Climate issues – Cloud-maven

A New Decadal Climate Oscillation Detected in Past Data a Long Time Ago? A Fool’s Journey? Namias Reacts

Purpose of this post of ancient, unfinished work with the humorous title: Could it inspire someone to continue it in a more sophisticated way than I have?

Named climate/weather influencing “oscillations” have become so numerous in the scientific literature (e.g., Atlantic Meridional Oscillation, Arctic Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, El Niño-Southern Oscillation, Atlantic Oscillation, Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, Madden-Julian Oscillation, etc.) one is tempted to ask humorously, “Doesn’t everyone have one?”

Well, I do, but this research is incomplete. And it may ne bogus, illusory; it seems to lead to a dead end. Still, “we” journey on, hoping these early findings, incomplete as they are and needing to be updated, will nevertheless bring someone a Nobel Prize in meteorology. (Also still waiting for some kind of science prize or medal from Israel for the work I’ve done there in exposing faulty cloud seeding results and descriptions of non-existent clouds supposedly ripe with seeding potential (Rangno and Hobbs 1995, Rangno 1988). But, as the Prunes sang, I had too much to dream last night.

https://youtu.be/-xRRT92Fpgs

Let us begin this story from the beginning. Let us explore how a gigantic amount of work, consuming work, really, thousands of hours of personal effort, can lead to a dead end. Maybe.

The oscillation story begins in an undergraduate climatology class I took at San Jose State College in the late 1960s. Each of us was assigned to do a climate research project. I chose to do something on Los Angeles Civic Center rainfall, something I had been charting since childhood. I graphed the days with measurable rain over the period of record for the Civic Center going back to the 1877-78 “rain season.” In California, the period of July 1 through June 30 is deemed the “rain season.” That was the way rainfall data were presented in the newspapers. The California “rain season” is similar to the water year precipitation totals widely used in the western US for the period of October 1 through September 30. If you are a meteorologist in the West, the calendar year is generally eschewed in place of rain season or water year since the latter capture the character of whole winters and better account for snowpacks in mountains.

I saw an interesting phenomenon in the plot of days with measurable rain; there appeared to be an “instability”; a jump to much wetter conditions after a decades long trend of declining days with measurable rain. After reaching what appeared to a minimum of days with measurable rain, there was a sudden jump in the next season to one having considerably more than the average. But, it wasn’t just one season that had many more days with rain! It was most of the next ten rain seasons that had above average days with rain. This had happened in my plot on three occasions; the season following 1903-04, the season following 1933-34, and lastly, the season following 1976-77. Namely, it wasn’t just a one-shot wonder, a season long singularity.

I was EXCITED! So excited I eventually sent my Los Angeles Civic Center plot to a famous professor of climate and weather at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Prof. Jerome Namias. I had read his papers in the Monthly Weather Review. (I had begun subscribing to this journal when I was 13 years old. By this time I had seen that these same three jumps had occurred at San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and San Diego. There was no evidence of this phenomenon at San Francisco; it faded to the north.

If you’re a Los Angeles or Southern California “precipophile” like me, you might well guess immediately why I wasn’t so much interested in rain totals as with days with measurable rain. A couple of huge storms can hide the character of a whole rain season, but the character of a rain season would be called out by days with rain. An extreme example: on New Year’s Eve, December 1933 into New Year’s Day, 1934, Los Angeles received it’s greatest 24 h rainfall: 7.36 inches! Approximately half fell in December 1933 and a little more than half in January 1934. The season’s rainfall total that year was 14.64 inches, or just about average. HOWEVER, the DAYS with rain was two standard deviations below average! That’s “what done it” for me, that extraordinary rain day and why rain totals might hide the real character of a winter’s rain season.

Naturally, there is pretty high correlation between the days with measurable rain and the season’s total. But from day one, I was convinced that the days with measurable rain was a better indicator of circulation changes over the years while rain amounts added “noise.” Here is the correlation between rain amounts and days with rain for Los Angeles Civic Center:

Professor Jerome Namias seemed to be excited, too. Here is his reply to my graph of LA rain frequency over the period of record.

Here’s the plot that started it all and that Namias and Stidd found interesting. It didn’t look like “white noise.”

By the time I corresponded with Professor Namias, I had been hired as the Assistant Project Forecaster for the nation’s largest randomized orographic cloud seeding experiment, the Colorado River Basin Pilot Project. I was living in Durango, CO, where the project’s headquarters were as I continued my research on a possible oscillation.

I was hoping that my work would eventually qualify as a Master’s Thesis from the meteorology department at San Jose State College (despite poor grades in grad school). As an aside to the reader: I had no business whatsoever in being in grad school taking classes like “numerical methods,” “advanced hydrodynamics.” etc. But I loved my campus life in those days of campus trash cans set on fire to protest the war, album protest rock, the marches, the demonstrations, the be-ins, the draft card burnings, to pinch a quote from National Lampoon’s “Bob Dylan’s Golden Protest” parody:

Over the next couple of years I added to my Los Angeles dataset with ones from San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and San Diego. These stations all had records that went back even earlier than the one at Los Angeles. All but San Francisco, whose record exhibited what one might call, “white noise,” exhibited the trend I had seen in the Los Angeles record! It was amazing to see.

Below is a running, 3-season average for SLO, SBA, LAC, and SAN through the early 1980s. Sadly, I was not paying attention when scanning this original diagram and parts are not shown here, such as the abscissa comprised of the rain seasons. The ordinate is the number of days with measurable rain at these four stations with a running mean of 3 seasons of those totals. It ends with the 1981-82 season, far right. For those in the know, the following season, 1982-83 featured a giant El Niño and that, combined with whatever was going on in what I was charting, produced numbers of days off the chart! I was so happy! The Great Salt Lake was about to overflow, too, from this incredible wet spell that accompanied the shift to a more frequently rainy regime.

Since the rain at these locations is associated with cold troughs in the wintertime westerlies, I imagined that the circumpolar westerlies gradually retracted over the years, then hit some kind of tipping point and sprung back to more a more southerly latitude before beginning the same slow retraction over decades.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Los Angeles forecast office used the 564 decameter geopotential height contour as a divider of rain; heights at or below that contour was where the rain was and no rain was the rule for heights greater than the 564 decameter contour. This key contour was used as an aid in forecasting rain as troughs approached and entered California.

The last shift to wetter conditions I found happened after the 1976-77 rain season. With the 1977-78 rain season, it became much more frequently rainy along the central and Southern California coast for most of the next seven years.

My California rainfall study ended a few years into this transition to wetter conditions due to two elements: 1) NOAA had stopped publishing the “Daily Series, Synoptic Weather Maps, Part 1, Northern Hemisphere Sea-Level and 500 mb Charts and 2) I got very upset over the misleading cloud seeding literature that was being published in journals and jumped ship into reanalyzing previously published cloud seeding literature for most of the rest of my career almost solely on my own time (e.g., Rangno 1979, Hobbs and Rangno 1979, Rangno and Hobbs 1995).

The NOAA surface and 500 mb charts were important because that’s what I had used to track cyclones across the Pacific for five winter seasons before and after a “shift.” I wasn’t able to do a set of tracks before and after the 1977-78 shift. It was interesting that about 20 years later, the 1977-78 shift I was studying was discovered as the, “Pacific Decadal Oscillation” (Wallace et al. 1994).

By the 1973-74 rain season I was so sure a prolonged shift to wetter conditions in the SW was on the doorstep that I was writing to the LA Times science writer, George Getz, the BuRec’s PR person, Hunter Holloway (the BuRec was the sponsor of the cloud seeding experiment I worked on), and to the Durango Herald about this coming shift to wetter conditions.

I was a little too early; the downward trend continued through the 1976-77 winter. Here’s an example of those writings, one an audacious, self-written “news release” that follows the letter to Mr. Holloway shown here:

The reason I posted the letter above is to PROVE that I really was anticipating “The Shift” BEFORE it happened:

The additional research I carried out went far beyond the rain day graphs:

Pacific cyclone tracks before and after a “shift,”

NH average sea level pressures before and after a shift.

Here are the sea level maps for the 1930s, before and after a shift that occurred with the 1934-35 rain season. For those not acquainted with the synoptic charts of that 1930s era it was something of a golden age of ship reports before they disappeared on these maps during World War II. Thus northern hemisphere sea-level pressure and cyclone tracks changes could be reliably charted.

A graphically obtained “delta” map of sea-level pressure changes before and after a shift comprises the third graphic. Not much can be seen to have happened when looking at these average maps for whole December through March seasons due to having semi-permanent pressure systems like the low in the Gulf of Alaska, and the “Pacific High.” I deemed looking at cyclone tracks (the following graphics) as far more useful. Nevertheless, these are never-before-seen-or-done maps by anyone but me. Enjoy:

Strangely believe it, the greatest sea level changes were in the domain of the Arctic Oscillation; in the North Atlantic, Greenland and England. Whodda thunk it? Not much change in the Pac and West, as expected due to persistent pressure fields even in these extremely frequent days with rain and those with many fewer ones. I honestly did not know what to make of this change. Do you? If not, let’s keep moving….

Before doing the sea level pressure maps, I had charted cyclone centers across the central Pacific to the Rockies for the same winter (Dec-Mar) periods as was done above. These charts were much more illuminating concerning the shift that happened in days with rain in central and Southern California:

First, the cyclone track “densities” of the five low frequency days with measurable rain winters preceding the shift. A strong channeling of cyclones was seen during these winters from the lower latitudes of the central Pacific into the Gulf of Alaska and into southern British Columbia to a lesser degree. This suggests the geographically anchored Asia/western Pacific Ocean jet exit had extruded farther east and into the central Pacific. (Upper-level maps are not available for this period.). This was to resemble what happened in the low rain frequency seasons of the early and mid-1970s that preceded another shift.

In the figure below are the tracks following the “shift” to higher frequency rain day occurrences in central and Southern California. The channeling is gone and what appears to be a standard distribution of low centers has replaced it. Cyclones that developed in the western Pacific moved northeast into the Aleutians relatively close to Japan rather than scooting across the lower latitudes of the central Pacific. The difference between these two maps is shown in the final map below this one.

The Delta Cyclone Density Map (pardon the skew):

Many more low centers tracked across the extreme eastern Pacific into California and into the Great Basin low pressure cyclogenesis zone in the lee of the Sierras. This map is more illustrative than the sea-level pressure maps of those changes that happened after the shift to wetter conditions .

Questions: Did channeled cyclones disrupt the sea surface enough to cause temperature anomalies in real time or later? Were the El Niños that followed in the late 1930s and early 1940s in part triggered by the lower latitude cyclones racing across the central Pacific? Was this a global change such that Western Europe and northwest Africa saw a shift to wetter conditions after the ones noted in central and Southern California? Data were not available for this period of study (1930s) except in the Middle East for Jerusalem, Israel. There was no indication of a long period of decreasing days with measurable followed by a sudden and prolonged shift to more frequently rainy days.

My favorite answer to, “What caused this shift when someone asked was based on the work of E. N. Lorenz at MIT. Professor Lorenz is famous for bringing our attention to chaos theory where small initial changes in starting conditions can lead to huge differences later. Today, this concept is used to improve forecasts by introducing minor changes in initial data in the models from that observed to see how much difference results in the model predictions.

There need not be an external cause for climate shifts, he wrote. It may just that systems shift in and out of favorite modal types without an external forcing. Thus, the best answer for what caused the shift I think I detected was, of course, “nothing.” See Lorenz (1968, Climate Determinism) in the Amer. Meteor. Soc. Monograph Vol. 8, No. 30, on, “The Causes of Climate Change.” Strangely believe it, there are no papers on CO2 in this Amer. Meteor. Soc. monograph! Mauna Loa measurements of C02 had just begun and so there was no awareness of how it was steadily increasing over the years.

——-

Work to be done?

Bringing the days with measurable rain plots up to date, storm tracks in the 1970s, and investigate whether the 564 decameter geopotential height contour shows a global expansion after the 1970s shift after hemispheric geopotential heights became available (beginning in the mid-1940s). Or is the shift to a high rain frequency along the central and Southern California coast a local phenomenon where a mean upper-level trough recurrs along the West Coast for years at a time? In a cursory check recently, there seems to be no clear recurrence of the prior three shifts in days with rain. Boo.

And lastly, one must ask, is what I have done a “scientific mirage,” and expression used by Foster and Huber (1997) to denote illusory science?

I would like the answer to be a sudden global expansion of the polar westerlies (shown in the average hemispheric latitude of the 564 500 hPa geopotential height contour that accompanies a shift, something like the “Bond Cycles” observed in historic ice core data: a “reset,” if you will, after a long, long period of withdrawing ever so gradually over the decades. Perhaps our gradually shifting climate to a warmer one has done something to interfere with this “shift” phenomenon?

An obstacle that arose in later years was that climate station at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. whose record started in 1868, started having missing monthly data that never showed up in the “Delayed Data” section in NOAA’s Climatological Data in the June and December issues. Eventually, NOAA dropped even having a “Delayed Data” segment in the June and December issues! Boo on that! Santa Barbara, whose record also went back into the 1860s, too, had missing months that never were reported. I remember how discouraged I was when these events happened and thought about giving up. How can stations whose records go back into the 1860s (!) suddenly have incomplete records where observers don’t file reports with NOAA? Where was the California State Climatologist? Asleep at the wheel, I suppose.

Maybe you, one of my two readers, will take this research up to see if it goes anywhere?

Sincerely, Art “I’m dreaming” Rangno. :

Caveat: My grad advisers at San Jose State and a professor at the U of WA were unimpressed with these works.

Our last hope for rain in early Feb; a thin blue line (a 552 decameter one)

Blue, as in the 5520 meter height contour line as produced by a single run of the many NOAA GFS model re-runs with those little “perturbations” of the starting data. Below, our only hope for rain here in Catalina is if the model run with a 552 decameter height contour over eastern Pacific across southern California (see arrow) verifies. Its an outlier, a rogue, a voice in the wilderness, etc.

From the NOAA spaghetti factory based on the global data taken and perturbed at 5 PM AST last evening. The thin blue line to which the arrow points, would be a major, rain/snow producing trough. But since its an outlier from the other blue lines, representing the heart of the jet stream, its very unlikely to happen, even if it is produced by an actual model run for this date and time.

Some background and diversionary writing in excess; skip if busy

Now that we have more powerful computers, we can run the same model over and over again with very slightly different starting data and then see how the results diverge from one another in the days ahead. In the first few days to week of the model run, the various outputs are virtually the same because the starting conditions are tweaked so very slightly. This is chaos in action! And it makes sense because we measure everything perfectly in the atmosphere at the same instant. So, little errors abound in our starting data anyway.

Think of E. N. Lorenz, “Dr. Chaos”! In fact, he thought our existing atmosphere could shift into a pattern resulting in an ice age without any external forcing (oh, like an interstellar dust cloud coming by for a few thousand years, the sun dimming, etc.)

Pretty amazing thought when you think about it, which you just have.

Nobody really thinks that today, but he threw it out on the table in his seminole (haha) paper, “The Intransitive Atmosphere” back in 1967. He also wrote about that kind of thing in the 1968 American Meteorological Society Monograph, “The Causes of Climatic Change“, papers by 22 of the leading climate authorities of that time. (Based on a 1965 conference at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, located in “Potville”, CO (aka, Boulder-haha. But, they really do love their marijuana in Boulder…).

Strangely believe it, in a further diversion from current weather and a mea culpa downstream that maybe you won’t get to with a lot boring writing before it: not one paper in that AMS Monograph was about the climate effects of CO₂! Talk about being asleep at the wheel! Wow.

Well, OK, you can’t blame them too much.

The earth’s temperature was slipping downward in those days, and while it was well-known that the effect of CO₂ was to cause warming, it didn’t seem to be having enough effect to counter the cooling, and we were only just getting obs of CO₂ from Mauna Loa. Sure, its kind of an embarrassing chapter of science, so your not gonna hear much about it from scientists; the monograph above is almost never cited, or course. We like to avoid mentioning embarrassing chapters.

I could name some others, in my specialty, like those cloud seeding experiments at Climax, CO, in the 1960s which looked so good, so complete, and fooled the National Academy of Sciences because it was really all “smoke and mirrors.” Or those in Israel in the 1960s and 1970s that fooled everyone for a long time, too, but, upon further review, were also “smoke and mirrors.” Yes, that’s right, there was a “consensus” of scientific opinion about the results of each of those cloud seeding experiments that for a time was wrong, as, to beat a dead horse, happened in the early 1970s concerning the prospect of “global cooling;” the preponderance of scientific thought was that an ice age was ahead (as indicated by a climate change conference at Brown University in 1972, the results of which were summarized in Weather and Climate Modification, 1974, Wiley-Interscience publishers, W. N. Hess, Ed. Hell, the earth was cooling, so it made sense at that time!

Pretty amazing when you think about it, which you just have.

We know better now. CMP, like most everybody else, is predicting warming dead ahead, only how much is in question.

Here, we address embarrassing chapters head on, if anyone is still reading, which I hope they are not. Check it out.

About 13 days ago, the NOAA spaghetti ensemble factory showed a result that strongly “IMI” (in my interpretation) indicated a vast weather change beginning at the end of January. Sure, it was WAY out beyond what we consider to be a reliable forecast window, and unprofessional to make a forecast that far in advance, that is, much beyond a week, but the signal, the bunching of lines was so great, I went for it anyway. I got excited and brought to your attention that a likely drought-interrupting weather change was to occur in 12-15 days from then, troughs would occupy the entire Southwest beginning at the end of January into the first week of February.

Its not gonna happen.

Cloud maven person was too confident in his interpretation of spaghetti back then, that a trough positioned in the SW was virtually in cement; it had to happen. I was so excited and so wrong, got carried away, like I did with Sharon so many decades ago, thinking we were surely going to be a couple. I was rongno then, too. Arthur Rongno…. Oh, well, we learn and sort of move on.

Oh, there could still be a major trough toward the 5-6th of February, but as the title imputes, we’re down to a single blue, a rogue contour produced by one of the many model runs repeating forecasts last evening with those little errors in starting conditions. the Lorenz model runs. 🙁 🙁 :{

The End, finally!

Opinion piece, soapbox, etc; stepping away from clouds for a minute

I was disturbed last evening (Dec. 13th) by a piece on the California wildfires, and their cause during the venerable PBS news hour. As with so many cases when opinions differ, PBS usually interviews those with differing opinions.

Not so last night.

It would seem that issues in climate have been removed from debate and critique except in the more or less underground blog world; bad for the public and bad for science.

Differences of opinion should be addressed head on in the most public of places, not hidden as though they don’t exist!

So I feel those alternative opinions on the cause and frequency of Cal wildfires omitted in the PBS news hour should be exposed:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/dec/11/california-wildfires-new-normal-baseless-climate-s/

These opinions are contained in the Washington Times, a counterpoint newspaper to the liberal-oriented, Washington Post. (We need objective news so BAD!)

Perhaps the PBS producers should listen to the FTC statement on fraud, which reigns in advertisers statements that can mislead consumers. I post this FTC statement because this is what happened last night on PBS, IMO. If what they presented last night on wildfires was a “product”, in effect, one “harming consumers” due to not having proper warnings (balance), you would see the injury lawyers lining up:

“Certain elements undergird all deception cases. First, there must be a representation, omission or practice that is likely to mislead the consumer.” —FTC Policy Statement on Deception

Yep, that’s what happened in the PBS news hour last night. Shame on you, PBS. You can do better.

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Disclaimer 1. Two of the scientists quoted in the Times article are friends and ones I greatly admire; they are first rate scientists with numerous peer-reviewed publications; Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Washington, and Roger Pielke, Sr., emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University.

Disclaimer 2: The writer is firmly of the opinion that the world will be warmer in the future.

Disclaimer 3: I am corrupted in a sense about scientific literature published in polarized domains due to having seen hundreds of pages of peer-reviewed literature describing ersatz cloud seeding results. I have a fair body of literature published on those, in essence, “corrections.” The bogus published cloud seeding results led to an erroneous scientific consensus on cloud seeding skill in the 1970s and 1980s.

Why did that happen?

The experimenters responsible for those faulty results knew beforehand what they would find and made sure they found it (sound familiar?), and due to inadequate and/or “pal” peer-reviews that let faulty literature into peer-reviewed publications (also sounds familiar).

The End

(Thanks to Mark Albright, I guess, to alerting me to that Washington Times article; I lost sleep over that and whether the Geminid meteor shower, peaking last night, would destroy the space station, killing all on board.)

Storm-weary Catalinans prepare for more strong storms, cold, and storm weariness

Catalinans experienced a FOURTH cloudy day in a row, and, over the past few days, including yesterday’s few drops that fell at 4:24 PM, have experienced over an inch of rain!

Some grumbling has started concerning muddy, pot-holed and puddled up dirt roads, about the washes running across roads lately, water and mud splashing on the car day after day, and brutally low temperatures dipping to well below 50° degrees in the morning now for several days in a row. Its 40° F here as I write this.

While a brief respite is in progress now, Catalinans were discouraged to learn that more strong storms are due in this weekend, bringing possibly damaging winds and heavy rains that will augment the poor road conditions.

How much rain?

Let us look below and see how much has been calculated by our best model at the University of Arizona’s Wildcat Hydro and Atmos Sci Dept (I am so glad they provide this service; I donate to the Dept, as we all should!):

Precip totals by 8 PM, January 23rd after a few storms have gone by. As you can see lots of red and yelleows in Arizona’s critical mountain regions for snowpack, and we’re in the inch or so of rain, pretty much like the amount produced here by the last storm. What a January this is turning out to be!

Hah! We can’t complain too much about inclement weather compared to California’s pluvialities. Here is a table and map of precip amounts for that State through just the first 14 days. Prepare to gasp:

A map and table of the highest 20 rainfall totals in California and Nevada just through January 14th. Astounding! And 10-20 inches more are expected at some of these sites before the month is out. Yep, by Jan 14th, one station was closing in on 40 inches of rain!

The remarkable aspect of this rainfall anomaly on the West Coast and in the Southwest, which is also quite wet, is that it could not be seen in climate forecasts days to a couple of weeks in advance. Its not that the folks at the Climate Prediction Center aren’t the best that we can get, its just a statement about how hard it is to get a longer term forecast right. Many are right, but lately, recalling the “Big Niño Bust of 2015-16” where the forecasts of a wet Southwest and central and southern California went terribly awry, those forecasts have taken a beating. Here’s what was expected this winter by the CPC, first, for January, a forecast made on the last day of December. when the forecast models we use day to day would have had some influence:

The precipitation forecast for January 2017 by the CPC.

As can be seen, the extreme rains that hit California, and our own well above normal precip, though on the doorstep on December 31st, were unforeseen. That’s how tough it is.

Below, the forecast for January through March, also going astray, though a recovery could be had by a very dry Feb and March in Cal and the Southwest, something not likely to happen now.

Below, the forecast for the three month period of January through March, also now going astray.

Glad I’m not forecasting for a month or three months! Gads, yesterday we had ice galore here and there, and I had predicted that morning that it was doubtful that ice could form in our clouds yeserday and how about that rainbow yesterday afternoon, to change the subject quickly, but smoothly; hardly a ripple, something gleaned from the election debates:

4:59 PM. A rainbow. — 4:59 PM. A rainbow, an implicit indicator of ice in clouds yesterday. There was a lot in some areas, particularly over the Catalinas in the late afternoon.

Some additional views, including a horse, which should increase web traffic:

Horse, muddy corral, and supporting rainbow evidence for why the corral is muddy. Horse: "Why is that rainbow on my butt?" — Horse, muddy corral, and supporting rainbow evidence for why the corral is muddy. Horse “Chero-key”: “Why is that rainbow on my butt?”

Rainbow empties into a rain gauge. — Rainbow empties into a NWS-style, 8-inch diameter rain gauge. Real weathermen have real rain gauges, not the cheap plastic toy types. Just kidding, CoCo and rainlog, orgs that use cheap plastic toy-type gauges. Just kidding again, CoCo and rainlog. orgs.

5:09 PM. Here a completely different rainbow, because I moved a few feet, and the rain drops in the prior bows have fallen to the ground, empties into yet another 8-inch diameter rain gauge, a tipping bucket one which is online at KAZCATAL4. Its been under-measuring the rain, however, for some time.

OK, now for the rest of the day, your daily cloud diary:

8:09 AM. You got yer normal TUS exiting smog plume heading for Mark Albright's house in Continental Ranch over there on the right. There is some Stratus fractus in that plume as well. The damp air has caused some of the hygroscopic particles to swell up; be deliquesed, which increases the opacity of smog. Such an effect is particularly bad on the East Coast ahead of cold fronts when warm, humid, smog-laden air is brought northward ahead of fronts. Gads, its awful. Even when the sky is cloudless, you can hardly tell its blue! — 8:09 AM. You got yer normal TUS exiting smog plume heading for Mark Albright’s house in Continental Ranch over there on the right. There is some Stratus fractus in that plume as well. The damp air has caused some of the hygroscopic particles to swell up; be deliquesced, which increases the opacity of smog. Such an effect is particularly bad on the East Coast ahead of cold fronts when warm, humid, smog-laden air is brought northward ahead of fronts. Gads, its awful. Even when the sky is cloudless, you can hardly tell its blue! Above the smog, Stratocumulus.

9:36 AM. Had evidence of a little smog up thisaway, too. Again, the whitish haze is due to deliquesced partilces. As the air dries out and the day warms up, this effect disappears. even though the aerosol particles that were "deliquesced" are still around. The Five Satins, "Still Around." That takes me back aways. — 9:36 AM. Had evidence of a little smog up thisaway, too. Again, the whitish haze is due to deliquesced partilces. As the air dries out and the day warms up, this effect disappears. even though the aerosol particles that were “deliquesced” are still around. The Five Satins, “Still Around.” Gads, that takes me back a-ways when I was 2 inches taller than now….

10:10 AM. Smog plume, as sometimes happens, begins to drift northward as the mountains start launching Cumulus clouds and cause the wind to move toward them. Can't say too much about the central cloud feature, a gesture of some kind it would appear. — 10:10 AM. Smog plume, as sometimes happens, begins to drift northward as the mountains start launching Cumulus clouds and cause the wind to move toward them. Can’t say too much about the central cloud feature, a gesture of some kind it would appear.

10:27 AM. Nice lighting scene I thought. Cumulus turrets were rocketing upward at this time.

1:48 PM. Not much going on. Underlying Cumulus bases lifted, some Cumulus spreading out adding to the general Stratocumulus deck. No ice around, as was forecast. — 1:48 PM. Not much going on. Underlying Cumulus bases lifted, some Cumulus spreading out adding to the slightly higher general Stratocumulus deck. No ice around, as was forecast.

3:02 PM. Something is going terribly WRONG with the anticipation of no ice producing clouds yesterday. Rain begins to fall on the Catalinas.

3:20 PM. A totally humiliating, completely glaciated tiny Cumulonimbus remains breaks into view from the Stratocumulus deck. On the other hand. another fascinating day of ice multiplication here in Arizona! Look at that little guy, all ice, and tops almost certainly warmer than about -12° C from sounding data. This would mean that those 10s to hundreds per liter of ice that you’re looking at are needles and hollow column ice crystals called “sheaths.” Man, I wanted to sample that cloud so bad! What happened to cause this cloud was that at one point its top got a couple of degrees Celsius colder than the surrounding clouds that did not produce ice. Rain was reaching the ground at this time o er there even though it is in the dissipating stage, too.

3:43 PM. In the meantime, the showers emitting from the clouds over the Catalinas were getting more enthusiastic (read, "personally insulting"). No doubt if you could get on top, they would have looked exactly like that dissipating Cb shown above. — 3:43 PM. In the meantime, the showers emitting from the clouds over the Catalinas were getting more enthusiastic (read, “personally insulting”). No doubt if you could get on top, they would have looked exactly like that dissipating Cb shown above.

But, then there were some great sun and lighting scenes in those showers, not to mention the brilliant rainbow that was to come:

4:47 PM. Its a little crazy, I know, but I just love these rainy, sunlit scenes on our mountains, or those sun and shadow scenes that I post so many of. Just never will get tired of them.

4:51. More of same. Notice inclusion of man-sized rain gauge in foreground. Its a nice touch if you, too, have one, which I hope you do. It really says who you are.

The End

Thanks, if anyone is out there….

Lucky snap; studies in orange

From the past three days, these:

DSC_8279_2 — From a single snap, this LTG complexity caught three evenings ago.

This was taken seconds before the big flash, which kind of ruined the exposure when it happened.

This last series of photos were taken the evening before. Kinda pretty I thought.

In other news…..

Record July rains are falling in much of the coastal and intermediate valleys of southern California as the pathetic remnant of once proud Category FOUR hurricane Dolores makes landfall there today. Places like San Diego have had well over an inch, unheard of in July. August, not so much, since tropical storm remnants have passed over southern Cal in a few Augusts. Remember August 1977, when two inches fell on LA due to a tropical storm remnant?

That also August deluge in Los Angeles, by coincidence I am sure, preceded the big Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) switch in which low centers in the Pacific shifted farther to the south beginning with the 77-78 winter and the Arctic warmed up. Wallace et al 1995, Science Mag, discoverers of the PDO, were claiming that the PDO shift had seriously muddied up the global warming hoopla of the time, suggesting caution in those global warming claims.

Nobody really paid any attention, since it was about to get even WARMER in the years immediately ahead, like in the 97-98 winter when a giant El Nino, like the one now out there, spiked earth temperatures to a record high of the time.

By the way, the phrase, “global warming”, has been supplanted by the phrase, “climate change”, one that has been bastardized from its original use since climatologists have always considered the phrase, “climate change” a temperature-neutral, precipitation-neutral, could-go-either-way one, but as you know today it is one-tailed; that is, “climate change” today has only ONE meaning by those (often non-professionals) who use it; that an anthropogenic WARMING of the climate is underway with its attendant effects on precipitation and life itself.

When the earth stopped warming some 15-20 years ago, the global warming phrase heard all over the media had to be supplanted with something else, of course. I laugh, bitterly really, when I think of award-winning science geophys writer, Richard Kerr, of Sceince Mag, who wrote an article in Science, quoting the Hadley Center and such, titling his 2009 article about the hiatus in the rise in temperature, “What Happened to Global Warming?”

Of course, today such a title would not be allowed in Science Magazine. But then, Richard Kerr could not have titled his article, “What Happened to Climate Change?” either, since climate change is always happening on this planet, probably the others like it.

Speaking of mud, or muddying things up, some scientists (Karl et al.) are now claiming (in 2015) there was NO HIATUS in the earth’s temperature; that its been rising all along! This astounding finding is due to some manipulations/”corrections” of existing data and use of African and other data not previously available. You can read about this in summary form: Lost and Found_Sci 6-5-2015

This made me feel sad for the great scientists of the day, like Susan Soloman and others, who have generated hypotheses about WHY the pause in the rise in temperatures has occurred, even publishing those hypotheses in high end journals like Science Mag or Nature.

Those folks are bound to be pretty embarrassed now since they may have been explaining nothing that was real. It doesn’t get more embarrassing than that; kind of like explaining N-Rays, that bogus radiation reported after the turn of the century by French scientist, Renee Blondlot, at Nance University (the “N” was for Nance). Man, was Blonbdlot embarrassed when American physicist, Robert Wood, went to France to see “N-Rays” for himself and found that they were imaginary and reported them as so¹. N-Rays, though they had been “confirmed” in numerous studies, were soon gone from the scene, one of the greatest mass delusions known to science.

Was there REALLY no hiatus, that the Hadley Center in England, perhaps the foremost climate center in the world, was somehow misled when they were reporting a pause or hiatus in warming? One thinks that the Karl et al 2015 report will get a LOT of scrutiny. Stand by….

More TSTMS in the area today through most of the summer. Hope one hits here in the Heights. We’re falling behind our 3.5 inch or so average for July.

The End.

————————

¹It was the story of American physicist, Robert Wood, as told in the 1982 book, Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science, by William Broad and Nicholas Wade, that partially inspired your Catalina Cloud Maven.com to go to Israel in 1986 to see the clouds for himself since, in his experience after years of airborne cloud work at the University of Washington), the cloud reports emanating out of Israel were goofy, also the likely product of someone’s imagination. Those Israeli cloud reports WERE goofy as found by your author (1988 pub), and independently by others (U of Tel Aviv).

Qiet day in “Lake” Catalina; LA Times 1981 climate change quote

Do we really need the letter, “u” in “quiet”? Just checking… “Lake” is for all the puddles around right now in Catalina after the nice half inch to inch rain the day before yesterday.

There used to be actual lakes in Catalina, btw, “Twin Lakes” they were called, as old timers know. That’s why we have a boat store here, and quite a few street names with nautical themes, like “hawser”, the name of a big marine rope for towing boats.

Before launching into the usual tedious cloud discussion and photo barage, those one of you that got to the bottom of yesterday’s blog may have noticed that it linked to a LONG article in the venerable Los Angeles Times reviewing media weather forecasting as it was in 1981. A friend and met man, Mark Albright, actually READ the whole thing, and alerted me to the following INTERESTING quote in that LA Times article, which I thought you should see, too.

I’ll frame this with the old Consumer Reports header, “Quote Without Comment”:

——————-
“Robert Cowen (Christian Science Monitor) says there is too much gullibility in newspapers about the possibility of climatic disaster. Too many reporters listen to people who want to make a reputation with wild predictions. Thus, even the nation’s better daily newspapers periodically publish stories under such headlines as “There’s Doom in the Air” and “The Sun Goes Bonkers” and “New Dust Bowl Could Bring Starvation” and “Ice Age Coming? Chilling Thought for Humanity.”

“Every time there’s a drought or a long hot spell, I get swamped with calls from reporters asking, ‘This means the climate is changing, doesn’t it?’ says Diane Johnson, head of information services for the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “All the media want to know usually is . . . ‘Is there a new Ice Age coming?’,” Johnson says. “They hardly ever want to know the whys or the imponderables.”
—————–

Well, HERE, we want to know “why”, dammitall! At least about cloud stuff.

Next rain not due in for at least a week, so enjoy the puddles while we have them.

Seems like undercutting dry air has ruined our chances for Cumulus-style isolated shower today. Currently there is an elevated layer of Stratocumulus, tops above Ms. Mt. Lemmon. That layer will make for a nice sunrise, so be ready. Other than that, just a few pretty, and small Cumulus, hold the ice, today.

Yesterday’s clouds and why

“Balloon Over Fog” yesterday after sunrise, that was about the most exciting thing that happened yesterday. No ice-in-clouds seen, which was a disappointment; no ice, no precip. Tops never reached our usual ice-forming level of about -10 C (14 F), as you know; mainly hung around -5 C, according to our TUS weather balloon soundings. For people not familiar with weather balloons, that’s not a weather balloon over the fog in the photo below, btw.

7:35 AM. A hot air balloon floats peacefully over an unusual March fog occurrence in Marana and Avra Valley. Altocu on top. Don’t see the balloon? See speck at sky/horizon interface center of photo.

9:35 AM. Lots of water coming down the mountains again as shown by the glistening rock phenomena. Most normally dry washes and creeks should continue to run with another H2O infusion continuing the flows started by our gargantuan late January rain. Poppies looking good now, too.

Below, just examples of a postcard day in Catalina, AZ, those kind of days that make you glad you had one more day on this planet.

The setting sun produced the normal “colorization” of the Catalinas that we savor, and when you look around in the desert at this time of day, even the treacherous teddy bear cholla has real beauty at this time of day.

The End

A nice cloud yesterday, not a great cloud yesterday; dramatic day ahead

The clouds were somewhat of a disappointment yesterday, not the stupendous photogenic day CM was expecting.

Maybe CM is total fraud, gets Big Oil funding and should be investigated by Rep. Grijalva as other weather folk are, like the great Prof. and National Academy of Sciences Fellow, Dr. Judy Curry, a friend, and about whom I say on a link to her blog here, and from this blog’s very beginning, “The only link you will need.” I said that because Judy² is a top scientist, and is eminently fair in this polarized issue.

I am in real trouble! Will remove that link immediately¹ before our very own “climate thought enforcer”, Demo Rep. Grijalva, AZ, finds it using a spy bot! No telling how far down the influence chain it will go, maybe all the way down to here, where there is virtually no influence!

Back to clouds…….

Only late in the day did the delicate patterns expected to happen ALL DAY appear, again, with iridescence, always nice to see.

Here is your day for yesterday. Its a pretty interesting movie. Two thumbs up!

Oh, today’s weather?

The media, Bob, and our good NWS, of course, are all over the incoming rain in great detail. In fact, it will take you half a day to read all the warnings on this storm issued by our Tucson NWS.

So why duplicate existing information that might be only slightly different than the prevailing general consensus on the storm amounts, and then maybe be investigated for going against a consensus? No, not worth it. Best to be safe, not say things against The Machine. (OK, maybe overdoing it here.)

In the meantime, the upper low off southern Cal and Baja has fomented an extremely strong band of rain, now lying across SE Cal and the Colorado River Valley where dry locations like Blythe are getting more than an inch over the past 24 h. Same for northern Baja where some places are approaching 2-3 inches, great for them. You can see how the rain is piling up in those locations here. In sum, this is a fabulous storm for northern Mexico and the SW US, whether WE get our 0.915 inches, as foretold here, or not! Rejoice in the joy of others. Looking for an arcus cloud fronting the main rainband, too, that low hanging cloud in a line that tells you a windshift is coming. Still expecting, hoping, for thunder today to add to the wind and rain drama.

Also, the present cloud cover, as the trough ejects toward us, will deepen up and rain will form upwind and around here as that happens, so it won’t JUST be the eastward movement of the existing band. This means you might be surprised by rain if you’re outside hiking and think the band itself is hours away. Expecting rain to be in the area by mid-morning, certainly not later than noon, with the main blast (fronted by something akin to an arcus cloud) later in the day. OK, just checked the U of AZ mod run from 11 PM AST, and that is what it is saying as well! Wow.

Finally, if you care, yesterday’s clouds:

6:45 AM. Your sunrise color, thanks to a line of broken Cirrus spissatus. Jet stream Cirrus streak, as a matter of fact. — 6:45 AM. Your sunrise color, thanks to a line of broken Cirrus spissatus. Jet stream Cirrus streak, as a matter of fact, moving along at about 110 mph.

9:47 AM. Ruffle of Sc topped Mt. Lemmon, while strange clouds formed just upwind of them. These kinds of shapes suggest an inversion where the air resists further upward movement and a smoothing occurs at the top similar to a lenticular cloud. Photo taken at the Golder Ranch Dr. cattleguard. which really doesn’t work that well, as the neighbors below here will tell you.

The 5 AM, March 1st, balloon sounding for TUS.

9:53 AM. Looks like a crab with four hooks. How funny. — 9:53 AM. Looks like a crab with four pinchers. How funny.

12:23 PM. Shredding tops of small Cumulus like this indicate that the air is very dry just above their tops, and the shreds racing off to the right, indicate how fast the wind increased as you went upward.

2:58 PM. Something is changing here. Notice how the tops are bulging and not immediately being torn into shreds. The air was likely moistening above cloud tops, and the inversion holding the tops back, weakening as our storm gets a little closer.

4:19 PM. A line of heavy Cumulus had formed to the west, indicating more moistening and "de-stabilization" of the air. — 4:19 PM. A line of still larger Cumulus had formed to the west, indicating more moistening and “de-stabilization” of the air. However, the upper low was not advancing toward us any longer and no further development occurred as stagnated, ratcheting up its rainband over eastern Cal and western AZ. The TUS balloon sounding suggested tops were getting close to the normal ice-forming level here, -10 C, the slight inversion on the morning sounding at 13,000 feet above sea level, and the one likely to have caused those smooth morning clouds, was gone.

6:07 PM. Just before sunset from near Oracle where we took mom for her BD. The heavier Cumulus clouds faded with the sun. They will arise today!

Below, just some pretty patterns observed later in the day. Click to see larger versions.

3:36 PM. Twisted, tortured Cirrus (fibratus?).

3:50 PM. Another view of Cirrocumulus. Though these clouds are still composed of liquid droplets, the 5 PM TUS sounding suggests they were at about -30 C in temperature. It happens.

4:00 PM. An incredibly complex array of Cirrocumulus overhead. Due to perspective, its about the only view that you can really see how complex the patterns are.

6:22 PM. Finally, from the "Not taken while driving since that would be crazy" collection, this oddity. Looks like an high temperature contrail (aka, "APIP"). but the trail seems to shoot up into the cloud Altocumulus cloud layer (or down out of it). Have never seen this before. — 6:22 PM. Finally, from the “Not-taken-while-driving-since-that-would-be-crazy-though-it-looks-like-it-was” collection, this oddity. Looks like an high temperature aircraft contrail (aka, “APIP”) in the lower center. And the trail seems to shoot up into the cloud Altocumulus cloud layer (or down out of it). Have never seen that kind of aircraft track before since it looks so steep! “High temperature” here means that it formed at temperatures above about -35 C.

Whew, the end.

——-

¹Not!!!!!! I thought this was a good read about this deplorable new stage of “climate thought enforcement” now in progress. It was brought to my attention by climate folk hero, friend, and big troublemaker, Mark Albright. Wow, maybe Mark will be investigated, too! Maybe I should excise his name….

²I remember, too, how cute she was when she worked my lab/office at the University of Washington in the mid-1980s, and thought about asking her out, to detract from a serious commentary here. She was a Penn State grad student, not a U of WA employee; still, to ask her out would have been untoward. A human commentary like this, one about feelings and things, help boost blog attendance.

Glimpse of an Ice Age just ahead, but maybe not here in Catalina

Like scientific opinion¹, climate change happens. You may not know this, but only 15,000 to 20,000 years or so ago, a blink of an eye in light years, the earth was gripped by an Ice Age. No “hockey stick” handle back then! Snow and ice piled up over a kilometer deep on top of the Space Needle in Seattle. And the polar ice cap extended to places like Cahoga Falls, Ohio, while burying the Great Lakes, which didn’t exist.

NOW, of course, we’re in an “Interglacial” period called the Holocene, where its nice and toasty, for the most part, the way we like it as a people. Really, human beans do not like Ice Ages; they can really die off in a hurry²and have to repopulate themselves afterwards! Well, I suppose that part might be fun.

The forecast models are foretelling something in the way of a flashback in the way of a pressure pattern over nearly ALL of North America that might well have been the average pressure pattern day after day during an Ice Age (there have been many), the last one, at its peak, not surprisingly, was called, “the Last Glacial Maximum.” I’d call it that, too.

Here are a coupla panels from the venerable Enviro Can computer model with its FOUR panels of weather. Take a look at the pressure patterns in the right side panels, you may have to use a magnifying glass, both showing the predicted sea level pressure pattern. These forecast maps are astounding to C-M and will, therefore, be likewise to you, too: a high pressure area so expansive with cold dense air that it covers millions of square miles, even more in square kilometers, maybe billions, since the kilometer is a smaller Euro unit of measurement that makes everything seem farther away when you’re driving to someplace and the distance is in Euros. (hahaha, just kidding folks).

Valid December 29th at 5 AM AST. Giant high pressure cell has formed in the Canadian Northwest Territories, and its leading edge is affect the US from COAST TO COAST! — Valid Monday, December 29th at 5 AM AST. Giant high pressure cell has formed in the Canadian Northwest Territories, and its leading edge is affecting the US from COAST TO COAST! I am pumped, don’t high pressure regions this big this too often in NA. In eastern Asia, e,g, China, where all our stuff is made, and Siberia, this big a high is SOS in the wintertime. So, we’re seeing a bit of eastern Asia wintertime conditons, too.

Valid just 24 h later, 5 AM AST, December 30th. Temperatures in some mountain valley locations in MT could be as low as -60 F. NE flow aloft, behind the upper low, will provide exceptionally dry air above the surface layer, and that will allow whatever "heat", and we use this word, advisedly, to efficiently escape from the surface after nightfall. So, clear skies, dry above you, no wind (as in a valley) down, down, down plummets the temperature. — Valid just 24 h later, 5 AM AST, Tuesday, December 30th. Temperatures in some mountain valley locations in MT could be as low as -60 F. NE flow aloft, behind the upper low, will provide exceptionally dry air above the surface layer, and that will allow whatever “heat”, and we use this word, advisedly, to efficiently escape from the surface after nightfall. So, clear skies, dry above you, no wind (as in a valley) down, down, down plummets the temperature.

So, we have an historical treat coming when the average temperatures every day in the US were 15-20 F lower during the Last Glacial Maximum! (Ugh.) The oceans were at lot smaller then, too, because a lot that water was piled up on top of the Space Needle, etc.

You might have noticed in these panels that the Ice Age-like conditions are plummeting rapidly southward, and big trough is starting to curl over the interior of the Pac NW. Yes, since we are still in the Trough Bowl, that curling air pattern, containing frigid air is headed toward Arizona, and will be here or not in early January.

Why a bifurcated statement?

Models are confused. Two model runs, only 6 h apart (5 PM and 11 PM AST last evening have the low center aloft for the SAME time, January 1st at 5 AM AST over a) Pebble Beach Golf Course, Carmel, CA; b) over Gallup, NM! How funny, outrageous, and frustrating is that? See below:

Ann 2014122506_CON_GFS_500_HGT_WINDS_174 — Valid at 5 AM AST, January 1st, New Year’s Bowl Day. With the amount of cold air with this system it would likely be snowing in lower elevation places north of SFO. Also, it would rain on the Duck-Seminole bowl game in Pasadena, CA.

Also Valid for January 1st at 5 AM AST. But which one will be right?

========Learning Module=================

But, we are “gifted” with an opportunity to learn about chaos in the atmosphere, aren’t we, that is, those times when little errors can lead to huge differences in future states.

So, to resolve this weather conflict, and lose a few more readers, we go to the NOAA spaghetti factory, and examine the “Lorenz plot” for this time period and see which one is looney:

Valid 12 h before the maps above, New Year's Eve, December 31st at 5 PM AST. — Valid 12 h before the maps above, New Year’s Eve, December 31st at 5 PM AST.

Well its pretty obvious that the goofy one is the one having the low over SFO and vicinity. Most of the circulation pattern has a center in Arizona somewhere. But this interpertation means that extremely cold air is likely to invade at least the northern half of Arizona as January begins. The good side is that there would be substantial, and later, reservoir filling snows in the mountains, and a good chance of substantial rain here in Catalina as the year begins.

The end of maybe solving a prognostic conundrum.

Today’s weather

Well, its all “out there” by your favorite weathercaster, and they all do a pretty darn good job, and so no use hacking over what’s already known by everybody except to say that the jet streak at 18,000 feet (500 mb), that core that circumscribes precip from no precip areas during our winters, passes over Catalina (our area) around 5 PM AST according the latest model run.

And that’s, too, when the models expect the first rain around Catalina to arrive. As before, this ain’t gonna be too much unless we get real lucky, top amount likely below a quarter on an inch between 5 PM today and the end of possible showers later tomorrow afternoon.

And of course, there’ll be lots of wind, maybe gusts to 40 mph today, a windshift to the NW here when front goes by overnight, with a temperature drop of about 10 degrees almost simultaneously. Expect a frosty Lemmon on Friday morning when the clouds part.

You can follow today’s developments today best from IPS MeteoStar’s satellite and radar loop.

The interesting part is that echoes and clouds will appear out of nowhere as that big trough expands southward, cooling the air aloft, allowing cloud tops to rise to ice-forming levels. Also, if you go there now, you will see giant clear slots between those middle and high clouds that passed over last evening until right now (Ac castellanus visible to SSW now), and a tiny band in west central Arizona, and the echo-producing clouds in the NW part of the State. Those unstable-loooking clouds will be gone soon.; they’re more from tropical locations.

Keep an eye on that little band in the middle; it may turn into a bona fide rainband as clouds add onto it, widens and thickens. That’s probably what’s going to bop us this evening with rain.

Expecting to see a nice lenticular cloud downstream from the Catalinas today. They’re common AHEAD of the jet core since the air is much more stable then, resists lifting and so you get cloud pancakes that hover over the same spot. How you log them if you see any.

Will we see our usual, “clearing before the storm”? This is when middle and high clouds depart, there’s a big clearing followed by an inrush of low, precipitating clouds. Not sure, but will look for it if that little band of middle clouds ends up as only that as it passes by today. The invasion of low clouds would follow that. Too much speculating today!

Yesterday’s clouds

3:42 PM. Cirrus fibratus thickening to Altostratus toward the horizon, invade sky as big trough approaches, upper ridge skiddadles.

3:50 PM. Looking at Cirrus and CIrrostratus advancing over the Catalinas.

5:20 PM. Your yesterday’s sunset. Heavy ice cloud shield advances on southern Arizona, Cirrostratus with Altostratus in the distance, the thickening NOT due to perspective. Hope you caught that.

Finally, the End. I’m sure you’re glad, too, if you got this far!

——————————-

¹Remmeber back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when it was widely believed that a new ice age may be at hand because the earth had been cooling off for a coupla decades? It was also being pointed out that an ice age could onset in a hundred to a few hundred years from past ice age onsets! Yikes. Scary times on earth then when the Beatles were popular.

²Of course, if you were to die in an Ice Age, you might end up being well-preserved and then people would see what you looked like, the hair style you had, tattoos, etc, as we’ve seen with a few dead people that have been found from those glacial times. I guess that’s something positive to say about cold times.

Clouds drop 0.01 inches in Catalina! Nice sunrise, too, yesterday

Of course, only CLOUDS can rain, so the title is a little silly, but it sounded more dramatic like that. This is the first measurable rain, it fell between 9 and 10 PM here, in EIGHT weeks!

And you could sure smell that special fragrance from the ground and desert vegetation as soon as you stepped outside to do your exercises this morning!

Nice sunrise yesterday morning to start the day. In case you missed, of course, I am there for you.

BTW, in the captions below, I have included for you a discussion of climate issues in a kind of stream-of-consciousness format. OK, its a rant that came upon me out of the blue. CM sometimes gets mad and loses control for a few seconds; need to get some counseling maybe…

6:56 AM. Altocumulus perlucidus. Say no more. Might be a lenticular sort of on the right. Not the classic almond shape, but it did hang on for a long time in that spot. Say no more.

Kind of gray after that in Altostratus with an undercutting, lower layer of Altocumulus by mid-afternoon darkening the sky up some more. Some virga here and there with sprinkles-its-not-drizzle reaching the ground by late afternoon in the Catalina area. Here is your cloudscape for later in the day, very Seattle like during approaching storms that actually rain lightly on you for hours:

10:35 AM. Classic Altostratus translucidus, ice path in cloud all the way to the sun.

10:39 AM, after walk down a slope to give YOU a view to the southwest, classic Altostratus as seen when not looking toward the sun. Hard to tell if its translucidus or opacus looking this way. By the way, even when you can see the sun, As clouds are thousands of feet thick, tops usually at Cirrus clouds levels.

1:26 PM. Here come the lower, flocculent masses of Altocumulus clouds, ones composed of droplets.

3:15 PM. It was all downhill for cloud bottoms after the Altocumulus moved in. Now, the bottoms are lumpy and much larger, casting them as Stratocumulus. There was some virga and very light rainshowers reaching the ground at this time, too. A few drops fell at 3:11 PM. Only the great cloud mavens of all time would have noticed. Lasted maybe one minute.

3:15 PM again. Lot going on here, so I thought I would point things out, in particular for my fellow meteorologist Mark A at the U of WA who winters in the Tuscon smog plume. Mark is a super sleuth when it comes to snowpacks, you know, was fired as Assist State Climo for Washington when he demonstrated, along with two faculty members, that the claims of gigantic snowpack losses due to global warming (now repackaged as "climate change") were hugely exaggerated, like the result of cherry picking a cold snowy beginning and ending with a run of El Nino winters, ones that lead to less snowpack in the Cascades of Washington and Oregon. — 3:15 PM again. Lot going on here, so I thought I would point out some things on a gray day, in particular for my fellow meteorologist Mark A at the U of WA who winters in the Tuscon smog plume. Mark is a super sleuth when it comes to snowpacks, but maybe doesn’t have so much moxie when it comes to smog. Mark, as you know may now, was fired as Assist State Climo for Washington when he demonstrated and kept complaining, along with two faculty members, that the claims of gigantic snowpack losses due to global warming (now repackaged as “climate change¹“) in the Cascade Mountains were hugely exaggerated, likely the result of cherry picking a cold snowy beginning and ending with a run of El Nino winters, ones that lead to less snowpack in the Cascades of Washington and Oregon. Such cherry-picking led to a wonderful suggestion of huge declines that has led to a bounty of funding and continued employment, promotions, accolades, citations by Big Media, etc, because such claims, even if exaggerated and untrue, are what we want to hear! And, no one ever got a job for claiming they can’t find any sign of global warming, or only a little one, but rather are vilified for even suggesting exaggerations in the “global warming” domain. Mark, BTW, continuing his sleuthing has recently shown that similar claims for declines in snowpacks in Montana near Glacier National Park, have not been decreasing but rather increasing. He’ll get HELL for this one! So, more vilification is likely ahead for poor Mark, as well as more smog.

What’s ahead, besides the Big Pac 12 Fubball Game on Friday evening?

More clouds. Maybe a few more sprinkles especially tomorrow after dawn. See nice map below from the U of WA Dept of Atmospheric Meteorology (original colors on the map below by that big troublemaker, Mark Albright)

Ann 2014120415_MM5 — Valid for 8 AM AST, tomorrow morning, which is Thursday, in case you’ve lost count of the days of the week. The arrow denotes an upper level trough, or bend in the winds. Ahead of the bend (sometimes referred to as vorticity, or curling air, or red curly air) the air tends to rise producing cloud sheets, whereas behind red curly air, the air descends. See Seymour Hess, *Introduction to Theoretical Meteorology*, 1959, Florida State University Press. As you can see by the arrow, that slight bend in the winds is about to pass over your house in Catalina, and the U of Az model output from last evening sees a little rain here with that passage. Yay! Also note suggestion of bifurcated jet flow with a minor maximum in wind (slight bunching of contours) to the south of us, nearly always required for rain here in the cool season.

The End

Stationary rainbow sets duration record, maybe

Had another rainbow from those cloud “warriors” we call Cumulonimbus on the Catalinas. But, “If traces are your thing, Catalina is king!” as we recorded but a trace of rain again while soaking rains poured down just a couple of miles away on the Catalinas, to form a sentence with too much punctuation and a sentence within a sentence¹.

More interesting perhaps to some, this modest rainbow formed just after 5 PM yesterday toward the Charouleau Gap, as seen from Catalina, and was still in almost the same spot after 30 minutes. Have never seen that before since both the sun and the showers are drifting along and so the rainbow should change position.

First, in today’s cloud story, the strangely believe it rainbow part:

5:12 PM. Rainbow first spotted toward the Gap. Cumulonimbus cloud not sporting ice at top; ice is below flat top due to weak updrafts that allow the ice crystals to subside. — 5:12 PM. Rainbow first spotted toward the Gap. Cumulonimbus cloud not sporting ice at top; ice is below flat top due to weak updrafts that allow the ice crystals to subside while the top remains mostly liquid appearing. The smoothness on the side of the cloud above the rainbow is due to ice particles

5:42 PM. While the observer has moved some few hundred yards, the rainbow has stayed pretty much where it was after 30 min. A course in optics would be required to explain this and that’s not gonna happen (accounting for the sun’s movement, the rain, and the observer’s movement).

The whole day represented several phases, the early, spectacular eruption of clouds on the Catalinas as it started to warm up under clear skies, those low bases topping the mountains again indicating stupendous amounts of water are going to be in them when they grow up, the rapid appearance of “first ice” just after 10 AM, the heavy showers and cooling on the mountains and here (little thunder heard), the clearing due to the cooling, the warming, the rebuilding of the Cu on the mountains, and new showers–the rainbow was part of the second growth phase, and then the gradual die out of the Cu as sunset occurred.

Huh. I just realized that what happened to our temperatures yesterday was like a mini-sequence of the earth’s climate over the past 200,000 years or so, the prior Ice Age in the morning temps, the warm Eemian Interglacial as it warmed up, the last ice age when the cooling wind from the mountain showers hit, then the warm Holocene when the clearing and warming started up again in the afternoon! Cool, warm, cool, warm. Below, the Catalina temperature record that emulates earth’s climate over the past 200,000 years, beginning with next to last “ice age.” I can’t believe how much information I am passing along today! What a day you had yesterday!

Mock climate change for the earth's past, oh, 200, 000 years or so as indicated in yesterday's Catalina/Sutherland Heights temperature scale. — Mock climate change for the earth’s past, oh, 200, 000 years or so as indicated in yesterday’s Catalina/Sutherland Heights temperature scale. But, we have a LOT of days like yesterday’s in the summertime, but only now after 7 summers has it hit me how it mimics our earth’s “recent” past climate.

Cloud Alert: Yesterday might have been the last day for summer rain here. U of AZ mod from last night has plenty of storms, but we’re on the edge of the moist plume, and those storms take place just a hair east of us it says. So, while they may be on the Catalinas today, unless we get lucky, they’ll stay over there. Drier air creeps in tomorrow, too.

Here is the rest of our day in clouds, from the beginning, even if its not that interesting. In the interest of efficiency, you’d do a lot better by going to the U of AZ time lapse site to see all the wonderful things that happened yesterday, instead of plunking along one by one as you have to do here. (PS: Some functions in WordPress not working, would not allow some captions to be entered as usual.)

9:21 AM. This tall thin Cumulus cloud was a reliable portent for yesterday's early storms on the mountains. It just shot up! — 9:21 AM. This tall, thin Cumulus cloud was a reliable portent for yesterday’s early storms on the mountains. It just shot up!

11:57 AM. Thunder and downpours are widespread on the Catalinas.

2:46 PM. After the long clearing, Cumulus begin to arise on the Catalinas again.

DSC_0005-1 — 5:46 PM. A pretty, and isolated Cumulus congestus with a long mostly water plume ejecting toward the NW. Some ice can be seen falling out of that ejecting shelf. Now here’s a situation where an aircraft measuring the ice output from such a cloud can miss it because its formed as the turret subsides downstream, and most of the ice is substantially below its top, and under the shelf. If you cruised along the top of the shelf, you would miss most of the ice and measure ice particle concentrations that are much lower than what the cloud put out.

DSC_0017-1 — 6:17 PM. This same quasi-stationary cloud with its long shelf, still shedding ice just downwind of the cloud stem, is about to disappear. Note, too, that the ice fall quits after awhile going downstream even though cloud top temperature is the same for quite a distance. The ice was actually formed at lower temperatures in the protruding turret, not at the temperature of the shelf, which apparently were too high for ice to form. Also, cloud droplet sizes shrink from those in the protruding turret as evaporation takes a stronger hold. Larger droplet sizes are associated with greater ice formation at a given temperature.

6:12 PM. Like aspen leaves in the fall, but every day, our clouds change color as the sunsets. Here’s another memorable site, not only due to the color, but how tall and thin these Cumulus clouds are, showing that the atmosphere was still extremely unstable over the depth of these clouds, probable 2-3 km deep.

The End.

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¹Hahah-these are just a couple of the grammatical gaffes I actually know I’ve done!