Unbelievable…. Well over 100 inches in the coastal range just north of San Luis Obispo (see arrow below). And, check those max totals in the table at right, too.
April also produced significant precip in central and northern Cal with almost 20 inches of water at the wettest site. More will accrue in May, too.
And remember most of all, that no one saw this incredible year coming! I think that’s why we love weather.
Makes up for the disappointing Big Niño water year of 2015-16, too.
The End
Oh, and just now, a very exciting sighting on the front door!
As of the end of February 2017. You can see were right about at the average for the Water Year,, but it took some “heavy lifting” in December and January to get there.
Doesn’t look promising for much rain here in Catalina in March, however. No rain in sight through the next 10 days at least.
Let’s check our 7 inches with what’s happening upwind, say, in CALIFORNIA, and see if there’s been any drought relief there, through February, via the CNRFC:
California water year totals through the end of February 2017. Note one station in the central Califorina coastal range is already over 100 inches! There are 20 stations already over 100 inches as can be seen from the table at right. March looks to have substantial rains north of SFO, which will add appreciably to those highest totals. Amazing! You can go to the CNRFC and expand these interactive maps, btw.
As you are likely to know from many media stories last year, Cal was in a drought siege of five straight years, with but got a little relief last year in the northern part thanks to help from the giant Niño, one of the strongest ever.
Alas, it was one that failed to deliver as the big rain producer for the south half of Cal and the SW in general as was expected.
In case you’ve forgotten how bad things were in Cal, let us look back at what was being said, those horrific appearing drought maps, and also how hopeful were were at the time that the Big Niño would take a bit bite out of drought. This is a really good article:
Then, when the Big Niño faded away like maple syrup on a stack of buckwheat pancakes last spring and summer, we were surely doomed for more dry years. And, for a time, the dreaded cold tongue of water in the eastern equatorial region, the so-called, La Niña, started to develop, which would be no help at all for a good rain season like a Big Niño is, usually.
The Niña faded away, too, to nothing as the winter went on, so we really didn’t have much going on in the tropical Pacific to help us figure out what kind of winter rainfall regime we were going to have om 2016-17. Not having anything going on meant winter rainfall could go either way, a difficult to figure out situation for season forecasters.
In retrospect it is pretty astounding how big a signal must have been out there SOMEWHERE that this winter was going to be one for the history books on the West Coast in general, and in particular, for Californians. Californians saw their drought chewed up and spit out in a single winter, including snow packs so high the height of some mountain peaks have been revised. (I’m kidding.)
No one saw such an astounding winter coming.
This winter sure makes one think of the QBO (Quasi-biennenial Oscillation, one up there in the Stratosphere where there’s almost no air (haha, well, practically none)… Did the QBO have a role in this astounding winter; was there a delay in the effects of the Big Niño even without a bunch of convection in the eastern Pac tropics? Doesn’t seem that could be right…
But, William “Bill” Lau, U of Maryland scientist, reported some statistical evidence of such a lag way back in ’88 due to a QBO connection of some kind and ENSO, no physical cause could be discerned, however, not yet, anyway. Lau, 1988, is reprised below for readers who want to go deep:
Sure has looked like the Big Niño WY we expected last year!
Some recent clouds; after all, this is CLOUD maven, not RAIN maven:
I’ve been kind of holding out on you. I dropped my camera and busted it. Its no fun taking pictures when you don’t have a real camera. Still doesn’t work right, but take these anyway:
March 4th, afternoon. Hope you logged this; the rarely seen CIrrus castellanus (almost “congestus” in size) or, informally, “Cumulo-cirrus.”Poppies are out, btw, in case you haven’t noticed. Nice display on “Poppy Hils” just across and southwest of the Pima County Pistol Club, off Bowman.March 4th, late afternoon. Nothing terrifically special in this tangle of Cirrus spissatus (“Cis spis” to cloud folk) but I thought it was just a really nice scene
Moving to the next day, Sunday, that REALLY windy day:
March 5, Sunday morning 6:13 AM. Altocumulus lenticularis alerts cloudwise folk to the possibility of windy conditions although it was already windy.3:55 PM, March 5th. After a day of solid Altostratus overcast with underlying Cumulus and Stratocumulus, a layer of Altocumulus began to move in to add a little more interest to the sky.3:57 PM. Looking to the north revealed that some of the lower Cumulus/Stratocumulus complexes reached heights where ice could form. That smooth region on the bottom and right side of the cloud is a fall of ice from this cloud with a RW- (text for “light rainshower”) if you like to text stuff) right below that. This is not a lot of ice and so you’d be thinking the cloud barely made that ice-forming temperature. CMP doesn’t think it was caused by an ice fallout from that higher layer, which sometimes can happen. Let’s look at the most timely sounding, just to check. From the real Cowboys at the University of Wyoming, this:The TUS sounding which I only now just saw, showing a vast separation between the lower Stratocumulus and the higher layers of Altocumlus and Altostratus on top. Note, too, that over TUS the tops of the lower cloud is not quite at -10°C the temperature we start to look for ice formation in AZ. However, our clouds were NW of that balloon sounding, and it would have been that tiny bit colder, and tops were also lifted some when they passed over the Tortolitas earlier, meaning that the tops of this complex were colder than -10° C (14° F) at some point.
Wow, too much information….after a hiatus in blogging I feel like that Oroville Dam in California, metaphorically overflowing with too much hand-waving information.
6:03 PM, March 5. Its still real windy. Line of virga brought a few drops when it passed overhead at 6:30 PM.6:04 PM. Nice dramatic shot toward Marana as the backside of the middle cloud layer approached allowing the sun to shine through.6:09 PM. Virga getting closer. May have to park car outside to make sure I don’t miss any drops!6:22 PM. SW-NE oriented virga strip about to pass overhead. Drops fell between 6:30 and 6:40 PM, but you had to be outside to notice, which you would have been as a proper CMJ eccentric. You would have WANTED that trace of rain report, maybe slackers would not have observed.6:30 PM. Climax; the great sunset allowed by that backside clearing.
Not much else to talk about, no rain of course; what is that?
But with so many colorful scenes yesterday, we can be partially sated by the lives we lead here sans rain here. October ended with a puny 0.01 inches in Sutherland Heights.
Now, because I grew up in California and remain a little Cal-centric, this brief diversion from AZ:
But droughty Cal got nailed though, from about San Luis Obispo, so we can be happy about that I guess. One station, Gasquet RS, near the Duck border, got just under 28 inches in October; stations in the Santa Cruz Mountains, way down by Monterrey, got between 14-17 inches! From the California-Nevada River Forecast Center, this nice map of October rainfall anomalies in that domain. Red is real dry, and that’s the color we would be in if it was the California-Nevada-Arizona River Forecast Center:
Many departures are far over the map color-coding limit of 350%, but are over 1000% of average! Note red below normal swath. This tells you that the mean area of low pressure at the surface and aloft was just off the West Coast. Pac NW set maximum October rainfall records, too.
But let us not dwell any more of generous rains that others got, but celebrate the color and clouds of Arizona. Here are yesterday’s glorious scenes, beginning with a spectacular Altocumulus lenticularis under some Cirrus at dawn:
6:37 AM.6:47 AM. Ac len stack.10:51 AM. Tiny patch of Cirrocumulus tried to hide in front of some Cirrus. Hope you weren’t fooled and logged this sighting in your cloud diary. Cloud maven person almost missed it himself.12:50 PM. There were lenticulars aplenty yesterday. Here’s another one in a location a little different from normal, beyond the Catalinas. Upwind edge is the smoothest one at right. No ice streamers coming out the downwind end, so must have been pretty “warm”. Lenticulars, due to their tiny droplets and those droplets having short life times, have been known to resist ice formation to temperatures well below -30°C -22° F). Pretty amazing.2:42 PM. Kind of clouded up in the afternoon, and with breezes, made it seem like something was up. It was, but far to the NW of us. We have been under a streamer of high to middle clouds originating deep in the Tropics for a couple of days. Here some lower level moisture has crept in on cat’s feet, to be poetic for a second, and has resulted in small Cumulus and Stratocumulus clouds underneath the Cirrus and lenticulars standing around. All in all, though the temperature here reached 87° F, a very pleasant day.
Now, just some nice lighting and color:
5:32 PM. The almost flourescent plant in the foreground is what is known as a “cholla.” The end elements fall off quite easily and attach to things like your pant leg if you brush by them on a horse, or if back into them while walking and correcting your horse for something when he’s acting a little “wild.” I can report that when seven or eight of them are stuck to the back of your shirt, its really hard to get that shirt off. In fact, it just about won’t come off without a major scream.5:35 PM. The higher Cirrus are shaded by clouds to the west, but the lower remnants of Stratocumulus/Cumulus and a few Altocumulus are highlighted as though they were meant to be for this photo. So pretty. Notice, too, how there seems to be more than one layer of Cirrus.5:44 PM. Cirrus and Altocumulus, the latter with some turreting making those the species, “castellanus”, if you care.5:47 PM. A nice flame-out of Cirrus occurred as those pesky clouds blocking the fading sunlight from striking them opened up below the horizon. A few Altocumulus castellanus can be seen, too, but relegated to shadow status.
In a further celebration of dryness here, let us examine the rainfall cumulative rainfall predictions calculated by the University of Arizona’s Dept Hydro and Atmos Sci computer the period ending at Midnight on November 5th. Says the coming rain in the State misses us here in SE AZ while falling just about everywhere else, of course. Dang. Let’s hope it one of the worst model predictions ever!
This really poor forecast is based on the global data from last evening at 5 PM AST.
If you don’t believe me, and slept through it during the power outages when it was COMPLETELY dark last night, here is a MEASUREMENT of the event from a private weather station, The arrow points to the event, 58 knots, which is about 67 mph. This is the greatest wind measured by the PWA in seven years, here and a few down there on Wilds. The measured (here, the max one-minute speed) wind is, of course, LESS than the actual greatest 1s or 2s puff, likely well over 67 mph. Unless you have a fancy ultrasonic anemometer, too much inertia in the cheaper ones to get those instantaneous puffs.
NEW: Got to 100 mph on Mt. Sara Lemmon before tower on which an ultrasonic anemometer was installed blew away.
Hope your trees are intact:
WInd measurement over the past 24 h from a Davis Vantage Pro Personal Weather Station located somewhere in Sutherland Heights. (Remember in Israel, that popular top 40 radio station that said, “Braodcasting from SOMEWHERE in the Medeterranean” and every one knew it was that ship located a half mile or so offshore of Tel Aviv. Played Springstein, that kind of thing for all to hear.
Only 0.17 inches tipped by the Davis Vantage Pro, but with wind blowing as it was, you KNOW that’s going to be substantially low. We really can’t measure rain that accurately in any thing but perfectly calm conditions. The more accurate measurements are made if your gauge is sheltered by vegetation that is about the height of the gauge top right near the gauge, but then increases like the inside of a bowl as you gradually move away from it in all directions. No trees, please, too close! Preferably your gauge is on the ground not up somewhere, too, which would exaggerate the losses from wind.
Now, I will go outside and measure the rain in two ground mounted gauges, one a NWS-style 8-inch gauge, and the little toy 4-inch gauge from CoCoRahs, that national group that wants your measurements! Sign up now. Here are the other totals:
NWS gauge, 0.22 inches
CoCoRahs gauge, blew over, no total! Dammitall! Wasn’t as protected in the weeds as I thought. That total “likely” was around 0.24 or 0.25 inches. CMP had privately predicted, 0.28 inches for this storm, whilst a major forecast professor from CSU who lives in Catalina predicted an INCH1!
Brutal out there, too. Temp only 43° F, still windy.
The weather way ahead
Sorry to say no rain for Catalinaland in our latest computer forecasts through the middle of February as the Big Niño hyped so much here and elsewhere is turning out to be big poop so far.
Cal rains only great in the far north of the State during January, and in the northern Sierras.
Sucked in by the Big Niño thoughts here, CMP was predicting quite the mayhem in Cal during the last 15-16 days of January, and 25-30 inches at some locations during that time here is a table for that period from CoCoRahs. Note Shelter Cove, near the King Range, has the most. Totals are sorted in descending order, Jan 13-31.
No doubt your curiosity was piqued and peaked by seeing how much rain could fall on you if you lived in Shelter Cove, on the Lost Coast of California. Well, here’s what its like there. Has an AP, too!
A view of Shelter Cove, showing airport and control tower. Yep, you can fly right in!Another view of Shelter Cove. King Range is in the distance. NO DOUBT, rainfall up there WAS more than 25 inches if about 22 fell at Shelter Cove!
May try to get some more of that Cal precip since Jan 13, finding a modicum o direct verification of that huge amount of rain prediction.
No Mavericks surf competition yet, though larger waves have been battering the Cal coast over the past two-three weeks. Below, surf for today.
4:04 PM. Nice lenticular, devolving into flocculated Altocumulus downwind. The cells the form downwind from the smooth upwind edge are likely due to the latent heat released when condensation occurs, causing weak up and downdrafts to develop father downwind.5:58 PM. Dusty sunset. No worrisome dark spotting on sun.
The End
————————————-
1Maybe the “Ivory Tower” has not only protected him from the hiccups of the “real world” due to tenure and that kind of thing, but also from discerning what real weather will be like. hahaha. Just kidding. Sort of. Recall CMP was NOT tenured, but just a “staff” meteorologist with a “light” at the end of the funding grant tunnel, year after year for about 30 years. So, I am pretty mad about “tenure”. Hahahaha, just kidding maybe.
“Tenure” was a recent subject of a Science Mag editorial (“Wither (wither) Tenure“), too; costs everybody, especially students, a LOT of money, it was said.
Too, often young bright researchers are blocked by senior professors having tenure and making large amounts of money that hang on well past their productive years.
Cloud Maven Person: Resigned from the U of WA Cloud and Aerosol Research Group due to feeling he wasn’t earning his high “Research Scientist III” pay anymore, brain dimming, though there was a pile of money that he could have continued on with. Title of resignation letter: “Time to Go”. This free-ed up monies for staff folks that remained in our group, too.
Com’on decrepit tenured faculty, give up! Resign now!
PS: My friend tenured fac is STILL active, gives talks/presentations around the world still, even though he’s quite a geezer now, as is CMP.
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.
Here are some examples from yesterday’s pretty, then toward evening, eerie skies with sprinkles, the latter due to backlit Altostratus opacus mammatus, to go the whole nine yards, an icy cloud with downward hanging protuberances that resemble something. I’ve reduced the size of that image accordingly. Below, in sequence, 1) Cirrus, 2) Altocumulus, 3) the incoming bank of Altocumulus with Altostratus clouds on the horizon late yesterday afternoon, ones with virga and mammatus; 4) the mix of Altostratus with virga and mammatus with Altocumulus after it got here, and finally, 5) that eerie scene last evening of what I would surmise was a sunset colored layer of Cirrus above the Altostratus clouds with mammatus that gave the Altostratus an orangish tint. I seem to be thinking a lot about mammatus formations today. Hmmmmm. Oh, well the CLOUDS were nice, and I guess you might say, our official cloud names a little suggestive. For the full fascinating day, go here to our great U of A time lapse movie for yesterday.
All of these clouds are emanating out of and around a low that a week ago, in the models, was supposed to have already gone by. Well, what’s left of it finally goes over us today, kicked out of place by a quite rudely interjecting jet around a cold trough in the NE Pacific and over the Pacific Northwest.
Here is a satellite loop from the University of Washington showing those clouds that went across yesterday and those similar versions that will be crossing our Catalina skies today, ones that are coming deep out of the tropics. You’ll want to crank up the speed button to really see what’s going, at the upper left of this loop. The mods have been seeing a bit more moisture with this upper level low (doesn’t show up on the surface maps at all) as time has passed and so maybe we can wring as much as a quarter inch out of it. Here’s what the U of A Beowulf Cluster has to say about the incoming rain amounts. These amounts, up to an inch in the mountains, would be fantastic and very satisfying considering the long dry spell. The best chance of rain is overnight, so we’ll have lots of pretty clouds, probably a lot like yesterday, during the day before the really thick stuff moves in.
The ominous aspect, though VERY exciting to us stormophiles, is, when you review that satellite loop from the Washington Huskies Weather Department, is the accumulation of clouds and storms in a long belt just north of the Hawaiian Islands. Take a look! In just a couple of days, those clouds and storms will begin streaming toward the West Coast like a dam breaking, impacting most heavily, northern California and Oregon with tremendous rains. You will certainly read about those rains! From experience, I can tell you that the most favorable mountain sites for rain will likely receive 20-30 inches of rain in just a few days as this pattern develops and matures with one strong low center after another racing across the lower latitudes of the Pacific under the soft underbelly of a blocking high in the Bering Sea.
Man, I want to be in the King Range/Shelter Cove area so bad! Let’s see, fly to SFO now, rent four wheel drive vehicle for forest back roads in the King Range, bring rain gauge, sleeping bag, tent for camping out and listening to 1 inch per hour rain intensity on tent roof. Hmmm….. Its doable. Maybe all of us should go there today, get set up, and then wait for those pounding rains with 50 mph plus winds. That would be great!
And the ocean waves will be something to see, too, along the Oregon and northern California coasts, thundering surf really. Been there, seen it. And believe or not, there are surfers who come to the West Coast for just these situations, the long tropical fetch that generates huge waves. And there is even a small cadre of folks who race to the coast just to see that thunderous surf. All very exciting. Well, kind of getting distracted here, and a little nostalgic. Those big rollers would look something like this.
Also, since I have doubtlessly piqued your curiosity about Shelter Cove and the King Range, below a shot of the King Range from Shelter Cove, a shot in the King Range, looking toward the highest peaks, and finally, an example of the people of Shelter Cove.
Now, where was I concerning Catalina? Oh, yeah, mods have more rain ahead, though we’re only sideswiped by the powerful storms affecting Shelter Cove. Best chance for the next rain is on the 21-22nd.
In sum, today’s focus, or more accurately, preoccupations? Mammatus and Shelter Cove, CA.