It doesn’t get any better than this if you need rain and want 10 inches:
Valid at 5 PM AST, Friday, February 28th. Arrow (upper right panel) points to massive sweep of sub-tropical air into southern Cal, the whole SW really. This from the Canadian Global Environmental Model (GEM) based on last evening’s data.
Actually, 10 inches in a day is not so unusual in the mountains of southern California, which is something that’s going to happen if this model output verifies this weekend. Also, the storm takes a couple of days to go through, and so mountain totals of 10-20 inches are likely in the favored locations. Coastal areas would likely see 2-6 inches I think now with this configuration.
Twenty four hour totals of more than 25 inches of RAIN were observed in the southern California mountains in January 1943, and again in January 1969, to put a forecast of “just” 10 inches in one day in perspective.
Thinking about driving over there, to say, Hoegee’s Camp in the San Gabriel Mountains, where they once got 26 inches in a day (back in ’43). Would really like to see what heavy rain looks like in this basher; rocks coming down onto highways, windy, giant waves along the coast, a real weather hullaballoo. Maybe we should organize a storm tourism trip? Think of all the happy people we’d see, too, in this muttin’ bustin’ drought bustin’ bustin’ bustin’ bronc bustin’ storm, to kind of get in the rodeo frame of mind here to emphasize to the people of Tucson just how rough it will be on the city folk of southern Cal.
The good news here is that predicted rains have been increasing here in Catalina and throughout Arizona in the models as well. Maybe it won’t be too late for our spring greening to green up a little more. An inch is now possible here on the top end, minimum likely to be as much as a quarter of an inch (even if mods really off) ending on the 3rd.
Still looking at a close call, maybe some sprinkles before that from the first slug of rain that hits Cal, on Thursday, the 27th of Feb. Much of Arizona should get something from that first rain intrusion.
What a great cloud day it was yesterday! Fabulous.
Here are a few cloud shots:
Can you name them?
Today? Sat imagery makes it look like our middle clouds will be thick enough to produce isolated drops. Be sure to log any that you see.
