Altocumulus clouds – Page 23

Cirrus, maybe some lenticulars, and dust ahead

In case you missed it, the thin layers of Altocumulus clouds provided a bit of a sunset “bloom” around 6:30 PM AST yesterday. Here’s what yesterday looked like, and I am doing this because I have a strong feeling some of you like to live in the past, like I do when I think about my best sports days in high school and JC R’s bat, and maybe a coupla others after that, so that’s why I am reprising yesterday below):

Here’s what we are looking at, in order of their appearance: 1) encroaching Cirrus (its not a cloud name, its what it was doing), 2) later, the Cirrus thickening (usually downward) into a nice example of Altostratus, a cloud normally composed of only ice crystals and snowflakcs, 3) Altocumulus perlucidus translucidus (honey-comb pattern, quite thin), with traces of ice falling out if you look VERY carefully, and 4) and 5), the Altocumulus as it was briefly (you only had a few minutes) underlit by the distant setting sun (its 93, 000, 000 miles away).

Moving on to the future, such as the rest of today

Its great, weather people can really do that, look to the future and say things that will actually happen with a great degree of confidence, like for the rest of today. (HELL, an economist can’t even predict what will happen in the next few hours!)

What will happen in the hours ahead? Cirrus clouds, patchy ones here and there, and a good chance of some Altocumulus or Cirrocumulus lenticular clouds as the jet stream powers its way down here, shooting from the southwest over us by late in the day. Sometimes, and I have predicted this before without a lot of success, you get these tremendously fine grained clouds (Cirrocumulus) that suddenly pop out of the blue overhead. There’s an awfully good chance of seeing those today, too, with the strengthening winds aloft. Of course, I’ll be watching for you if you miss them, and will replay anything “exciting” tomorrow.

Also, as the low in southern Nevada strengthens tremendously during the day, the winds will pick up as you all likely know by now, and the blue sky will start to wash out in a brownish dust haze. Twin Peaks may not be visible from Catalina late in the afternoon due to dust. You can track the development of that low here, from the University of Washington. Right this moment, 5:50 AM, there is not much there, so a lot of the development excitement in southern Nevada is ahead. The NWS, Tucson is quite excited about all the things that might happen, as you will see here!

Enjoy and interesting day!

The End

“The answer”, as well as a lot of other things, will be “blowing in the wind” tomorrow

What did that mean, anyway, the “answer” is blowing in the wind”? What a crazy thing to say! What “answer”? I never heard it. Me? I liked, “Everyone Knows Its Windy”, by The Association. Now there’s a song…and “everyone” will know its “windy” tomorrow afternoon just like they said back then. Very accessible song. But first this diversion/tirade.

So much for the “plethora” of storms foretold by our models some nine days ago. It even appeared that Catalina could have a snow day yesterday or today. Poof! The Catalina snow day was moved to Boise, Idaho. Imagine a week before the Tucson Rodeo, it was announced that it had been moved to Midland, Texas! Well, the models need to shape up! They’re just awful beyond a week or so, always indicating, it seems, a big storm here. What have our weather scientists been doing all this time with all that government money they get year after year???? (hahahaha, sort of). ((Just kidding guys, now that I don’t get any government money to study weather and clouds at the big university where we all know its hobby work and we’d do it for nothing but don’t tell anyone….))

OK, one of the many “storms” foretold in the model will pass over us tomorrow. It won’t rain. The jet stream in the middle of the atmosphere will be a hair too far north, and the lower moisture needed for precip and circumscribed by it will be so close that we will likely see some Stratocumulus off to the NW-N shedding some virga or snow and maybe some small Cumulus here (Cumulus humilis). Probably most interesting tomorrow, if there is enough moisture in the mid-levels, say around 2o,ooo feet or so, is for a couple of Altocumulus lenticularis clouds to form, those almond like clouds. Those can be pretty cool, and sometimes cause people to call in about seeing a flying saucer. Really, its happened. But we’re smarter. We know “a” Altocumulus lenticularis when we see one! In case you forgot, here’s one near Ashland, Oregon:

The low pressure center with this system is going to be pretty intense as it deepens over southern Nevada and then scoots on across Utah tomorrow. “Intense” means it will have a lot of isobars around its center, and lot of isobars means wind because the pressure on the outside of the low is so much different (higher) than at its center. I guess that is something; it will feel like a storm is coming, and the relative humidity will go up after the front passes.

The End.

Dark clouds but no rain yesterday. What happened?

Quick answer: 1) drops too small to coalesce and form ones bigger ones ; 2) no ice in ’em, for the most part.

Read below if you want a LONG discussion about yesterday; dull photos way below

Let’s talk about it, though probably more than you want to. You’re probably a little down because it didn’t rain yesterday, hour and hour though it looked like it should, except for a couple of “sprinkles-its-not-drizzle” drops. You probably had to use your headlights in the middle of the day like people in Seattle do. It began to clear up some, gradually, in the afternoon. Here are a few of scenes below, beginning with the morning overcast, with the last two shots between 4 and 5 PM AST as the clearing was underway.

So, what kind of clouds are they? Well, Stratocumulus in the first shot, in the second shot a higher layer of Altocumulus or water-topped Altostratus¹ is underlain by Stratocumulus and Cumulus clouds (when the bases are more isolated, we call them “Cumulus”; when they are more connected together, we hedge the name toward “Stratocumulus”.)

The third shot, showing Stratocumulus looks particularly ominous, probably the darkest part of the daytime was here around noon AST. A shot toward the mountains next shows the underlying Stratocumulus and Cumlus below the higher layer of Altocumulus/Altostratus. These clouds can’t be “nimbo” this or “nimbo” that because there is no rain to speak of falling from them. (“Nimbus” means rain in Latin.) Note the good visibility under all of the clouds; no precip there.

Finally, with the breakup of the overcast, shown in the last two shots, we can get an idea of the thickness of the lower clouds, at least at that point, about 2,000 to 3,000 feet at most. Also in those last shots you will notice that the higher layer has moved away or dissipated, and with a bit more heating, the clouds are tending more toward Cumulus rather than Stratocumulus.

The higher layer, located at Altocumulus level, about 12,000 feet above ground level, was actually the cloud layer producing the sprinkles, and was a key player in how dark it was; two layers, naturally, stacked on top of each other, will make it darker looking than just one, especially, in this case, when they are both pretty shallow. And with a top at about -18 C, you can almost be assured that the top was composed of mostly droplets, not ice crystals. A droplet cloud reflects much more sunlight back into space than ice crystal clouds like Cirrus and Cirrostratus.

Anyone still reading? I’m doing my best here…

That last photo demonstrates that in spite of having a little rain overnight, and even during the day, there was a lot of haze/smog in the air. It wasn’t washed out by rain. And, the more clouds get bunged up with aerosol particles on which drops can form on, the higher the concentrations of cloud droplets are in them, and the smaller they are as a result. Smaller drops cause more sunlight to be reflected back into space, and when that happens, the bases look darker. In Seattle, in our airborne studies, it was usually the case to have darker based clouds downwind of the city, and light gray clouds near the coast and offshore, even when both cloud layers were about the same depth. However, there are natural sources, like volcanoes that can also affect clouds this way. For example, “VOG” (volcanic smog) in Hawaii darkens clouds there because VOG has particles that can form drops in clouds. I seen it myself and I know a dark, polluted cloud when I see one!

What happens when you get smaller drops in clouds, as smog produces in them? It makes it harder for something to fall out the bottom in two ways.

First, in smog filled shallow clouds, drops don’t get big enough to collide and stick together to form larger drops (something that happens when they get to 30-40 microns in diameter (about a third of a human hair in width). But, even in the event that could have happened yesterday, drops got that large, the result would have been only TRUE DRIZZLE, fine, close-together drops that go under your umbrella if there is a breeze of any kind. Very tough on people who bicycle and wear glasses.

The more important key to not raining clouds, was that the clouds did not have, IN GENERAL, cold enough tops to form ice crystals. The lower ones seem to have topped out around -5 to -7 C (23-20 F), temperatures at which smoggy clouds with itty bitty drops cannot produce ice.

The higher layer, seen in the second and fourth shots, was just cold enough, about -18 or so at top from the morning TUS sounding, to form a few ice crystals. Also, being higher, it was probably not impacted as much by smog.

Quitting here, brain exhausted. Hope this is somewhat comprehensible.

The End

¹The smoothness of that higher layer is due to ice crystals falling out the bottom, obscuring an Altocumulus-like cloud from which they are originating. Sometimes this has been called the “upside down” storm because the top is liquid like Altocumulus clouds where it is COLDEST, but underneath is all the ice, where the temperatures are higher. (Man, this is getting way too complicated to comprehend!)

0.03 inches! Not as much as expected!

Want to keep the excitement level up…after all, it is raining somewhere near by… Besides, if you’re excited, it will sound like more happened than really did. (Another ploy is to report large amounts of rain somewhere else: “An Avra Valley location got 0.39 inches late yesterday and last night.” Really did.)

http://159.233.69.3/temp/pptreport.txt

Well, at least this rambling low “below” us in Mexico is not a total “gutter ball.” It was looking at little grim for rain last evening with all the stars out. Here is a loop of that low’s drift, with obs and satellite imagery on a 500 millibar map from my former “home” Department at the University of Washington:

http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~ovens/loops/wxloop.cgi?sat_500_full+9

You will see here that a blob of deep clouds is sneaking around in “back” of us and will likely deliver an odd fall of rain from the northeast as the low scoots off to Texas. The models, in all their wisdom, think the rain in those sneaky clouds can get over the Cat Mountains but to the east of us here in Catalina. Don’t expect a lot, then, maybe just a hundredth or two if we are lucky this morning before those clouds starting thinning and moving off. Still, it would be something. Rain and snow threats are still in the model outputs (last night’s 5 PM AST one) in the days ahead for us, but have diminished in magnitude; become more marginal in later runs, dammitall. Hence, this font size to reflect that.

Cloud report

Yesterday was one of the great days of clouds we have here so often, so pretty with all that snow coming down out of such little wispy clouds. Here are some scenes, beginning with the momentary underlighting of Altocumulus clouds shedding long virga trails. In the second shot, I will no doubt have to admonish people again that to see what I saw, you must hold your computer monitor over your head. This was a long fiber of virga (snow), like those shown in the first photo, but was overhead. So nice!

Cloud tops of these little clouds, those flat flakes at the top of the virga (sometimes called, “generating cells”, source regions for all that ice, by my reading of yesterday’s Tucson sounding, were about -25 C (-13 F) at about 15,000 feet above the ground here. These are low temperatures for us at that level, BTW.

The rest of the day was generally a joy, too, with terrific examples of glaciating (turning completely to ice) Altocumulus castellanus clouds (next shot). Those whitish turrets in the foreground above the bush have glaciated, while the others are still mostly liquid water clouds, on their way to becoming icy, and cirrus-like. This glaciation has just happened and you can infer that because the snow has not yet fallen from the bottoms of those clouds above the bush. If you really look hard you can see the telltale filaments, fibers, stranding in those clouds, too.

A really nice example of “Ac cas”, turreted middle-level clouds, are those whitish clouds in the distance toward Kit Peak. That next shot is of an Altocumulus turret long after it has glaciated with only a ghost of its former height shown protruding above a long, fibrous, icy trail. There may have been other smaller turrets as well.

What was happening here is that the air just below these Altocumulus clouds, was only moist for a short distance, and then became extremely dry. So, initiatlly, the ice that fell out of these clouds may have grown in size, but then when they starting falling into the dry layer, began evaporating rapidly. As they did, the fallspeeds of the crystals went down to practically nothing and so, being something like diamond dust snow, seemed to float horizontally in the air. And as they do this at these small crystals sizes, they lose the stranding become something akin to a fog of ice crystals that gradually disperse from the parent clouds. Sometimes layers of Cirrostratus clouds, or large patches of thick Cirrus (spissatus variety) form in this way. An example of ice clouds having formed like that yesterday in shown in the next shot.

Finally, just some shots of some pretty clouds, the next (supercooled) Altocumulus perlucidus (tending toward castellanus) and NOT showing any ice, and then just more shots of those little snowstorms in the sky.

The End, finally!

Plethora of storms ahead; Catalina snow day still being foretold for Feb. 25th which is only nine days away now!

To help understand that odd word, “plethora” in the title in case you are befuddled by it, I have added a YouTube teaching module to help you out: “What is a ‘plethora’?”

Well, one of the great model runs of our time has come out once again last night after yesterday’s great model run of our time based on the that morning’s data. SEVERAL rain days foretold in the next couple of weeks! One of these is actually a snow day, Feb, 25th, first predicted by the models about a week ago. This would be the “real deal” here in Catalina, not some “diabatic” (a weather term opposite of “adiabatic”) fluke as was our inch or so of snow two days ago, one that happened due to extremely heavy precip in the clouds above us, thus drawing the freezing level downward.

The first rain day is today, likely beginning after 5 PM AST, and then continuing into tomorrow for a second day. Here are some rainy/snowy snapshots from our friends in Canada at the EnviroCan weather service where they use a modified version of the ECMWF (European) forecast model here. The first panel is valid for 5 PM today just before the rain is supposed to begin. (If you don’t click on the panels below, you’ll need binoculars to see what I am talking about.)

Does this pattern look familiar in that first panel?

Yep. “SOSO” as we have been seeing all winter when storms strike. In the lower left panel you will see all that moisture streaming (colored regions) into our today’s cut off vortex from the south from the Mexican Pacific and linking up with a moist plume from the Gulf. Interesting to see that. Also, as it gets cut off, and great for us, it begins to dawdle while edging eastward along the US-Mexican Border, allowing those moist plumes to “filler up”, just like at a gas station. So, the rainy areas with this low should be expanding/appearing as clouds are enhanced; deepen up and begin to precip. Very exciting.

What’s been great is seeing the amount of precip predicted in Catalina from this low increase gradually over time as the models were seeing that it was not going as far south as they thought earlier. Here is another panel for this storm, valid for tomorrow afternoon at 5 PM AST. While the low has gone by to the south during the day tomorrow, this model suggests that it likely will have rained on and off during the day. This is because so much moisture arrived in this low that it has developed a “wrap around” band of rain to its north and west, good for us, kind of like a sucker punch. You should be able to see that happening today and tonight in this great IPS sat and radar link, as well as clouds “appearing” over the deserts to the west and south of us, and then developing echoes as they deepen.

Our local U of AZ Wildcat Weather Department has this great depiction of this “wrap around” development from their own model run here. Nice!

Here are the additional days ahead with more rain, and also, low snow levels. Mt Lemmoner’s rejoice! Below, the next panel, Sunday afternoon into Monday morning, this next trough.

Brrrrr, another cold blustery day Sunday, but notice this one is NOT a cut off and so will move through rapidly. Then, 4th panel, a dollop on Tuesday, just a minor trough passes by, and then, after a break, the Arctic iceberg on the 25th. Check this trough out in the last panel. Awesomely cold!

With luck, and a little verification of these predictions, maybe the washes will run later this spring!

The Cloud Report part of blog

Had some complicated, but nicely detailed Cirrus clouds float over in the early afternoon, a part of our invading storm’s circulation. This was followed by a large clearing and then encroaching Altocumulus patches trailing virga (ice crystals) in gorgeous, fine strands that wiggled this way and that in the setting sun’s light as that falling snow responded to slight changes in the wind below those little flakes of Altocumulus cloud. Enjoy.

The End.

“Hello I must be going”

This trough about to cruise over Catalinaland is going too fast for much precip, “hence”, to use an old word, the title. (A quote from a Marx Brothers movie of yore.) We have about 12 h of rain potential in the form of brief passing showers from this morning to this evening. So, we will be lucky to get a 0.25 inches or thereabouts from this one today. BTW, if you look up between 5 PM and 8 PM you will see this trough go by at 20,000 feet above us or so. Better, deeper clouds before this time, flattening clouds after this time. Here is the several day loop, as produced by the University of Washington’s Weather Department’s model from last night’s data, and the “panel of passage” from that below, showing the trough (curved belt of winds) right over us.

The purple blob is not a sports related thing because this is from the Husky (purple and gold) Weather Department, but rather shows another puddle of even colder air than today’s trough is predicted to be over southwest Washington, violently spinning as it wobbles on down into the Southwest and gets stuck there for a day or so.

If the map below looks familiar its because it is the modis operandi for this winter where isolated spinning cyclones roll down the West Coast toward Arizona, ending up cut out of the main flow. And here’s another one with cold, and maybe rainy portent, for Catalina in a couple of days. Pretty remarkable how this pattern has recurred this whole winter beginning in early November, and after the long “sunny malaise” of several weeks, has returned. Awesome.

But wait, there’s more! (I am screaming here as in proper advertising)

This pattern doesn’t end with this current greyhound of a trough, but rolls along with one COLD trough after another, some dry, some with precip over the foreseeable future (still screaming)! The West and Southwest are going to answer the Euro cold of the past two weeks with some of our own that may garner headlines! February 25th, still looks like it might be a snow day in Catalina, rain changing to snow on that day! Can you imagine? Hang on.

A quote from Mark Albright, U of Washington research meteorologist and former WA State Climatologist before he was fired for saying that the Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon still get a lot of snow in spite of GW:

“Yeah, better prepare for snow on 25 Feb according to the new 14 Feb 00 UTC gfs run.”

So, there you have it.

Some cloud shots from yesterday’s gorgeous if cool day.

First Cumulus “pancake-us” (humilis), and second, the “supercooled” Altocumulus layer that announced the approach of today’s trough.

Jeckyll-Hyde models have future AZ rain once more after Big Miss today

Trying to feel better today about the huge miss, that “gutter ball” low that is slipping down the Baja coast toward MMZT (“Mazatlan” in weather identifier jargon) right now as I write, and trying to forget about what it could have been. Reminds me, too, of that critical dropped pass in the Superbowl by some guy in the last 40 seconds that could have changed the game, or that girlfriend who found out I was older than she thought and I went off the relationship possibility radar after that, etc. From the University of Washington, to sigh about, this map series for 500 millibars . Its good to sigh about things, shows you’re alive inside, have feelings that get crushed every so often. Hahahaha, sort of.

You will see that the winds at 500 millibars (18,000 feet ASL or so) around the Baja low are stronger on the back side (the green lines are closer together on the west side compared to the east side). Therefore, to paraphrase, “Don’t need no model” to know that this low going to head SE and away from us. Maybe it’ll reach the Galapagos Islands….dammitall.

As the low moves farther and farther away, the gradual ascent of air that produces all those clouds you see drifting up toward us from the south, weakens. The rain lessens, too, the clouds begin to thin and lift above the ground as they move into AZ. That’s what happens in these situations. That upper low needs to stay close for the clouds to remain thick be rain producers here.

So, even though the clouds look great on the satellite images, and are producing rain to the south of us here in Catalina, and are heading this way, they end up thinning and weakening as they do. Expect to see a lot of virga today from heavy Altostratus opacus clouds (mostly deep ice clouds), and that’s about it. But even a sprinkle would be nice, just to remind us again that it can still rain here.

Rain in the future?

Here is is, THREE chances the mods now say after having nothing just yesterday at this time. Two minimal events have shown up; one on the Sunday the 12th and again on the 14th, THEN this behemoth of a storm on the 23-24th, shown below! I am beside myself with excitement dreaming about how important I might be to my friends a couple of days before it hits! Though we know, by now, that what is shown below is as likely to be realized as an ice crystal forming in HELL, nevertheless, it is HOPE. Check it this out from IPS Meteorstar’s rendering of our US WRF-GOOFUS (“goofus” after about a week in advance) model and be happy! “Totally awesome!”

“In case you missed it” department; yesterday’s aircraft effects on Altocumulus clouds

The temperature of those “supercooled” clouds was around -20 C, perfect for aircraft to make holes and ice canals in them, a kind of inadvertent cloud seeding. Here are a couple of shots, the first, a hole with an ice patch in the middle, 2) and ice canal, and three strange optics caused by aircraft-produced ice crystals.

Enjoy, or be upset by artifact ice.

Hawaiian Storm and Big Wave Alert

Continuing the theme about meteorologists and the excitement we get over bad storms, a weather student at the University of Washington was beside himself and sent an e-mail to all of us on the weather list, in case the rest of us missed it, this NWS bad storm news for the Hawaiian Islands and giant surf. Seemed kind of funny, this extra effort to bring to our attention a really bad situation there. I do have to admit wanting to go see the waves crashing on the rocks and world class surfers who will come in their droves to surf’em. I had to smile reading this:

“Check out the front page of www.weather.gov right now – the unusual front Greg Hakim mentioned at the end of weather discussion today is the top story, above the map. If it’s changed by the time you’re reading this, here’s the message:

…Threat of Coastal Inundation for the Hawaiian Islands and the Marshall Islands…
Published: Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:27:29 EST
High Surf Warnings are in effect for Hawaii, where the 10 to 20 foot waves observed today are expected to rise to 18-35 feet tonight. High tides and strong winds are expected to impact the Hawaiian Islands as a cold front moves across the area. This will increase the potential for coastal inundation, with potential impacts including road over-wash, sand or rocks on the roadways, and water approaching exposed property areas. The Marshall Islands have the potential to be similarly impacted. D etails…”

Smoke and mirrors in the models; fire in the sky

For those of you who have forgotten that heavy metal pioneering band, Deep Purple, and their hit, “Smoke on the Water”, to which this post sort of alludes to, straining really, take this. It was kind of fun to see this “songumentary”, because it was about something that really happened. In a line out of Spinal Tap, the parody heavy metal band, one review considered Deep Purple, “the globe’s loudest band.” How funny!

Here’s the “fire in the sky” at sunrise yesterday, and in case you missed it. Fabulous blaze of fire underlighting those Altostrastus clouds with their snow virga.

Then, in the afternoon, we had these sky gems; Altocumulus clouds, mostly of the floccus and castellanus varieties, some shedding ice in what up there would have felt like snow flurries. For those three of you who follow this page, you can guess immediately how cold those ice-shedding Altocumulus clouds were: colder than -10 C, and probably colder than -15 C without even looking at a temperature sounding.

The weather ahead; discouraging.

The models have been gradually reducing the chances of rain since the last blog about rain ahead, and when they do show rain on or around February 7th, its been reduced from what was once going to be a substantial period of rain to a minor event. Hence, the models have truly come up with “smoke and mirrors”; looks real but its not.

Rain at the end of the tunnel?

Finally, the dark tunnel of pleasant, dry weather may be coming to an end, I am happy to say. The WRF-GOOFUS model longer range output has been showing RAIN in southern Arizona for two or three runs out around the 7th to 14th of February. Of course, those who follow this blog know that RAIN predicted in southern Arizona that far away is like the square root of -1. It doesn’t really exist; its imaginary. Still, it COULD happen, and you get a little more confidence when it shows up in more than one model run. The USA! WRF-GFS model is really very good out to about five-seven days, but gets “goofus” after that, you almost always can’t rely on what it says with rare exceptions. But, that having been said, remember that our models are still a lot better than economic forecasting models. Think of the unforeseen “black” stock market days that come up! Q. E. D. They don’t know what the HELL they are doing over there. Just kidding.

Below, some happy thoughts should accrue from viewing the images below if not already in place due to coffee. Think of flowers. And, if you’re like me, you’re happier overall and feel better about yourself thinking about a future rain in a desert region. Below, what the WRF-GOOFUS model thinks February 12th will look like, based on thinking done on last evening’s (5 PM AST) global data. This is so good I have reproduced TWO renderings from IPS Meteostar for that day. It can hardly get ‘”greener” (show more precip) in the entire Southwest than what this storm is supposed to do on February 12th, and we even see some dark “green” (heavier rain), turning into blue (even heavier rain) in southern Arizona in this sequence. Streams would likely run in places in southern AZ with this overall scenario. Its a great thought!

BTW, the later model run, just six hours after this one (based on 11 PM AST data, but whose awake then to take good obs and there aren’t that many anyway?) took a lot of this rain away and so I didn’t want to show it because its who I am. (hahahaha, sort of)

On a more mundane level, another fabulous AZ sunset last evening caused by…..what kind of clouds am I? Moslty Altostratus (really thick all or mostly ice clouds) and Altocumulus (mostly droplet clouds far horizon and very thin). See far below.

The End.

Pomp and circumstance, but only a hundredth

“Pomp”, in the form of some thunder and lightning, and a few hail stones between 10 and 10:30 PM AST; “circumstance” with a pretty strong trough going by. But they only delivered a hundredth of an inch of rain at the ground here in Catalina. I guess the bugs will be satisfied, but it was a tiny bit disappointing to me. Was hoping for TWO hundredths. The U of AZ computer model did a nice job foretelling a tenth or less of rain. The most rain reported around here is 0.12 inches way up in the Catalina Mountains at CDO and Coronado Camp.

In case you missed it, here’s when and where the lightning occurred from Strikestar-Astrogenic systems. The last panel, lower left, shows those surprise lightning strikes that occurred around 10:15 to 10:30 PM AST last night. BTW, these folks have the best presentation of lightning occurrences that I have been able to find, one that includes non-ground strikes.

Now its sit and wait in the sun for maybe two weeks or more for precip. The closest thing to a storm here in the next FIFTEEN days that the models (courtesy of IPS Meteostar) are showing is this very strong upper low and trough that, as shown below over the Four Corners area, passes by too far to the east of us on February 1st-2nd to be considered a threat.

This system been showing up on the models for days and days, sometimes as one that can bring rain here, but it hasn’t been shown that way lately in the models. The fact that it has been persistent as a feature that affects the Southwest is a good sign that something major will pass by us in early February, and at the least will bring quite a chill whether we get precip or not.

In the meantime, we will have to be content with a long, long stretch of a sunny weather malaise, where almost everyday is perfect for a winter day.

Clouds?

Here are some from yesterday, and again, a great, late-blooming sunset. Almost gave up on it happening. First, the nice strand of Cirrus yesterday morning that heralded the thicker layers behind it and shots of those multi-layered clouds consisting of Altocumulus, Altostratus (the smooth one), and then the sunset “bloom.”

The End.