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 while the top remains mostly liquid appearing. The smoothness on the side of the cloud above the rainbow is due to ice particles5:42 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. 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!
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.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.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!
Forgetting about yesterday’s unforecast subdued afternoon convection hereabouts after about 1 PM), lets talk about the misery of others; the little crybabies that leave Arizona in the summertime, decimating its economy, so that they can be cooler and “happy” in northern climes (while dodging hail and tornadoes, we might add).
Well, how about them birdies being really COLD before very long, due to record breaking low July temperatures? Yes, that’s right, what’s left of the “polar vortex” will once again, due to global warming, of course, spin out of control and down into the northern US in just about 5-7 days. And with it, long term July low temperature records will fall in the eastern US. Count on it.
So, once again, as some scientists alleged last winter, global warming will actually cause cooling. (Almost everything that happens is due to GW these days, as we know. (“GW”, BTW, now repackaged in the catch all, temperature-neutral phrase, “Climate Change”, during the past few years because, globally, it stopped getting warmer way back in ’98, and when the years began to pile up without global warming, scientists had to find another phrase to hang their mistaken hats on. (Where was the usual scientific “caution” back then?)
HOWEVER, continuing on with this harangue, and being a “lukewarmer”, we must watch out that the coming big El Nino doesn’t release a spring-loaded, pent up release of global heat. Might well happen, so don’t give up on “GW” quite yet; hold some cards on that question for another few years.
And, of course, if there is a step jump up in global temperatures just ahead, the phrase, “climate change” will be dumped by scientists and media for “global warming” again. Count on it, #2.
But, I digress, mightily, mainly due to yesterday’s cloud disappointments.
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Not in a great mood after yesterday’s bust, as you can tell, except for that strong thunderstorm that pummeled the north side of the Catalinas beginning about 11:30 AM, that was pretty cool; had continuous thunder for about an hour and a half, too. Dan Saddle up on Oracle Ridge got 0.63 inches, but you can bet 1-2 inches fell somewhere up there.
I was so happy then.
I thought the “Great Ones” would arise upwind of us in the direction of Pusch Ridge, but no. Those clouds got SMALLER as the afternoon wore on, it was incredible, and by sunset they were gone with only trashy debris clouds of Altocumulus and Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus from great storms in Mexico drifting over our sky. Even the sunset was disappointing.
Well, that 3:15 am to 3:30 am little shower this morning than dropped 0.15 inches here in the Heights, and 0.24 inches down there at the Bridge by Lago del Oro gave a psych boost1 that got me here on the keyboard.
10:55 AM. Nearly invisible veil of ice crystals begin to fall from an older Cumulus congestus turret. This was about an hour and a half ealier than the prior day, indicating that the Cu tops were reaching that level sooner than the prior day, suggesting bigger things (I thought). When you see this happening this early, you also look for an “explosion” some massive turret to suddenly blast out of these developing clouds, and that did happen within about half an hour after this.
10:55 AM. Close up, in case you don’t believe me.
11:04 AM.
7:33 PM. Your sunset.
Today? Check here. Once again, mod expects early Cumulonimbus on The Lemmon, then groups of thunderstorms move in during the evening (as was more or less predicted yesterday, but didn’t happen.) Will go with mod again, though, because I would like that to happen.
The weather way ahead
We’ve talked about cold air, now to balance things off, how about a discussion of the warm air ahead? Real hot air.
Was blown away by the spaghetti outputs from last night for the period of about two weeks from now. You can see the whole package from the NOAA spaghetti factory here. Below, our weather in 12-15 days, usually beyond confident predictions, but not here:
Valid at 5 PM AST July 22nd. Massive blob of really hot air settles in over the western half of the US. In this map, the most reliable long term predictions are over the western half of the US and over the Saharan Desert (indicated by the lack of lines in those two areas. A lot of lines means the weather pattern is pretty unpredictable.)
Valid at 5 PM July 25th. Massive upper level blob of really hot air continues to dominate the western half of the US.
&
So
The hot blob of air should lead to record HIGH temperatures all over the place in those days beginning around the 20-25th of July. Rainfall here? Indeterminant. If the high center sits over us, it might just be hot, real hot, but dry.
But, if the configuration aloft is as shown in the second plot, it could be very wet as tropical disturbances shift northwestward from Mexico into Arizona.
Sorry, can’t do much with precip from these, I don’t think.
The End, and covering all the possibilities, CM
==================================== 1Paraphrasing, the song for weathermen, those speaking to clouds; “Rain on me, when I’m downhearted….”
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.
Most of us can easily understand the reasoning behind the bounty of media stories and pronouncements by some scientists/White House ones even, describing how global warming has led to such severe winters over the past few years on various continents. It makes perfect sense that as it gets warmer, winters will be colder, more severe in some regions, while other areas, like the SW this year get a global warming face plant.
Furthermore, extreme regional temperature extremes like the ones we have seen in the US this winter have NEVER happened before since 1976-77, and, oh yeah, 1962-63…oops, I guess 1983 had a bad winter back East, too. OK, maybe “NEVER” is too strong… Tree rings have some bad stuff in them, too, before the historical records begin. Lets just say that the “NEVER” above refers to the last 12 months maybe.
Well, as I posted last time, Mike et al (his friends) posted a letter to the uppity journal, Science, saying that attributing these kinds of extremes to global warming was based on evidence that was “not compelling” (i. e, in normal speak, BS, or likely BS1.)
But that’s not the way the Press is treating these claims.
Mike is kind of a complainer, well, actually, I never actually heard him complain about anything, professionally or otherwise whilst at the University of Washington, but anyway, continuing, he sent to our weather e-mail list at that institution kind of a complaint. He observed that his comment in Science questioning the evidence presented in support of the claim that global warming is causing the severe winter in the East, was not getting much play in the Press while the proponents of a not-a-compelling-theory were getting a lot.
Here’s what Mike sent out to us, FYI:
“Here’s a new posting on Andy Revkin’s dot. earth following up on our letter that appeared in Science last Friday. The clarification at the end of our posting is in response to statements in postings of Jennifer Francis and Charles Greene on dot.earth, alleging that we had misrepresented the Francis and Vavrus article in our Science letter.
There’s an article about Jennifer Francis’ work on the NPR blog 2/16. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/16/277911739/warming-arctic-may-be-causing-jet-stream-to-lose-its-way
She appeared on CBS yesterday and her work was featured on the BBC News web site http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26023166
In contrast, the press has shown very little interest in our Science letter. In a quick look on Google just now I found only one blog (besides Cliff’s and Judy Curry’s) that refers to it. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/16/Record-Cold-February-Sending-Global-Warming-Conspiracists-into-Deep-Freeze
Kevin Trenberth and Jennifer Francis were interviewed yesterday on Chris Mooney’s program, which will be aired this Friday.
The link leads to Wikipedia and other links there; Mike has gotten NUMEROUS awards for his work; none of those are from oil companies, at least that I know of.)
I emphasized “Mike’s” observation (not his real first name, BTW) about one-sided media coverage by using a larger and red font because, you see, Mike came down in yesterday’s rain.
By that I mean, he is an idealist, one that sincerely believes that the Press will cover a story evenly and will give both sides a fair hearing in the debate about global warming/climate change. Mike, BTW, is FULLY on board the global warming band wagon, as are his pals; they just wanted to point out that some claims are not well supported and are going too far; that’s all.
But we streetwise folk remember the words of Seattle’s Queensryche, 1989:
Balanced media coverage on climate? Telling the public in large fonts about the “puzzling hiatus” in global warming over the past 15 years or so, as it was termed in Science recently?
Not gonna happen in these polarized days of the shifting polar vortex, as the latter has always done from time to time.
Let’s look ahead in weather to see if any other extreme weather news sits before us in the models. Then imagine how it might be covered by the media.
Below, from our best model, and from late yesterday’s global data, something awesome has shown up and its been showing up for a few model runs of late, giving it enhanced credibility:
A GIGANTIC and terribly severe mass of cold air is foretold to extrude into most of the US from the Arctic in about 8-10 days. NOAA spaghetti plots VERY supportive of this very bad cold wave). Below, the awesome and annotated in excitment sea level map from NOAA WRF-GFS based on the global data crunch at 5 PM AST yesterday:
Valid at 5 PM AST, February 28th, only nine days away! Arizona still toasty. Word deliberately misspelled here to see if you’re paying attention, one of the many innovations here at cloud-maven.
So, how will another astounding round of cold air be treated by the media, and certain incautious scientists? Let us imagine newspaper headlines on March 1st, 2014:
“Globally-warmed polar vortex squeezed out of Arctic again onto International Falls, MN!
“Numerous low temperature records set yet again against the backdrop of a warming world!”
Later in the stories we might read:
“Demographic experts warn that If the earth warms anymore, and winters continue to be more and more severe in the US, illegal migration will be INTO Mexico, not out of it.”
Or…..
“Citrus growers to move crops to southern Mexico and central America to escape the warmer world of more severe winters.”
———————–End of imagination module—————
What in the cards for Catalina weather in early March?
Still looks pretty good, better than 50-50 IMO, for measurable rain here in Catalina during the first week in March. See below:
Valid at 5 PM AST March 1st. Green areas denote regions where the model thinks it has rained during the prior 12 h. Really bad cold wave in progress in eastern half of US. Will Lake Superior ice over?
The End.
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1Shouldn’t be taken as fact, just an assertion at this time, a hypothesis waiting for confirmation.
2From the concept album about drug mind control, “Operation: Mindcrime”, released in 1989 when the writer was quite the lefty. But then I heard that NPR interview with David Horowitz and Peter Collier, former editors of the rad lib Ramparts Mag in the 1960s and 70s and how they had come around over about a ten year period to be able to vote for Ronnie Reagan and I went, “Huh?” “How is that possible?” It would be like Bob Dylan singing songs about being “saved” in the Christian sense. Not even imaginable.
A few top climate scientists have banded together and commented in prestigious Science magazine concerning the recent attribution of this winter’s weather extremes to global warming1 from places on high. In fact, such attributions can’t be done with any reliability. Reading between the lines, and knowing how hard it is to criticize a former student’s work, much less a presidential adviser whom they helped elect (:}), I would have to conclude that they were pretty upset and felt a strong need to get the word out.
Will a few incautious scientists and politicos continue to make those kinds of as yet, ill-founded claims as addressed by Wallace et al? Is there cactus in Arizona?
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Cold and precip suggested here at the beginning of March two weeks from now. Some climatology supports something real happening then since early March is also the the time that the highest chance of rain (over the past 130 years or so) in southern California occurs. Rain there usually means rain here in a day.
So, maybe, MAYBE, this storm will be real and not fantasy as so many are in model predictions two weeks away.
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In memoriam, Zuma: 2000-Feb 15, 2014
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1In recent years, in a subtle sleight of hand, the oft heard phrase of earlier years,”global warming” is now being replaced by the phrase, “climate change” because it stopped warming so many years ago, 15 or so, whilst CO2 concentrations continued to climb. Scientists and the media became increasingly uncomfortable, it appears, talking about warming when it isn’t.
However, “climate change” is something we can ALL agree on since the earth’s climate is always changing, such as hereabouts in the SW US, oscillating from dry and wet periods, sometimes very long ones in duration. Ask any tree ring.
What’s next for earth?
No one really knows for sure, but you would likely tilt if you had to make a guess toward a resumption of warming with an El Nino on deck for later in the year. The planet warms when El Ninos happen. And if CO2 is having its way, the warming likely will not subside afterwards. Interesting times ahead!
Warm in the West, COLD in the East. Hasn’t locked in like this over the US since way back in the winters of ’62-63, ’76-77 when old man, “Polar Vortex”, the circulating hub of cold air in Northern Hemisphere winters, lost his way from near the North Pole and drifted down to around Hudson Bay, Canada, a few times, as it is doing at times this winter.
You can read about those January’s, ’63 and ’77 below for those of you who like to reminiscence about severe winters in the East.
You may recall, too, that it snowed in Miami in January 1977, the only time it’s happened. They got pretty excited about it down there, too, as you can see.
That snow in Miami, BTW, occurred pretty much at the height of the global cooling hysteria (hahaha–I like to tease those who think there wasn’t any. But…..we REMEMBER!) Furthermore, one of the great climatologists of the day, Hubert Lamb, from East Anglia University, was even predicting a new ice age dead ahead in the 1970s. Oh, well. I’ve made some pretty bad weather predictions myself.
Fortunately, our current pattern, replicating those old ones, goes to HELL by the end of January, and our chances of rain go way up. Below is the totality of the evidence I am going on for this weather assertion:
Valid at 5 PM, January 28, 2014.
As you can see above, or maybe not, the entire central and eastern Pacific are in complete disarray, and the standing pattern we have now “will not stand” much after this.
Let us compare what we have now, and will have for the next ten days or so, below:
Valid at 5 PM AST, January 23, 2014. Temperature refugees race into Arizona as wave after wave of brutally cold air blasts the eastern half of US leading to an exceptionally moneyful tourist season!
In the first example, very few red and blue contour lines follow the predicted yellow brick road lines. Those red and blue lines are, in general, no where near the actual “control” yellow lines representing an actual prediction for those contours.
In the second example, way out to ten days, the red and blue lines follow the “yellow brick road” ones, meaning the forecast, even that far out, is very robust. So, for another ten days we’ll have our peaceful weather, but watch out toward the end of January. “Change gonna come.”
The End. Might check back when it starts raining….
Not much to say, so will let others speak after showing you this sunset from last evening:
6:01 PM. Best described, due to thickness and coverage, as Altostratus. Note fine virga underneath. It would be a very, very light snow if you were skimming the bottom here. Crystals? Bullet rosettes, natch! Too cold for anything else that had time to grow big enough to fall out.
————————-on claims module——————————–
About really cold air outbursts as we have had in the East (Great Lakes freezing over, etc.) and global warming…. Let’s see what Mike has to say (gonna be a little technical with a ton of references), but I think you might get SOMETHING out of these.
Check here and here. Awards? Too numerous to mention. And he may be the most disinterested person you will ever meet in the current “climate wars” surrounding the issue of anthropogenic global warming1. I don’t mean by “disinterested” that he is bored with his work (haha) but rather that he refrains from axe grinding, stays aloof from the emotions and partisanship that we see so much of in that domain. HELL, I get mad myself sometimes.
Enjoy, if you can.
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Sorry to say there’s no rain in the computer outputs here for another 15 days. Pattern of warm and dry in the West, cold in the East continues to dominate computer forecasts.
The End.
1Fueled in particular these days by the halt in the rise in the earth’s temperature over the past 15 years or so when it was predicted it would continue rising GRADUALLY by our best computer models.
Well, that cloud WAS “creeping” toward us after suddenly appearing on Pusch Ridge at dawn… Looky here:
7:14 AM. It thinks we’re not looking.7:25 AM. In only three minutes, a spurt toward Cartalina, hugging the mountains where its safe.7:44 AM. I wasn’t watching for awhile, and suddenly, there it was across from me!8:00 AM. By this time it was just sitting, pretending it was something innocuous, but I knew better.1:44 PM. By afternoon, it was gone… Or is it? You see, creepy Stratus fractus is afraid of the sun, twist and writhes in a death throe, evaporating right before your eyes when the sun comes out, or the weak light from the sun, as yesterday, warms the air up a little. Stratus fractus is truly cold blooded and only strong light will make it go away! The end. Below, some apropos music and commentary…
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With Halloween only 10 and half months away, I thought I would “get in the mood” and make up a little creepy-ness for the little kids who read this blog. Hi, kids! Hope you didn’t get too scared reading this. “Uncle Artie” is sorry if you did get scared.
What you saw in that sequence of Stratus fractus movement is also demonstrative of what often happens to smog layers funneling out of the Tucson area toward Mark Albright’s house in Continental Ranch, Marana. Here’s an example of creepy morning smog (smoke and other aerosol junk), partitioned to the lowest layers near the ground by a radiation inversion, a temperature reversal that develops at night that results in a temperature rise as you go up. In the afternoons, after the sun has done its work for awhile, the temperature DECLINES as you go up and the smog molecules are dispersed over greater and greater depths. Got it?
7:32 AM, December 2, 2013. Maybe you remember this morning. Smog stays down there until the sun comes up, and then slowly creepy-creeps toward Catalina and our foothills as the wind changes direction and comes toward us in the late morning and afternoon. Happens during stagnant weather patterns, not much going on. Fortunately, the heating by the sun disperses this goop into a greater depth so the smog seems less obtrusive, less visible, though its still there. BTW, the second arrow pretty much point’s to Mark’s winter home in Continental Ranch. Mark is a research meteorologist/climatologist at the University of Washington who got his feelings hurt when he corrected exaggerations of snowpack losses in the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest and people in his own department got mad at him for correcting those claims; happened back in 2005 or so. But, of course, it still goes on. Mark and his colleagues were proved right in the ensuing years of mountainous snows in the Cascades. Of course, a hundred years from now, well, that might be another story. Tune in later, maybe around 2050 to 2100. It is interesting that when me and Peter Hobbs was correcting cloud seeding claims found in the peer-reviewed literature, ones made by people in OTHER universities, the people in MY department loved me for doing so!
Now, where was I after that big caption….?
Oh, yeah, the weather on deck
Sunday marathoners, achtung!
Looking more like a dry day now on Marathon Day, Sunday, though a cold front will have gone by just before it starts. Looks like measurable precip will be partitioned to the north of Oracle on Sunday, but it will likely be cloudy with Stratocumulus clouds as the day starts, but those should gradually disperse into scattered to broken Cumulus clouds with virga by mid-day, some of those deeper Cu could produce a cold one; i. e., a sprinkle.
Jet core (at 500 mb, 18,000 feet or so) is well north of TUS as Sunday starts, and its really hard to get precip here until the core passes, which on Sunday will be later in the day. But then, the cold front has long gone, and the tendency for precip with the jet core has diminished (subsiding air behind the front is moving in then) to just scattered deeper Cumulus clouds having some ice-forming potential. Deeper clouds are stymied on the right side of the jet (looking downwind) overall in the Southwest in the wintertime by warmer air aloft and stable layers, the kind that produce lenticular clouds.
Below, what”m trying to say in words, is shown in this 500 mb forecast from IPS Meteostar with the wind velocities on it:
Winds at about 18,000 feet above sea level forecast for Sunday morning at 5 AM AST. No rain is also predicted by this latest WRF-GFS model run on Sunday in the TUS area.
Since this is an analysis from a model output, one inherently containing error, there is that inherent bit of uncertainty. So, you, as a weatherfolkperson, imagine what can go the best (the most rainful error), and the worst, and make outlier predictions. Potential rain here in Catalina on Sunday: max, a tenth (everything goes right); bottom, zero (or trace), in this case, as predicted by this model.
Way ahead
I will leave you with this. I think its looking more promising for storms later in the month. I think you’ll see what I mean:
Add to text box, lower left, the words: “….unless you’re quite young.”
Looked like there was a leveling off during the past 15 years, along with the “puzzling 15-year hiatus1” in global warming, coincidentally, so I used a “poly” fit instead of a linear one that would reflect the “stabilization” of water year rainfall in these latter years. Those early wet years in our record are now associated with a big change in the positions where the lows and highs like to be in the Pacific, one that comes around every few decades called the “Pacific Decadal Oscillation” (PDO). The change to a new regime occurred in 1977-78, just when the Catalina rainfall records started at Our Garden down on Stallion where you should buy some stuff. There was also a gigantic El Nino in 1982-83 that contributed to that early wetness. Remember all the flooding in September and October of 1983?
You may notice that I have posted this some ten days before the end of the water year. I dare it to rain on this year’s data! (And I hope it does, given our meager total.)
Yesterday’s clouds
Many more and thunderstorms much closer than expected from this keyboard (heard thunder just after 12 Noon!) Here’s our day in pictures:
8:15 AM. Altocumulus perlucidus provides some nice lighting effects on the Catalinas.10:03 AM. Early risers, like that middle one, suggest tremendous instability up there.10:31 AM. See excitement note.
12:06 PM. Cumulonimbus/thunderstorm forms NE of Catalina. Due to high and cold cloud bases (at and a little below freezing later) this cloud has a high preponderance of ice compared to our more tropical Cbs.12:38 PM. Eventually becomes the “Dump of the Day” over there by the town of Oracle as it recedes (boohoo).3:44 PM. As noted in the title, yesterday’s clouds with their cold bases had a LOT of ice in them, and in most cases, not a lot of rain fell out. Here, an example of a dissipating Cb that didn’t produce much more even in its peak than what you see here, a VERY slight shaft.6:24 PM. Still, some nice color at sunset. That’s what this blog is mostly about, pretty pictures, in case you missed those scenes of the previous day..
Today…. Dewpoints are up from yesterday over much of southern Arizona, and mods suggest a similar day to yesterday, scattered to broken Cumulus clouds with an isolated Cumulonimbus, with more coverage in rain than yesterday. Whoopee! Rain is actually predicted here! How fantastic would that be? And I would have to update my opening just graph just that bit, an enjoyable task, really.
Mods are also indicating that some rain may leak into tomorrow as our first tentative cool season-style trough and front pass by. We’ll see. In any event, should be a pretty day today and tomorrow. Try not to be inside the WHOLE day watching football!
7:01 PM Virga from Altostratus clouds is illuminated by the setting sun.
Took time out from a bazillion chores concerned with moving to a new house here, and other doings for a U of WA archive project to savor another great sunset here in Catalina:
The weather way ahead
Before looking ahead, look outside now (6:20 AM) There are some gorgeous patterns in Altocu and Cirrocu!
The models have gone real bad on us, taking away rain that was once predicted here in early May. Sure, its unusual, but it could have happened. Now its pretty much gone (for now).
In the meantime, sometime very unusual is forecast for the central and southeast US. Can’t remember seeing a pattern like this so late in the winter where in really cold upper low center just goes down to Natchez, MS as in this loop. Lots of low temperature records likely to be set for early May if this pattern comes to pass.
Valid for mid-day, Tuesday, May 7th.
This continues a trend, too, this spring of well below normal temperatures in the Plains States in the middle portion of this forecast loop. They had one of the coldest springs ever in the northern Plains, and the latest measurable snowfall ever just happened in Wichita, KS. Just yesterday, the latest freeze date in the 91 years of records was established at Wichita Falls, TX, when the temperature dipped to 29 F, nine days later than any prior freeze day.
Here are some additional details, as provided by climate issues troublemaker Mark Albright, former Washington State Climatologist, and friend, who has been complaining lately that if these were high temperature records, they’d be all over the news, but low ones get swept under the media rug.
Here’s Mark’s statement from a few days ago:
“The coldest baseball game in major league history was played yesterday in Denver where the game time temperature was 23 F. It breaks the record set just last week in Denver. You can watch the video here to see the conditions at Coors Field.
“This story echoes my thoughts exactly. Why aren’t we hearing from the news outlets about the historic spring cold wave gripping the US and Canada in 2013. When it was warm last year we heard all about it.
In Fargo ND 45 consecutive days (10 March – 23 April) have passed without a single day of above normal temperature. In fact, they have yet to record a temperature warmer than 43 F this year through the 23rd of April. March 2013 averaged -10.5 F below normal and April 2013 is even colder at -12.6 F below normal so far in Fargo ND. This sets up a major risk of severe flooding in a week or two when the Spring thaw finally arrives.
Unusual cold has also been seen in interior Alaska where Fairbanks is running -14.9 F below normal in April 2013.”
While it will likely be getting warmer over the next 100 years, we seem to be afraid of reporting low temperatures and cold; that is, while it gets gradually warmer, we seem to be afraid or mentioning that weather will be pretty much doing what its always done, being abnormal a lot of the time, too. Even I get worked up if I think there is a news bias against reporting cold air! It ain’t right.
