Cumulonimbus clouds – Page 19

Tracey day

Two maybe three sprinkles occurred in the early afternoon between 1:30 and 2:40 PM for a total accumulation of “trace.” The first from our very own Catalina cloud street off Ms. Lemon. Here it is in mid-afternoon when it was was still right over us, but the clouds in it not tall enough, as earlier, to have something in them that causes precipitation to fall out. (What is it? Hint: Think of the Beatles’ anthem about something that is, “all you need¹.”)

SONY DSC — 3:11 PM. Cloud street off Ms. Lemon Mt.

Bubble Cu drifts away, later becoming a “quarter pounder”… Watch the sequence below.

So, what did we get out of this sequence?

Even small clouds, really modest ones at the start, can boil upward and produce a useful amount of rain, albeit in a short-lived life. Between the time it began to rain from this cloud and the end of it from this little cloud was barely more than six minutes, maybe ten. But don’t overlook them; they can still get you wet.

And with that happy ending, let me leave you with this happy ending to our day; yesterday’s sunset Cumulonimbus cloud, and the thought of more of them today! (The weather service says so…here.)

¹ice

Rainbow? Or, after THAT storm, was it the “‘Arc’ of the Convenant”?

What an amazing, Biblical sight¹ that came across the Catalina Mountains yesterday evening, that shaft of intense rain and attendant rainbow! After a day where it looked like rain might not happen here, those earlier Cumulus clouds being pretty lazy really, this behemoth powered across Tucson and the Catalina Mountains dropping 0.56 inches in momentarily blinding rain blown on 60-70 mph gusts, with numerous cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, taking down power lines, and causing a 6 h plus power outage in Catalina. 0.51 inches fell here in 10 minutes!

Oops, forgot to remind you: Don’t forget to go to the movies. Shows the backside of what hit us just as the day ends.

How great this rain will be, too, for our stressed desert-thornscrub vegetation after almost a week of dry conditions. (Only 0.17 inches at Sutherland Heights, though.)

For me, yesterday evening produced the most dramatic sights I’ve seen here in four years in Catalina. I hope you caught it, but if you didn’t, here are a few of the most dramatic ones. The first, penultimate shot was from the front porch about three minutes before bedlam hit Sutherland Heights. Below this, those shots leading up to it.

A repeat of yesterday today? Not bloody likely.

Oh, well, any rain will be great, but drier air is moving in. Check it out here from the University of Washington Huskies’ (some former of whom, if that is correct english which I doubt, are in the Olympics, for example, women’s volleyball, but not in beach volleyball which I seem to be watching a lot of) Weather Department here.

Note the drier air moving in from New Mexico and west Texas in this loop. Just the same, it can still rain here some because while drier, it’s not dessicated air and so the usual isolated Cb should be around. So, keep watching, keep cameras ready and charged.

The End.

^{————————————————————————————————————————————————————-1}Biblical allusion is to the “ARK of the Covenant” whose activity was demonstrated in a movie with Harrison Ford some years.

“Feint” rainbow

For a few minutes yesterday afternoon, it looked like some unexpected rain was trucking over the Cat Mountains from the east-northeast late yesterday afternoon. No one could blame you for getting your hopes up and misleading your neighborhood by saying it might rain in half an hour. Those clouds rolling in from the Catalinas (shown below) were great sights for soaring eyes, ones that look to the skies all the time for rain.

But within the hour, the clouds had broken up, and the shower they produced was reflected by a faint rainbow. Rainbows to the east and northeast are often precursors of rain and wind moving into Catalina. Here is the sad remnants of those albeit weak, Cumulonimbus clouds with their feint rainbow, one that was not followed by one drop of rain here.

A big patch of Cirrus kept the temperature down some during the first half of the day, and so our Cumulus were behind in development compared to areas around us. Here is that bad Cirrus spissatus in case you missed it, that which hung over us so long.

It was quite visible even in the visible satellite image all morning. When it shows up there, you can bet that the Cirrus in that image is thick enough to produce shading and mess up the development of Cumulus under and around it, particularly on marginal rain days like yesterday.

Much Cirrus is virtually invisible in visible satellite imagery; get it? You can see it from the ground (i.e., its visible), those thin wisps of Cirrus, but try to find it in a visible satellite image! This whole line of reasoning and befuddled exposition here reminds me of that Science knee-slapper of a few years ago; that article entitled, “Where are the invisible galaxies?”

Today?

Raining lightly now at 5:25 AM! Yay. A night stalker mass of rain is moving into TUS now as I write. They don’t usually like the daytime and fade as the sun rises in the sky. Sprinkles, very light rain showers (and as always pointed out here, quite emphatically I might add, “sprinkles is not DRIZZLE, dammitall”, to be a little colloquial there!).

Let’s hope this heavy cloud cover we have now (5:30 AM), which you could call, Altocumulus opacus and castellanus due to its height above the ground (its at about 11-12,000 feet above the ground and has turrets here and there). But, to get a little pedalogical you could label it in your log book as Stratocumulus, perhaps with the appendage, castellanus, since turrets are present–those are what’s causing the sprinkles/light showers.

Sunset was nice….

U of AZ mod shows this is our best day for a significant rain, some of that this morning, and some arises later with those afternoon and evening giants we get around here. Hoping so. Tomorrow is supposed to be drier.

The End.

Long distance Cumulonimbus top; cloud review for yesterday, and, big day tomorrow?

The only good Cumulonimbus (Cb) clouds seem to be occurring north of Golder Ranch Drive, about a 100 miles north. which of course, astronomically speaking is actually quite close. Yesterday, with no intervening clouds, it was another chance to see how far can you see the top of a Cb, then use the NWS radar to place it. The Cb top, with an arrow pointing to it in the first photo, is followed by a zoomed shot. The radar indicates that lone, very tall cell was about 10 miles SE of Kingman, or more than 150 miles away! It was common in South Dakota, working with radar in Mitchell and Parkston, to see Cb tops and anvils on the horizon that the radar was unable to see, partly because the radar beam is pointed slightly upward to minimize “ground clutter” as seen in the radar image below around PHX.

annotated 0001E6 — 7:20 PM NWS radar mosaic rendered by the U of AZ.

Review of yesterday; another quiet day (Ed. Note: Getting tired of quiet days)

Yesterday was almost exactly like the day before, with a brief period of glaciating cloud in the same spot beyond the Charoleau Gap from Catalina as the day before. Here are a few representative shots of yesterday.

Can you pick out the icy top in that one little glaciating Cb? Its a little harder to detect this time compared with yesterday.

I feel uncomfortable labeling this little mush of cloud a “Cumulonimbus”, maybe “Cb calvus”, because the fibrous nature of the ice is not yet obvious.

Still it has the attributes of a Cumulonimbus, glaciating top, precip out the bottom, though we can’t see it here. It will produce a radar echo like the little Cb the day before. What we really need, to editorialize some, are categories for these situations like “Cumulonimbus humilis”, “Cumulonimbus mediocris” so that we know that we have miniature versions of those clouds.

We do have, though I avoid it, a category of “Cumulus congestus praecipitatio”, because visual examples, as shown in the last (1987) World Meteorological Atlas, cannot be differentiated from Cumulonimbus clouds, at least, not by me!

The weather ahead

“Quiet time” is coming to an end, not today so much, the computers say, but tomorrow, oh my, could be huge!

Check it out here, courtesy of our U of AZ weather program and their massive Beowulf Cluster of computers.

The End

July 2012: 15 days with measurable rain (with three traces); adds up to 4.45 inches!

And we were one of the drier areas! Many places around us were between 5-10 inches this July making it a pretty memorable one and the 6th wettest July in Catalina since 1977. Here’s the list of those wettest for Catalina:

1. July 2006 7.22 inches 11 days with measurable rain

2. July 1984 6.54 inches 17 days with measurable rain

3. July 1990 5.25 inches 12 days with measurable rain

4. July 1983 4.94 inches 9 days with measurable rain

5. July 2008¹ 4.73 inches 12 days with measurable rain

6. July 2012 4.45 inches 15 days with measurable rain

¹The record begins in 1977 down at Our Garden garden on Stallion Ave and in July 2008, is a mix of their records for the first half of the month, and here on East Wilds Road for the second half, and from East Wilds Road thereafter.

Here is the NOAA 30-day radar-derived rainfall map, ending July 31st, for Arizona to provide an overall picture of how well our State did this July. Also shown is the percentage of normal map. You can find these maps here.

De-briefing for yesterday

A disappointment for sure, since the day before, the models had indicated a pulse of rain moving through in the afternoon. But then they changed by yesterday morning. The rain pulse was gone. That’s what weather computer models do; they say they like you and then they say they don’t, in a sense.

However, if one looked far enough to the south in the evening, there was a Cumulonimbus way off in Mexico, maybe a 100 miles or so, that was exactly headed this way. It lasted about 20 minutes and never crossed the border. Oh, well. Rain hope springs eternal.

Closer ones suddenly popped up to the NE and ENE, quite pretty, but they weren’t moving this way.

There was too much haze yesterday, too.

The Weather Ahead

Seem to have entered a break in the showers now. U of AZ mod (here), crunching data from 11 PM last night, doesn’t think the rain will be back until the 3rd.

We can hope its WRONG again!

Another big day; scattered amounts around us of more than THREE inches again; we only got 0.18 inches!

Trying to be excited for those around us who got all that rain yesterday while we received a paltry 0.18 inches here in the upper reaches of Catalina. Still it was another good little rain for our local desert.

The 24 h rolling archive from Pima County rainfall gages is here. Most seen here? 2.01 inches at Finger Rock and Skyline, Tucson. You’ll see that storm in the movies.

Also, check the more comprehensive U of AZ rainfall network here. In fact, you might as well join up, too. It would get you out of your rut. Think how exciting it would be to go out in the morning and see how much rain fell in your gage in the previous 24 hours! Maybe someday you might win the “rain lottery” and have the biggest amount anywhere in the State! The most reported so far this morning is a deluge of 3.17 inches over by Picture Rocks again. Good grief, have they been getting hammered.

What a July this is turning out to be!

Here we are in Catalina, its late afternoon, it has just rained again, the temperature is a chilly 70 F, dewpoint 68 F (almost saturated), with Stratus fractus just above eyeball level lining the hillsides! Its an amazing scene for an afternoon in Catalina and vicinity in July. And so DARK! Here is that odd scene from yesterday afternoon:

Relive yesterday, as though you were in the city of Tucson shopping possibly, here in this movie, courtesy of the U of AZ Weather Department. The movie is rated “R”, for violence since the sky goes WILD in the afternoon, winds going every which way.

Also, in this time lapse you will get a sense of how rapidly moist air is flowing across us from the east to east-southeast. This movie, comprised of still shots taken every 10 s shows movement, like the day before, that is phenomenal for summer, more like a winter scene when winds are normally strong. There are even Altocumulus lenticular clouds (almond shaped ones) hovering over and just downwind of the Cat Mountains! Amazing.

But check the CHAOS in the mid and later afternoon. Unbelievable. Areas toward the Catalina foothills, during this chaos, got another 1-2 inches again yesterday.

In contrast, let us now look at the very same day in a time lapse film in Seattle, Washington, where Mr. Cloud-Maven person spent 32 years, most with the U of Washington Huskies Weather Department. Here it is. I sum up the totality of that movie for July 29th below:

Bor-ring!

Those Seattle skies, for the most part, were like eating plain, cooked oatmeal everyday, all day.

Below, the start of our exciting day, the middle, and the end has already been shown above. Lots of nice rain shafts SUDDENLY collapsing down out of clouds. A sequence of the big northwest Tucson storm early in the afternoon that moved off toward Marana is included as part of the middle. That shaft really fell out fast, and how you could detect the icey tops BEFORE the shaft appeared. I try to point out how you might have been able to do that in this sequence, and thus, and quite importantly, impress your friends and gain status and some kind of weather sage.

Today?

Just looked at the latest AZ mod output, as you can here (forgot to past link until now, 8:08 AM). Colored splotches are where it is supposed to have rained that HOUR. That model has a much less active day today, but much more active tomorrow. Cumulonimbus clouds in sight today? Oh, yeah! But, none are SUPPOSED to get us today. But these mods are always slightly inaccurate, so keep watching this afternoon. Should be another photogenic day, if nothing else.

Every which way but here

Of course, alluding today in the title to the great western movie with John Wayne…

Every which way you looked yesterday afternoon, there was a great rainshaft. 1.85 inches fell in one hour at Picture Rocks Community Center yesterday afternoon, 2.01 inches total. Several stations around the county had another 1-2 inches yesterday. You can see the Pima County rain lineup here. Seems the great amount in the Catalinas was about half an inch in a gage at Samaniego Peak. Probably twice that between gages up there in the hot spots, where the best columns of rain fell. Also, it would be good to examine our U of A rainfall network today, too, for some jumbo totals. Values are being added during the morning hours as a rule.

Catalina? Well, a measly 0.05 inches fell here after 7 AM until this morning from side-swiping Cumulonimbus clouds, though Sutherland Heights did receive a more respectable 0.28 inches–just measured it. . So, if you were outside yesterday, you saw heavy shafts of rain all around, but none developed over us (the best kind), or moved in here.

But, then, 1.85 inches in an hour, probably most in a shorter time than that, might be “counter-productive”; might make Catalina into a news story, and not a good one… So, I’d better watch what I wish for.

Here are some views of yesterday’s “clouds and columns” of rain yesterday. And, as has been the case, the day started with heavy layer clouds, Stratocumulus and Altocumulus, and a nice, but very brief sunrise “bloom” shown below:

Once these clouds thinned by late morning, Cumulus began to surge upward over the Catalina’s, and reflected an usually strong east-southeast wind just above mountain top levels by trailing over Catalina from Mt. Lemmón. These reached the ice-forming level (read, began to produce rain at the ground) in a series of showers and thunderstorms by 11:30 AM (2nd photo).

Looked, too, like another tube (funnel cloud) at 3:48 PM yesterday off in the direction of Marana, but I’ve posted so many of late I thought I would just post it at the bottom of these more interesting photos.

Moisture continues to revolve into Arizona from the southeast and so it would appear a similar day is in store for us. Oh, goody.

On a clear day you can see Flagstaff

Of course, you can’t see the TOWN of Flagstaff, you silly person, the title was just a hook to get you here to read about clouds! The earth curves too much for you to see Flagstaff, for Pete’s Sake. How could you even imagine that such a title could be true?

But, you CAN see the tops of Cumulonimbus clouds boiling upward OVER Flagstaff, maybe there is someone you know there and you could call them about it, find out how much it has rained. Those Cumulonimbus tops stick up above the horizon in that direction about a quarter of an inch if you were to take a ruler out and hold it out in front of you. Thought you’d like to know this.

Here’s the scene I am describing from yesterday afternoon. In case you wouldn’t know what to say to your Flagstaff friend, I’ve tried to help you out in the caption for the second photo. Maybe its your mom you haven’t called in a while…. Who knows who it might be that you know up there?

Finishing off today’s lesson: The tops you see are ALMOST always completely composed of ICE crystals and snowflakes because they too damn cold at 40,000 feet or so (temperature less than -40 C, less than -40 F; they are the same numeric at that temperature, yet another piece of knowledge for you) for anything but ice we think.

Some embarrassed people have reported liquid water at temperatures below -50 C such as Robert H. Simpson, former head of the National Hurricane Center and also husband of the late Joanne Simpson, famed Cumulus researcher and FIRST WOMAN TO EVER RECEIVE A PH. D. in meteorology¹. Must’ve have been an especially great marriage because they both loved weather and clouds and hurricanes and probably talked about ’em all day.

Continuing with something relevant, once when Bob (Simpson) was in Seattle giving a talk, after the talk I said to him, smiling, “You must be pretty embarrassed about reporting liquid water at -62 C”, as he did in 1962 in a conference paper, and again in 1963 in the peer-reviewed journal, the Monthly Weather Review.

He smiled and said, “The theoreticians don’t think its there, but its there.”

Hmmmph.

The weather today and the next few days into August?

Scattered rains, lightning thunder EVERY day into August! I am so happy. More rain is on the doorstep. Take a look below at what this extra rain we’ve had so far in July has already done to our desert as of three days ago, July 25th. Its incredible, isn’t it? I call it, the “re-jungle-ation” of Arizona accompanied by the appearance of new life forms; see last photo.

____________________________________________
¹Joanne Simpson, after reviewing my grades, advised me to give up meteorology. She was a professor at UCLA then (1963), and I wanted to “walk on” as a met student in their program. In effect, though I didn’t realize it then, she saved me from myself since UCLA was WAY too theoretical for me in the approach to weather. Later I attended San Jose State², a program much more suited to me with my weak math skills. (Can you put a footnote in a footnote?)”

²While at SJS in the later 1960s, I was forecasting weather for the college paper, forecasts that devolved into silly, juvenile, lame topical humor, much like the “humor” here. To drop another name in this blog, I loved what KRLA-AM, a top 40 station in Los Angeles, where I grew up, was doing in those turbulent days of the late 1960s. They had dared to start a news parody program, recreating news events that they would first report in a serious manner. It was bold and courageous for a mainstream media station; they dared to offend. I wanted to be a part of it, and went down to apply for summer work there in 1968.

My interviewer? A young Harry Shearer. The “Credibility Gap“, the KRLA news parody team in those days, consisted mainly of Harry, Richard Beebe, and David L. Lander. An example of their work, “Dawn of New Era for Man”, KRLA’s 1969 Apollo 11 counter coverage to the major networks; its 8 min long, Arizona’s Papago Indians mentioned. You can’t find this on the internet!

Back to the interview: Harry briefly examined my topical forecasts for the SJS paper, ones I presented to him pasted on a blank sheet of paper. After just a minute or two, he said, “I don’t think they’re that funny.” It was painful to hear, but upon later reflection, oh, so true! I left immediately.

I had some low moments in the 1960s, but here I am!

“Curve ball” of a Cumulonimbus strikes out Catalina again

It looked like it was coming straight down the middle. I didn’t see any rotation on it. It was coming toward ME… and to Catalina. We were going to get “shafted”, rain shafted that is, at last!

I started taking video, shooting numerous still shots of the mammoth-behemoth, churning, tropical-like, boiling-roiling Cumulonimbus cloud rolling in from the southwest toward Catalina, lightning sparking every minute or two at one point. Pileus veils appeared and disappeared as the tops shot upward through moist layers. What is a pileus? Hint: Its not Latin for somebody who flies an airplane. But, continuing about airplanes….

If only I had a plane, I dreamed, to go inside them, fully explore and experience them in a quantitative way, those voluptuous turrets! To penetrate their depths with instrumentation like we would used to do in the olden days at the University of Washington, recording the hail/graupel bursts on the pilot’s window, ones where it was like someone had thrown rice at the window, the huge amounts of supercooled liquid water piling up on the airframe, the plane trembling, rocking in turbulence, turbulence whose effects could only be mitigated by Marezine, the lightning strikes on the fuselage, the white knuckled, almost euphoric, glad-to-be-alive feeling afterward.

Yes, those were the good old days.

While our dogs were cowering, made restless by the approaching thunder, I dusted off my rain gage collector, looked inside it, as you all should do, for telltale signs of recent bird visitations, droppings that might hinder the rush of water into the inner collector, or even block it all together. Once having cleaned it off, I sprayed the outer collector with WD-40 so that the drops would roll quickly into the inner collector without the least resisitance, allowing the tipping bucket of the Davis Vantage Pro II Extra Deluxe Mark IV rain gage and weather station system to report rain as rapidly as possible.

This was going to be a great rain, it would make up for the prior two day’s of disappointments and sadness, really. BTW, its quite normal for meteorologists to feel like they live in a “hole” where the best rains hardly ever hit.

In case you didn’t call in sick yesterday as was suggested here so that you could see the those majestic Cumulonimbus clouds roll in, and in paritcular, missed this one below that literally rumbled toward Catalina from the direction of Twin Peaks, here is a sequence of shots taken at 12:53 PM, 1 PM, 1:07 PM, and 1:28 PM. Rain seemed imminent.

Of course, it fizzled out. Three strikes! Three days in a row of near misses!

This one got SO CLOSE! And as you see below, there were flanking bases even as it neared, absolutely necessary for continued life of the storm. Without those flanking clouds, a Cumulonimbus can have a shockingly short life span, maybe 20-30 minutes of rain to the ground.

As you can see below, those dark bases sans rain shafts (flanking dark cloud bases) were a good sign that the approaching storm was going to continue propagating into Catalina with gusto, and gusts as well, as the flanking clouds piled up into new Cumulonimbus clouds, riding on top of the outflow winds of the rainshaft.

But no, the flanking clouds disappeared in minutes, leaving only the sad stratiform remains of that once proud Cumulonimbus. Below, 2:57 PM, one of the saddest cloud sights of all, Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus, orphaned from their parent Cumulonimbus cloud, set adrift, and adrift, without being fed from below, well, they die. Light, ever so light, rain was falling when this photos was taken.

Eventually the steady, very light rain added it up to 0.02 inches. I felt like I was back in Seattle because the way that rain was falling yesterday afternoon, was EXACTLY like the rain that Mr. Cloud-maven person experienced year in and year out in Seattle, Washington. Yep, that’s how it rains in SEA most of the time and you experienced that right here in Catalina yesterday afternoon.

The day ended with a remarkable clearing of all the low clouds, not a Cumulus could be seen from horizon to horizon. But we did have “pretty Cirrus” (spissatus) clouds, also orphaned from Cumulonimbus, to make a nice sunset.

Today, after the early morning rainbow, one that I didn’t get a photo of?

Gee, the dewpoints are still high, we have a surprising amount of mid-level clouds this morning, some with turrets and showers, yet the U of A weather model suggests no rain later today based on what it sees. Hmmmm. Its usually correct in these matters, though I hope some surprise is waiting for us late this afternoon anyway.

The End.

Kind of upset I missed getting a shot of that unusual morning rainbow because the camera had no SD card again, so I think instead, out of spite, I will put in a recent photo of some kind of beetle.

Grazed and confused

Man, its tough to get rain here sometimes. Not sure why we seem to be in a death zone for Cumulonimbus clouds lately. Yesterday, a really great shower plodded toward Catalina and only to fade on the east side, and propagate off to the west and over the Tortolita Mountains (veered down the sideline, in football speak). I guess we should feel lucky that, due to the lightly raining “stratiform” (blanket cloud) residual cloud from this strong storm, we got 0.02 inches here last evening. Coulda been worse, of course. (BTW, if you’re an old rocker and want to hear, “Dazed and Confused”, to which I allude to in the title, go here.)

Here’s the photo record in thumbnails, which I thought was interesting enough because this moderate-sized shower really exploded into something large as it approached from near the Tucson Mountains. You can also go here to get the full version as seen from the top of the Wildcat Dept of Atmos. Meteoro.

4:54 PM. Nice and cute; its even heading this way, but way too far away to make it, given the short lifetimes of small Cumulonimbus clouds.	5:04 PM. Huh? Its STILL coming, and seems to be developing a new “crop”; those flanking, non-raining clouds that might grow to take the place of the raining one. Oh, it’ll never make it. Too small.	5:36 PM. Its not small anymore! Holy Smokes! And look at those “fountain-of-youth-required-for-new-life-new dump for Cumulonimbus flanking clouds! This could be great dump here!
6:04 PM. Here, the side of the storm approaching Catalina. The flanking lower cloud deck has disappearing and only light to moderate rain is upwind now. Without re-inforcements from below, that approaching rain will only get lighter and lighter as it approaches. Dang.	6:11 PM. Awesome, but somehow “wrong”, falling over there. An almost black flanking cloud, piled high on top, was forced there by the outflow winds from the original storm as it dropped its first heavy load in Oro Valley. Because those winds aren’t symmetrical blowing out from the rainshaft, it happened that the strongest winds and uplift over them went over there. Dang#2	7:07 PM. Its raining lightly here now, coded “R–” or “RW–” in your log book. The cloud would be termed, Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus (namely, debris cloud, trash clouds from our glorious Cbs).

To finish off with something more positive, this sunrise photo taken just now while a few drops of rain were falling.

The Weather Ahead.

Drying trend starts on Wednesday, the 25th and lasts a couple of days. The Enviro Canada model saw this coming some days ago, the US WRF-GFS not so much, but they agree now.

The clouds and Cbs return on the 29th with July finishing strong in activity.

In the meantime, another great day ahead, one with large Cumulonimbus clouds and scenes like the past few days are on tap.

More, later.

It is later.

Here is the U of A model output for today, hour by hour. Lots of activity seen for us in Catland beginning after 12 Noon with numerous showers developing by then, but nothing for tomorrow and the next day.

Maybe you should call in sick today, and enjoy the sky all day.

The End.