April 12th, 6:57 PM. In case you missed it or forgot about it already.
Still looking like a couple of pokes of cool air in the last ten days of April, no rain indicated with them, just wind.
Some sprinkles maybe on Friday or Saturday from mid-level clouds like Altostratus or large clumps of Altocumulus with virga, some of the latter likely large enough to transition in name from Altocumulus (castellanus) to Cumulonimbus clouds. As with the last sprinkle a few days ago, any rain will be from clouds whose bottoms are well above Ms. Mt. Lemmon.
A great sunrise/sunset or two is almost guaranteed on Friday and or Saturday. This cloud action due to a weak wave/trough in the subtropics that creeps toward Arizona in the next few days. You can see it now in the sat imagery from the Washington Huskies Weather Department here. Its that little thing spinning around in this loop east of Hawaii with a big plume of high and middle clouds streaming NE from the Equator toward the West Coast to the east of the upper low. Expecting nothing more than passing Cirrus before Friday.
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:
Looky here, valid in only about 9 days, that is, just off the forecast confidence horizon, predicted rain for SE AZ! Valid for April Fool’s Day, at 5 PM AST. We hope its not another model cruel joke, since time is running out on the chances of cool season (Oct-Apr) rains.
SInce I know you love spaghetti, here’s some for about that same time, the evening before the map above, and it has a strong indication of a strong trough moving into the SW from the Pacific. Count on it. At the least, it will get real windy when this happens, count on it, and with a little more luck, there will be enough amplitude in the jet stream, that rain WILL occur.
Valid at 5 PM, the day before the predicted map, that is, 5 PM on March 31st.
The last batch of spaghetti was disappointing, that shown here about two weeks ago. Sure, there’s been a “trough bowl” in the SW as was predicted way back then; that’s what was producing the pretty clouds we’ve been seeing, the passages of weak troughs aloft over us, ones that have been also keeping the temperatures reasonable.
But, that predicted “trough bowl” so far back did not have the amplitude necessary to bring rain as was thought could happen back then. “Trough bowl” turned out to be more of a “plate”, than a “bowl.”
Here’s what I mean, below, from the first panel of spaghetti from last evening: see the little dent toward the south in the contour lines passing over Arizona? That represents a trough where clouds like to form, such as yesterday’s Cirrus clouds..
Map for last night as model runs begin.
But we need the big polar jet stream over us to get rain in the cool season, not a wispy jet up at Cirrus levels as we have been having. You may have noticed how fast the Cirrus clouds were jetting along up there. Well, for the past couple of days, they were zooming along at over a hundred miles an hour.
What we need are deep, cold troughs where the red height contours (5700 meters in the above map) are way south of us. Here’s why rain is predicted in the first map, as an example. Below is the configuration of the jet stream for that day that rain is predicted, showing that the 5700 meter contour and the core of the jet stream is over central Baja California. Now THAT is a rain map for AZ!
Let us begin by breaking up the weather talk monotony with a photo of a bee evaluating a thistle1, this from a hike yesterday to some weather petros2, to resume the weather talk.
10:31 AM. “Sentient Bee-ing and Thistle” $1800. (See link to Sci Am article below if you don’t think bees think about stuff.)8:46 AM. Crossing strands in CIrrus fibratus. Indicates that they have formed at different heights in layers of air with vastly different wind shear (change of direction with height). Rarely do you see this because at Cirrus levels (here around 30-35 kft above ground level, the wind direction usually does not change much. The strands running from left to right across the photo is the higher Cirrus cloud.
9:14 AM. Several species of CIrrus here; fibratus, uncinus, and spissatus (lower right).
9:35 AM. After the delicate Cirrus forms passed, lower blobs of dense Cirrus spissatus with some castellanus *turreted” versions) followed.
9:45 AM. Cirrus fibratus radiatus–last of the delicate Cirrus clouds left a memorable scene as they disappeared past the Catalina Mountains. However, the look of radiating fibers may be due to perpspective, not sure.
11:32 AM. Strands of Cirrus fibratus mimic the branches of a mesquite tree, both seemingly reaching out. A blob of the rarely seen Cirrus castellanus is on the horizon, lower left.
The cloud day pretty much ended with a brief appearance of Cirrocumulus overhead, enhanced by iridescence:
2Below, an early weather forecasting icon petroglyph indicating that the forecaster was anticipating a sunny day except for some Cirrostratus clouds, ones expected to produce a halo. Pretty sophisticated I thought.
10:17 AM. One of several weather forecasting petroglyph icons.
Valid two weeks from now, Thursday, 5 AM, March 20th. Massive trough, at last, settles into the West for awhile, more in keeping with climo. Keep jackets at the ready. Rain? Dunno yet, but probably on the correct side of 50-50 beginning around the 17th. Changes! Warm and dry for a coupla days, followed by a parade of troughs, quite a few minor ones over the next week or so, before the Big One forms. Above, this is a VERY strong signal in the spaghetti for two weeks out, and so got pretty excited when I saw it, as you are now, too. So, when mid-March arrives, get ready!
Was going to close with this NWS forecast for Catalina (might be updated by the time you link to it), but then saw just now that Saturday, the day a cold, dry trough is over us, it’s predicted to be 76 F here in Catalina, too warm. I would prepare for upper 60s.
Canadian model has even had rain near us at times as this trough goes by on Saturday, but only here in the 11th hour (from yesterday’s 5 PM AST run) has the US model indicated that the core of the trough and rain near us on Saturday, as the Canadian one had for a few days before that. Hmmm…
The fact that any trough is ending up stronger than it was predicted, as the one on Saturday, is a good sign of being close to the bottom (farthest S lattitude) of the “trough bowl”, that location where troughs like to come and visit. So, maybe this is a precursor for us, this unexpected little cool snap on Saturday. Maybe climatology is beginning to work its wonders at last in the West.
Powerful storms begin affecting the interior of the West and Great Basin in 10 days, and that pretty much marks the time when the winds here start to pick up to gusty at times as strong low centers develop to the north of us, and the major jet stream subsides to the south toward us.
It will be the end of the warm winter era for us, too. While cold settles in the West, it will mean very toasty weather back East from time to time, something those folks will greatly enjoy.
———————–Climate issue commentary; skip if you’re happy with the climate as it is now—————————-
As you likely know, much of the upper Midwest had one of its coldest winters ever, and just a few days ago Baltimore (locally, “Ballimore”, as in “Ballimore Orioles”) had its lowest measured temperature EVER in March, 4 F!
“RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
0930 AM EST TUE MAR 04 2014
…DAILY AND MONTHLY MINIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDS SET AT BALTIMORE
MD…
A DAILY RECORD MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 4 DEGREES WAS SET AT BALTIMORE MD TODAY…BREAKING THE OLD RECORD OF 5 SET BACK IN 1873.
THE MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 4 DEGREES FROM TODAY WAS ALSO THE LOWEST MINUMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDED ON ANY DAY IN MARCH FOR BALTIMORE. THE PREVIOUS RECORD MINIMUM TEMPERATURE FOR MARCH WAS 5 DEGREES ON 4 MARCH 1873.”
(Thanks to Mark Albright for this official statement; emphasis by author)
If you’ve followed some media reports, the exceptional cold of this winter has been attributed to global warming, a hypothesis that has been questioned by climo Big Whigs. However, if it is right (which even lowly C-M doubts), parts of the upper Midwest may become uninhabitable due to cold in a warming world, quite a weather “oxymoron.”
Also, if you’ve been hearing about weather extremes and global warming (AKA, “climate change”) you really should read this by a scientist I admire, Roger Pielke, Jr., at Colorado State Univsersity, his rebuttal to a Whitehouse science adviser’s characterization of his testimony before Congress about weather extremes (they’re not increasing).
What seems to be happening in climate science is the opposite of what our ideals are. Our conglomerate of climate models did not see the present “puzzling” halt to global warming over the past 15 years or so as CO2 concentrations have continued to rise. However, instead of being chastened/humbled by this failure, some climate scientists seem emboldened and only are shouting louder about the danger ahead. Presently we are struggling with a number of hypotheses about why the hiatus has occurred (e.g., drying of the stratosphere which allows more heat to escape the earth, more aerosols in the stratosphere in which incoming sunlight is dimmed some as it was due to the Pinatubo eruption in 1991, ocean take up of extra heat, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current slowing down, causing northern hemisphere continents to cool off.)
UPdating at 8:28 AM: This from the “current”issue of Science (Feb 28th) about the Global Warming Hiatus (GWH): It might be due to the cold waters of the eastern Pacific, now reigning year after year almost for the whole time of the “hiatus.” (BTW, you’ve heard of it, haven’t you, that hiatus in rising global temperatures? If not, write to your local media sources about this. Its pretty important.) Science mag is $10 if you want to buy it off the newstand.
What ever the cause of the puzzling hiatus in warming, it was not accounted for in our best models right from the get go, and so, naturally there SHOULD be caution on everyone’s part until we know what happened and can get it right in those many climate models..dammitall! Unless we know what done it, how else can we have confidence that they are going to be very accurate 100 years out????
———————————————end of climate issue/rant module————————–
Here are a couple of nice sunset scenes from March 4th, that same day it was SO COLD in Ballimore, these to help you cool off personally after I got you pretty worked up with climate issues. Hope I didn’t spoil your day, and try not to be mad at work thinking about it.
6:19 PM. Row of Cirrus lenticulars appears below CIrrus/Altostratus layer. I think they were too high to be Altocumulus lenticulars, and dissipated into ice puffs right after this shot.6:31 PM. Cirrus spissatus (thicker parts) with strands from Cirrus uncinus under lit by the sun.
Started to rain here in at 3:45 AM…have 0.01 inches so far. :{
So far in AZ, Flagstaff area leading the way Statewide with about 0.90 inches. You can check out those amounts in real time here from the USGS, and here for Pima County. Also you can look at those amounts reported in real time at PWSs (personal weather stations) throughout Arizona on the Weather Underground “Wundermaps” as this exciting, much awaited day develops.
Point forecasts from the U of AZ “Beowulf “for today, based on 11 PM AST data, here. (Graphical version not yet completed.) You’ll see that a mighty amount of over 4 inches of water content is forecast for the top of the Lemmon (Summerhaven) from this storm. These calcs are usually a little high, but even 2 inches would be fabulous up there. Catalina, per se, does not appear in the point location list, but Oro Valley is expected to get around half an inch. We should do better than that here in Catalina/Sutherland Heights.
———-SC rain doings———
Forecast “10 in 24” at Opids Camp; got about 8, same for favored locations in Ventura County. Working on 10 for storm there as I write; another round of pounding rain moving into the LA Basin now. NWS tornado warning for east central LA expires at 4 AM today. (They saw rotation in a severe thunderstorm around Covina earlier this morning.)
BTW, go here to see how excited the Los Angeles branch of the NWS is today. You’ll see that their domain is a kaleidoscope of colors for warnings and advisories of all kinds! Ninety five percent of the time, they really don’t have that much to forecast in southern California, pretty boring really, so this is a great time for them to show their stuff, be excited, “show the colors.” (Me, too!)
—————————
Some of yesterday’s cloud scenes
6:46 AM. Sunrise on the C-Gap.6:57 AM. Two levels of ice clouds, an rare site. The darker on just above the mountains is some icy remnant of an Altocumulus cloud that converted to ice. The whiter clouds are at Cirrus levels, likely some spot of droplets before almost instantly glaciating. The different colors give away the different heights, and also the difference in movement; one level moving relative to the other tells you this, too.8:37 AM. Microversions of Cirrus uncinus suddenly blossomed overhead; almost missed ’em. What was unusual was how tall the vertical parts were with tiny hooks at the bottom. That vertical part indicates a layer of air with no wind shear, a phenomenon almost always observed at cloud tops. The wind shear may have been “mixed out” by the up and down motions associated with cloud formation and dissipation.8:37 AM. Close up view of those tiny Ci unc.9:12 AM. “Webby” Cirrus. Has no official name that I know of.9:35 AM. Though the natural sky is slightly marred by a contrail, in general it was a thing of beauty all morning in particular with the high visibility, complex goings on in the cloud structure, deep blue sky, moderate breezes and temperatures in the 70s. This view, toward the Charouleau Gap, shows more of that “webby” Cirrus, and on the horizon, left of center, the rarely seen Cirrus castellanus which I report seeing almost every week here in AZ.10:37 AM. Less complicated Cirrus fibratus/uncinus patches moved in, followed by the development of small Cumulus clouds. Still very pretty though.2:50 PM. Your afternoon. The Cirrus thickened into a solid layer with gray, transitioning to Altostratus with these small Cumulus (“humilis”) below. TYpically thickening is due to the bottoms of clouds lowering (in this case, where the ice crystals falling out evaporate is perceived as cloud base) while the top stays about the same height. As the air moistens during the approach of a storm, the crystals fall farther toward the ground and the cloud thickens downward.
As much as 1-2 inches as far south as Ventura County so far, 3-4 inches in the coastal mountains of central Cal as of just now (4 AM AST). Rolling 24 h Cal State archive here. LA area rain here; keep an eye on Opids Camp and Crystal Lake FC. Totals in NW LA County just now going over an inch. Following this drought bustin’ sequence, while just a” two shot wonder”, will be like watching….I don’t know..something really exciting, a weather kind of Olympics, where the favored team “drought” is taken down unexpectedly by some upstart storm. Yes, I will play the Olympics card.
And remember, this is just the lightweight division today; up next, beginning Friday in southern Cal: “Sumo wrestling”, as a 400-lb storm moves in next to push aside “Team Drought” at least for the moment. (Is Sumo wrestling an Olympic sport?) Still expecting some jumbo rain totals in the mountains of southern Cal, such as more than 10 inches at places like Opids Camp in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Speaking of jumbo totals, a friend and expert weather forecaster (and big atmos sci faculty member at Colorado State who now lives part time in Catalina), sent a stunning e-mail to me yesterday expressing his opinion that Catalina will get “1.5 to 2 inches of rain” from the second “Sumo” storm, the one that eases into Arizona late Friday and arrives here by dawn on Saturday, and then continues for around 24 h. Cloud maven here can’t go that high in his guess, doesn’t have the “testicularis” you might say, to go that high; 1 inch max is all I can come up with, but would be ecstatic if in error!
Still, this is going to be FANTASTIC! Saw some perennial wildflower blooms on the trails yesterday (see below), ones in need of a little pick-me-up–actually a big one, and this will be great for them. Fauna, too, will be happy! It may be too late for the annuals…not sure. Poppies are few, and awfully stunted this year, as many of you know.
Don’t forget, too, before our storm; those gorgeous skies! Have camera and pen ready to document and make notes about them in your weather diaries Those skies we’ll be fantastic, too, like yesterday, which was a great day to be on a horse, watching the sky.
Even when its raining the skies will be fantastic!
How many of us, even if we’re from Seattle, are STARVED for low gray, dank and dark daytime rainy skies, clouds chopping off the Catalinas a thousand feet above us, listening to rain pounding on our roofs, then running off roof making puddles, those richer shades of desert green after the rain ends, the glistening, water-covered rocks on the Catalinas in the morning sun after the storm? Its a real treasure when rain falls here.
Yesterday’s clouds
12:23 PM. You got yer Cis spis (Cirrus spissatus) topping a few Cu fractus and humilis, if I may. It was so great to see those Cumulus clouds, reminding us that July and huge clouds are only about 125 days away!12:23 PM. You got yer Cirrus uncinus. Note fine strands hanging down. Amazing they can be so perfect, not erratic (see arrow), when the wind up there is about 100 mph!
3:54 PM. A great line of a Ac lenticular advanced over Oro Valley. This shot was about the best I got and its not that great.
3:55 PM. Not all about clouds..wanted to show you that I have more than one dimension. Here, a wild onion bloom maybe, slightly out of focus. Prickly pear is in focus, though.3:55 PM. Very nice Altocumulus lenticularis formed later in the afternoon downwind from the Catalinas.6:25 PM. Another very nice sunset due to some Cirrus spissatus and a few lower Altocumulus clouds.
On the weather horizon
Mods still have unusually warm weather here in the storm after life, 8-12 days out (cold in the East continues, too). But, then some Catalina rains continue to show up after that hot spell when you think May is already here.
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.
7:46 AM. Stratocumulus lenticularis castellanus (has spires), an oxymoronic cloud. You would call this Stratocumulus because its low enough to top Ms. Mt. Lemmon. While some turrets can be seen, others are causing shadows. Have never really seen something quite like this and I look a LOT.10:35 AM. Stratocumulus lenticularis on the Catalinas. The moist air is resisting like mad being lifted over the Catalinas. Oddly, once condensation occurs a bit of heat is released and on the left you see that it was enough heat to allow a Cumulus turret to rise out of the smooth cloud. This is pretty darn rare site, seeing such smoothness AND Cumulus rising out of the same deck.3:46 PM. Cumulus humilis, no ice, except in those Cirrus clouds on the right.5:28 PM. Sun dog, or mock sun, also “parhelia” in natural Cirrus and in a contrail. The parhelia is likely brighter in the contrail since the simple hexagonal (six-sided) plate-like ice crystals that cause parhelias are smaller and more numerous in the early stages of a contrail.
6:09 PM. Cirrus spissatus.
Today’s clouds
Much like two days ago. Higher based Stratocumulus/Altocumulus with patches of heavy virga and sprinkles around.
Back edge of the cloud mass times in around 2-4 PM. Might be a little early for a great sunset, but just in case, have camera ready.
Looking farther ahead….
Still mainly dry through the next two weeks, though close call on the 7th, a situation that appears much like today, That close rain call NOW appears in both the Canadian and US WRF-GFS models (yesterday they were vastly different). So, with that, a chance of a few hundredths here after nightfall on the 6th into the morning of the 7th.
Spaghetti, in a dismal series of plots, also shows little hope for rain here through the 20th. So, even with mistakes in the initial analyses, deliberate ones to see how different the forecast maps turn out, we still can’t exit our drought! Oh, me. Poor wildflowers.
The End (did you see the giant mammatus/testicularis to the north this morning? If not, here it is:
I’m talking about your clouds and weather day yesterday, and definitely NOT about someone whom I shall call, “Sharon1“, that happened to me 33 years ago and whose birthday was yesterday, Ground Hog Day, a day commemorated by a 1993 movie about a weatherman. Seemed “right”, too, to be a weatherman with a girlfriend whose birthday was on Ground Hog Day. I loved her so much! Was definitely in the first stage of the psychologist’s lab standard, the Passionate Love Scale2 ; euphoric when things were going right, and also a stage characterized by delusional and obsessive thinking. (Haven’t we all been there at some point?) Had a great sense of humor and playfulness about her, too. As it turned out, though, I wasn’t good enough for her. (I really wasn’t; she was a med student and all that; very brainy, so there was quite a mental contrast.)
Oh, yeah, NOW for the clouds yesterday on a cool day which is what I was talking about to being with; high only 55 F here in the “Heights”:
6:06 PM. Altostratus, of course, with slight virga consisting of very light snow. Too thick to be Cirrus. 3:18 PM. Altocumulus perlucidus. What the temperature? In the middle of the photo there’s an ice canal–hoped you logged it in your weather diary. That ice canal was caused by an aircraft passing through a cloud that’s well below freezing. The exact reason for the sudden freezing of drops in that cloud is still being investigated. However, when you see this phenomenon, an ice canal or hole punch cloud, I want you to FIRST think of ME, because our paper on this phenomenon was rejected twice back in the early 1980s before being published, and second, when you see this happen, estimate that the droplet cloud was probably at -20 C (-4 F) or colder. Yes, THAT cold and still composed of droplets! Therefore it produces a buildup of ice on an aircraft when one flies through it, but then the aircraft changes that by converting to ice behind it! How strance is that?. (I deliberately misspelled “strange” to see if anyone has read this far.)
Annotated version. 3:19 PM. Frosty the Lemmon. Good sign of rime icing on those trees up there. You see how frosty they look? Likely because of supercooled cloud droplets hitting the trees and freezing during all the low clouds of the previous day. Very pretty. 2:19 PM. “Angel’s hair”, Cirrus fibratus. The delicateness of those striations are amazing when you think that they are traveling in air moving at around 80 mph up there around 30-odd thousand feet above us.
Below, the predicted total rain in Arizona as this great trough goes by. NIL in Catalina! The map below is a forecast of all the rain areas and their amounts expected by 2 PM AST tomorrow afternoon. Fortunately, it has been, as in basketball, “rejected.” Read details in caption.
Expect a trace to maybe a tenth. No drop will escape my attention!
The End. I hope you’re happy now since I have titillated you with a personal story in a cheap attempt to raise blog ratings. Haven’t broke into the top 10 million blogs yet. But maybe if min is more like “Entertainment Tonight”, I make that breakthrough.
———–
BTW, if you haven’t heard yet: “Seattle Celebrate (sic) SB Win!”, a title and article written by a possible drunken AP writer after the SB, if you’re interested.
————– 1Defintely NOT a picture of “Sharon”, but its how she MIGHT have looked had she been in my Seattle living room with her son, New Year’s Eve, 1981. And, of course, I found someone I loved just as much later…
2Don’t believe me that such a thing exists? Read the first column of SCI CLIPPINGS CAUDATE OVER HEELS IN LOVE 001, no less. Probably goes farther in its discussion of these kinds of things than we really want to know about and how they came to know them…be advised.
Gauge 15 1 3 6 24 Name Location ID# minutes hour hours hours hours —- —- —- —- —- —- —————– ——————— Catalina Area 1010 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.08 0.43 Golder Ranch Horseshoe Bend Road in Saddlebrooke 1020 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.43 Oracle Ranger Stati approximately 0.5 mile southwest of Oracle 1040 0.04 0.08 0.12 0.12 0.47 Dodge Tank Edwin Road 1.3 miles east of Lago Del Oro Parkway 1050 0.04 0.04 0.08 0.08 0.47 Cherry Spring approximately 1.5 miles west of Charouleau Gap 1060 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.16 0.71 Pig Spring approximately 1.1 miles northeast of Charouleau Gap 1070 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.08 0.35 Cargodera Canyon northeast corner of Catalina State Park 1080 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.12 0.51 CDO @ Rancho Solano Cañada Del Oro Wash northeast of Saddlebrooke 1100 0.00 0.04 0.04 0.08 0.28 CDO @ Golder Rd Cañada Del Oro Wash at Golder Ranch Road
Santa Catalina Mountains 1030 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.20 Oracle Ridge Oracle Ridge, approximately 1.5 miles north of Rice Peak 1090 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 Mt. Lemmon Mount Lemmon 1110 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.24 0.71 CDO @ Coronado Camp Cañada Del Oro Wash 0.3 miles south of Coronado Camp 1130 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 Samaniego Peak Samaniego Peak on Samaniego Ridge 1140 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.24 Dan Saddle Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge 2150 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 White Tail Catalina Highway 0.8 miles west of Palisade Ranger Station 2280 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.31 Green Mountain Green Mountain 2290 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.24 Marshall Gulch Sabino Creek 0.6 miles south southeast of Marshall Gulch
As you can see, a couple of stations in the Catalina Mountains were virtually missed by the storm (ZERO total, for example, at Ms. Mt. Lemmon) or it snowed on those low total precip gauges and the snow has not melted and is sitting in the gauge’s funnel. Select choice number 2. Mountains just becoming visible; looks like snow down to 6,000 foot level.
Didn’t see any precip/virga before dark yesterday, started raining just before 10 PM, nicely, and continued through midnight when it quit. However, the main event, lasting about 6-8 h is supposed to start happening about now, but rain mostly lighting up in TUS. That means we should see some clearing around mid-day, but leaving enough low clouds stacking up around the Catalinas for some nice quilted sun and shadows on those mountains, one of our prettiest sights I think, along with our now snow-capped mountains.
FROPA, or “frontal passage” in weather text speak, occurred late yesterday afternoon. I wonder if you noticed the wind shift and dropping temperatures? However, was a very shallow depth of wind that shifted, and temperature took about 3 h to drop 10 F, (58 F to 48 F) not exactly as sharp a FROPA as was anticipated from this microphone yesterday. Also, a bit unusual, the rain band was displaced far behind the wind shift that occurred around 4:30 PM.
Yesterday’s clouds
I thought yesterday was quite an interesting day for you. Lots of cloud types to log in your weather and cloud diary. Let us begin our retrospective with Sunrise on the Equestrian:
7:05 AM.7:17 AM. Splayed Cirrus display, racing at you at over 100 mph.7:52 AM. Orographic Stratocumulus top the Catalinas, a very good sign that the incoming front will produce rain. Indicates reasonable lower level humidity already in place.9:34 AM. Small Cumulus form over the Oro, Cirrus above. So pretty a sight, I thought.12:17 PM. Micro-snowstorm (Cirrus uncinus) passes past the Catalinas. You can see this cloud from the U of A here in their time lapse movie.12:58 PM. Seattle-style Stratocumulus overcast. Got a little homesick there for a minute.
3:38 PM. Atop horsey Jake now, looking for signs, knowing that front is getting closer. Here those darker, lower line of clouds were atop the windshift that was about to occur, marking the leading edge of the front. This colder air has lifted and chilled the moist air from the southwest to help create that lower base, the sure sign of a wind shift. Looking north toward Saddlebrooke from near The Chutes on the 50-year trail .
toward
4:27 PM. Cloud bases lower significantly as the cooler air rushed in. But look, no precip in spite of the heavy cloud cover. What’s up with that? No ice present in them; cloud tops still too warm in even FROPA area1.Also at 4:27 PM, looking toward weak sun producing the lighting break on the Catalinas. Note haziness, likely due to dust.
Your next storm: due in Sunday morning. Likely just something around a tenth of an inch. Nothing showing up beyond that, but lots of mod fluctuations re storms. I suspect the one that showed up a few days ago for the 20th or so will arise again in some future run. Just a gut feeling since there’s no evidence in the spaghetti plots yet to support that hunch.
The End.
———————————————— 1The TUS balloon sounding yesterday afternoon about the time of the next to last photo. Shows tops WERE warmer than -10 C, in case you didn’t believe me because the clouds looked so dark yesterday afternoon. They were pretty dark because there was a higher ice cloud overcast (Altostratus) and when droplet concentrations are high, clouds are darker on the bottom. We usually have pretty high droplet concentrations here in old Arizony.
Note that the temperature of the air (blue) lines slope upward to the right.
