A great immediate sign yesterday of the later cloudscape, if you were outside and not working in a room with no windows, was the early Cumulus rising off Ms. Lemmon. Some places got half inch to an inch, but only a trace fell here amid hours of thunder. Here’s the day:
9:29 AM. It would have been good for you to have pointed out the early riser, then told your neighbor, maybe breaking out in song, “I think its going to rain today”, by Randy Newman; “Broken windows and empty hallways, pale dead moon in a sky streaked with gray.” Well, pf course, you know this song. Well, if you’re friend hasn’t shot himself after you’ve finished that sad song, you might also have added, “there could be a lotta thunder with that rain, too.” Well, there’s always a lot of thunder here in the summer, but it sounds prophetic to add that.11:18 AM. First thunder on The Lemmon! Was pretty pumped as anvil overhang overspread me and The Heights. Was thinking “rain moving off the mountain this time!” And little itty bitty spritzes did, over and over again all day and thunder crashed and boomed around for hours. The result was one of the heaviest traces of rain ever I think to Sutherland Heights. Public service message: Overhangs like this can spit out a spark down to the ground, WAY out ahead of the rain area, visible on the top of Ms. Lemmon. Its not good to be out under it standing on a knob, pretty much the highest point around, taking pictures like this. I went out as soon as I heard thunder; would never just go out without knowing where it was in the charging cycle. Still, you probably shouldn’t even do that since that charging cycle can rev up, too. Silly me.11:50 AM. Anvil overhang from The Lemmon with new Cumulus piling up north of Saddlebrooke, as they often do. This indicated storms were going to also form before long over the lower terrain. Sometimes, as you know, they can’t. When they do this, it means we have a chance to get a core, as does everyone out in the hotter lower elevations.1:26 PM. A real beauty north of the Gap. The darkening blue sky that goes with autumn really brings out the contrast between these immaculate white tops of a…..Cumulonimbus calvus (“bald”) on its way to the fibrous “capilatus” stage (when the ice phase up there is clearly evident). It may have been this one or the next one that dumped a half an inch around Oracle town.3:07 PM. If you look carefully around this TEP Co power pole, you can see that heavy rains, indeed, got out into the lowlands. I hope I have made my point about poles and wires. They have no business being above ground in the 21st Century.3:12 PM. A little mammatus showed up, too, maybe from a collapsing, “overshooting” top upwind.6:47 PM. Overhead wires and just a trace of rain are forgotten about as this luscious sunset unfolded down below where i had to walk to avoid the overhead wires being in the photo.6:46 PM. Expanded shot of same scene, so fabulous, one of the best!
Looks like a similar day today, just eye-balling the maps and stuff, clouds piling up on The Lemmon, drifting NW over Sutherland Heights and Catalina, chance of thunder, some sprinkles or light showers. However, drier air is filtering in from the east as I type, meaning cloud bases will likely be higher than yesterday, and we probably won’t see such an early start to Cumulus forming on Ms. Lemmon as we did yesterday. And not as much cloud cover.
Supposed to dry out tomorrow and Friday further but then moisten up again on football viewing days, Saturday and Sunday as a tropical storm/depression works it way up the Baja coast. Could be a great weekend.
Below, a remarkable storm report from yesterday from around the Prescott area, brought to my attention by climate folk hero, Mark Albright at the U of WA:
Lost control for awhile yesterday evening at sunset as pretty little pileus caps formed repeatedly on top of new Cumulus congestus/Cumulonimbus turrets to the west. It like an entomologist seeing a spotted owl, or some other rare bird like that. You don’t see pileus caps that often, and when you do, you’d better have your camera ready because they only last seconds. Nice sunset color along with them, too. Some nice lightning over that way later, too.
If you were in a research aircraft and wanted to find the most liquid water around at a particular flight level, a pileus cap on a Cumulus turret at that level is a good sign that that’s where it will be compared to other clouds. But don’t sample too close to cloud top, maybe 100 m below since dry, ambient air is being mixed into the extreme top and you MIGHT not measure the most liquid water there, especially if the top looks a little “frizzy.” . Its fun to see how much you can hit with an airplane; see what the instruments do.
The rest of the day was very nice before this pretty much replicated the day before in virtually every detail; several Cumulonimbus clouds arose on Ms. Lemmon beginning in mid-afternoon, anvils trailed over Oro Valley, and there were again a number of distant Cumulonimbus clouds to the NW-NE scattered over the high terrain way up that way. There were also Cumulonimbus far to the S-SW toward Mexico, as well as an active cluster to the west at sunset that generated so many pileus clouds. Here is your cloud diary day in photos:
6:36 PM. First, before the pileus shots, the overall scene to the southwest and west, and also why telephone poles and overground wiring, relics of the past, are offensive and need to be removed; those wires put under ground. Don’t blow down that way, either. I’d like to start digging right now! Hope I’m not upsetting you too much with this scene. As a CM Jr., , overground wires are the bane of civilization.5:58 PM. Grouping of Cumuloni,bus and Cumulus congestus clouds distant west, ones with repeated pileus caps as new turrets surged upward through a thin moist layer, also shoved up due to the approaching rising air in the turret.6:56 PM. Yet another pileus cap formed, but this time, is above the top of the surging Cumulonimbus calvus top. (Its got rain coming out of it, so its that bit better to call it that instead of just a Cumulus congestus.)
The clouds prior to the pileus eruptions were these ones:
2:42 PM. Just a pretty picture looking NW across Saddlebrooke with Cumulus humilis and Cu fractus in the foreground and scattered Cumulonimbus and Cumulus congestus on the horizon.11:45 AM. A good sign of an interesting day ahead, that Cumulus sprout over Ms. Lemmon that indicates there is a lot instability (the decline in temperature with increasing height is pretty large) and that further heating will likely lead to deep clouds.4:26 PM. A sight very reminiscent of the previous day, a narrow Cumulonimbus shoots up off the Catalinas. This was the second one in a row like this. Kind of blew up into something considerably larger than the one around 3 PM, with this one’s vast anvil eventually overspreading Catalina and Oro Valley. Here, playfully, it appears to be in the shape of an alien with two arms reaching out, a fibrous, icy one on the left, and a fragmented, droplet cloud one on the right, with a big head between them.
5:19 PM. Pretty much all over here, just a big anvil as bottom got rained out with no more good surges of Cumulus to keep feeding it. Just getting too cool up there.
Want to get one more thing in here, in case you haven’t paid attention to all the rain that’s been falling in Arizona, particularly in the NW part, SE CA, and southern Nevada. They are having a spell that is just incredible. Here, from WSI Intellicast, the 7-day rainfall totals for the US, which highlights how well those areas are doing compared to the rest of the county even. This is an amazing graphic, and so pleasing since all this rain in the Southwest has been falling on very drought-impacted areas.
The seven day, radar-derived precipitation totals for the US. Mountains, of course, interfere with radar beams that do this, and so in mountainous regions these estimates are likely too low, or can be missing altogether.
Summer rain season set to sputter along today and for the foreseeable future. Looks like there will be a few more thunderheads around today compared to yesterday, a bit more instability today, too, this from a 2 min look at model outputs as choke time approaches. If you want a good forecast, you should see Bob’s writeup. I like Bob. Plus, he’s a stupendous expert on convection!
Forgot the nice sunrise and another faint rainbow, two mornings in a row! In case you missed them, again, here they are:
6:01 AM.5:54 AM. Ac opacus.
While yesterday’s Cumulonimbus clouds were sparse, their “overshooting” tops told you that they had pretty violent updrafts in them, ones that carried the top of the cloud past the tropopause (the boundary where the decline in temperature as you go higher stops). Above the tropopause sits the stratosphere, normally cloud-free and extremely dry.
These “overshooting” tops are due to inertia generated by the strongest updrafts in the cloud below them, they end up being much COLDER than the surrounding air in the stratosphere because the air is still expanding and cooling as the cloud punches through the tropopause. Like stones in water, they plummet back down quickly as they drift away from the root updraft. The worst volcanoes, like El Chicón in the early 1980s and, of course, Pinatubo in 1991, do this, too, and to a lesser degree these overshooting tops also inject aerosols and moisture into the stratosphere. These tops are usually easily recognized as a bulb-looking, whiter top above the flat anvil, the anvil representing cloud top ice that has been stopped by the tropopause barrier and has spread out.
Some examples:
1:10 PM. Violent looking Cb with an overshooting top, one that punches through a flatter anvil cloud. There were many of these yesterday, regrettably so far away you couldn’t even see the rain shaft! Boohoo. Here, looking SSW from Catalina, range about 50 miles or so.2:51 PM. I thought this cluster looked especially “volcanic” with how tight the Cumulus tops were in the foreground. When the updrafts are strong from the base on up, you have a lot of aerosol particles taking part in the condensation melee, cloud droplet concentrations are extremely high, the clouds are extremely dense inside, might not be able to see the wingtip of your aircraft. For this reason they look like granite on the outside (center). When ice forms, such as in the higher tops, the concentrations are less and the cloud “softens” in appearance (highest top, left of center), one that appears to have punched through a flatter anvil cloud.2:56 PM. Many Rim Cbs also had overshooting tops. In our worst storms, with frequent cloud-to-ground lightning and blinding rain, you can pretty well be sure that you’re under one, or close to it.1:38 PM. Mt. Lemmon did join the Cumulonimbus producing fray in the distant mountains around us, but they were about a magnitude smaller than the ones in the distance, and, as you saw, the several that formed could not leave the high terrain.
Seems we have a day similar to yesterday ahead for today, but the models suggest an uptick in activity tomorrow. When the thunderheads are more isolated, they are more photogenic I would have to say, especially against the backdrop of the darker blue skies we have now. And with no haze around, something that often can accompany higher humidities such as we have had over the past week or two, our cloudscapes are especially pretty I think.
First, yesterday’s sunrise rainbow, in case you missed it.
5:56 AM. Virga/RW– (very light rain shower) from Altocumulus opacus (‘thick”) leads to an early morning treat. The rainbow faintly extends all the way up to cloud base, indicating that the freezing level was at or above cloud base. The TUS morning sounding indicated that this layer was based at 14,000 feet and about 0 C. Some sprinkles did reach the ground, but shadows from terrain or other clouds prevented the bow from reaching the ground.
“Dumps of the Day”:
12:57 PM. North of Saddlebrooke, this cloudburst. With bases as low as they were, LTG, indicative of stronger updrafts in the storms yesterday, likely an inch or more fell in this one. If anyone drove under this with a gauge, I’d like to hear from you, get some ground truth. Also note how obscured this tremendous Cumulonimbus is by the layer of Altocumulus, showing that on really moist days, it doesn’t have to get real hot and sunny to generate big storms.
A little later, this masterpiece of a cloudburst, without doubt one of the most dramatic I have seen in five summers here, or anywhere really. Here’s the sequence:
1:57 PM. Nice looking shower, but kind of so-so at this point. Drifted away from the “action” for about 15 min, and came out, jaw dropped when I saw what had happened over there! You just cannot take you “eye off the ball” here in the summer for even that long without some “volcano” going off. Check out the next shot.2:13 PM, just 16 min later, we have a serious cloudburst over there somewhere near Railway Ranch mining operations next to the Tortolitas. Easily 1-2 inches in 15 minutes kind of rainrate1. Was losing control here and took a lot of shots, just in awe of how nicely shaped it was, the lighting, the lightning, lots of it, feeling lucky to be alive and living here in Catalina and seeing something like this, and on and on. But I had to remember that sights like this are only seconds in duration. So much water is falling out at this second, and smashing into the ground, that the air has to get out of the way, and this columns like these flare out on the sides, and, it can rain out in minutes if the updraft isn’t continued somewhere else. In this case it was on the right side, and new dumps kept falling out as it propagated north. Took some video to prove it, too.2:14 PM. One minute later. Look how the blast at the ground is spreading out already! Unbelievable sight! So pretty, too.2:35 PM. New splash-downs occurred as those dark bases in the earlier photos, representing the updraft portions feeding the storm, gave out, first with fine fibers, if you looked closely, then the whole dump. With each new smash down (does that expression come from wrestling vaudeville?) new updrafts are launched adjacent to the dump and the cycle is (usually) repeated. About this time gusty NW winds from this storm hit Saddlebrooke and Sutherland Heights, but, alas, no new Cumulus formed above it. Must have not been enough of an upward shove, and/or our air too cool.3:05 PM. Eventually, all of those dark Cumulus bases got rained out and no new ones formed, leaving this “debris” cloud to continue raining itself out. At this stage, little if any new precip is forming up there. If you flew in it, what you would find for precip is giant snow flakes, amid lots of other tiny ice crystals, and some residual small cloud droplets, all of which are disappearing. Those large snowflakes melt into normal-sized raindrops (not ones splashing 3 inches off the pavement as would be in the “dump”). The rain here is more and more beginning to resemble the rain that falls in our winter storms. Seeing an absence of new Cumulus near us made me kind of sad at this point after the euphoria and hope just two hours earlier when I thought maybe the outflow winds that roared through would launch new Cumulus over ME. But no, it was all over at this point, with no chance of appreciable rain in “The Heights” (of Sutherland). We did get a sprinkle from a similar dying gasp of a storm that crept over the Catalinas from the east a little later.
Looks like today, absent the latest mod runs and using older material, always a little risky, looks very similar to yesterday, except as yesterday compared to the tropical day before that, our cloud bases are heading upward overall as the level of moisture declines.
Also, like yesterday, there’s very little steering wind for our storms, and so they tend to sit and die, unless the outflow winds can launch new buildups that blow up into Cumulonimbus clouds. Those outflow winds are chaotic, and where that happens, well, you’ll have to be watching. Though Ms. Lemmon, our nearby friend, did not produce much of anything yesterday, you figure that’s going to change today.
The good news ahead is that there is no clear cut end to our summer rain season yet, though there will be greater and lesser days of activity, as usual . Eventually the westerlies aloft will sweep down into Arizona and clear it out once and for all, but that’s not in the cards yet over the next 15 days.
Being Saturday today, NCAA college football day in America, I hope you will be able to separate yourself at least once from the TEEVEE at least once during the day, preferably after 11 AM, to view our too soon-to-end summer clouds. Remember, you can watch football until February 2014, but you only have maybe two weeks more of big Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds and lightning spectacles. Think about it.
The End.
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11-2 inches has been measured in hourly recording gauges in 15 minutes here in AZ. When that happens, you don’t have beads of water running off the roof, you have pretty much a solid waterfall.
Maybe they sneaked up because I wasn’t looking. After posting yesterday just after 5 AM, went out side and looked at the Catalina Mountains, that is those parts I could see through the thick rain shafts, and said, “WHAT!!!?” I was STUNNED to see them; had not even looked at the radar imagery for a couple of hours. Really was asleep at the keyboard.
And then the hour or so of rain that followed, with no lightning! Rain is so rare here om the morning in the summer, and it was so substantial. If there was a disappointment, a slight one, it was that Cargodera Canyon (NE corner of Cat State Park) with 0.87 inches, and the bridge at Golder Ranch Dr and Lago del Oro (0.71 inches) got so much more than we did here in Sutherland Heights in the past 24 h (0.38 inches). They were hit harder, too, by that late afternoon Cb that drifted off Pusch Ridge, again, a heavy shaft of rain with no lightning–how often have you seen that in a summer afternoon?
For a roundup of Pima County rainfall totals, go here.
It was, with its high concentrations of drops, a rain reminiscent of coastal Washington State in the early fall when offshore waters are still pretty warm, or Hawaii, for that matter, the latter location where most of the rain forms without ice. Our high concentrations of rain drops was also likely due to forming, at least partly, through the “warm rain” process, one that does not require ice, and is VERY rare in Arizona. Requires really warm cloud bases, and we had them yesterday, with bases around 60 F, 15-16 C, not too much cooler than you would find hovering over you in New Orleans or Miami, or Merida, Mexico, etc., places where warm rain develops routinely along with ice in the deeper clouds.
Here are some scenes from our huge, and low based, soft-looking, “soft serve” Cumulonimbus clouds, ones that looked that way because updrafts are weak for such deep clouds. You will see that updraft weakness in these photos.
This will seem strange, but I thought yesterday, with its absence of thunder until around dark to the NE, was one of the most unusual days I have experienced here in the summer, so reminiscent of the clouds in the Marshall Islands near the Equator that we (the U of Washington’s research aircraft) flew into during a ’99 field project down there; low, warm bases, high visibility under them, and clouds with weak updrafts and little lightning (the plane was only struck twice during the program):
11:44 AM. After the rain, this gentle giant. No anvil, frosty glaciated slides that kind of slope upward, all indicative of relatively gentle updrafts, a situation that limits the amount of electrification that can build up in them. I was in awe of how pretty this was, and how unusual its appearance was, too. Had to stop, jump out in the mud and grab a shot.
11:46 AM. A closer look. I am just beside myself at how tropical this scene is, so I took another shot. Took too many photos yesterday, too.2:31 PM. Another tropical-looking scene on the Samaniego Ridge. Cloud bases are running about 15-17 C here, 59-62 F. Coulda been taken in the hills around Luzon, Phillipines. Note itty bitty rain shaft. Without doubt that from drops colliding and sticking together (“warm-rain process), no ice needed for those clouds to start raining yesterday. I hope you enjoyed this unusual day as much as I did! It was like being transported to a REALLY warm and humid climate, and yet, here we are in a desert!3:06 PM. Maybe the “Dump of the Day”. It was beginning to fade at this point, and as it approached Catalina, I listened intently for thunder, but none was heard. This, too, made it so “tropical oceanic” since those huge clouds with their weak updrafts, hardly ever have lightning. But I have never seen a shaft like this in the afternoon here sans thunder, making the day that bit more unusual, and special. I will never forget you, August 29th, 2013.6:43 PM. Just the condensation of the water, and the accompany release of a little heat was enough even in the evening to send small clouds shooting upward, another sign of warm based clouds. The warmer the base, the more water is contained in the droplets that first form, and the more heat that is given off to the air next to the droplet. Those clouds were magnificent last evening on the Catalinas! There was yet another Cumulonimbus beyond the mountains, too.6:45 PM. Just two minutes later, I was thinking about that curry dish with mushrooms. I guess it shows how flexible the human mind is, going from this to that.
Well, that’s about all we have time for, kids, and the hour of the exede.com choke hold, 5 AM approaches, and its too frustrating to be on the Web after that. May dredge up a Kwajalein shot at some later point, for comparison purposes, though.
——Today——-
Dewpoints are still running very high, even several 70s in the state (68 F here in the Heights). And so, with luck and no drying and no appreciable changes evident, we’ll have another day in the Phillipines, or the Marshall Islands, or Puerto Vallarta, New Orleans, Miami, Panama, etc. Enjoy.
Though the the castellanus twins dropped by yesterday:
10:24 AM. After a hazy start, this pair showed up; two perfect examples of Altocumulus castellanus, side by side. Have never see this before. Castellanus indicate a layer of the atmosphere where the temperature declines more rapidly than in other moist layers, allowing little baby turrets to extrude from the base that bit. Sometimes, though, they can reach high enough and get large enough to have virga. But not yesterday. You definitely should not have logged any virga from these clouds.
Altocumulus castellanus, that is. Suggests atmo in this layer ripe for convection, but unless there’s some humidity below these clouds, it can be kind of an old saw that doesn’t work out a lot of times, unless they themselves get overly enthusiastic and begin to shower and thunder. It happens.
While yesterday had these interesting clouds, and a couple of distant Cumulonimbus tops, the only real excitement was this dumpster NW of us shown below. Did any one drive over there to get under it and measure the rain it put out? I would dole out some extra credit if you did. Otherwise, we’re going to have to rely on radar to estimate how much came down over there.
1:50 PM. Surprisingly dense rain shaft to the NW from a rogue Cumulonimbus. Nothing much else really all afternoon. Boring! Remember how we used to yell, BORING!!!!” in that movie when that guy was talking1? You don’t find people/whole audiences yelling at the movie screen anymore because something is going on they don’t like and feel motivated to erupt with a comment. People are more reserved now days and hold in feelings at movies, probably not the best thing.4:46 PM. The Lemmon cloud factory was “on strike” most of the day, and here, that dark blue sky made you think of college football.6:15 PM. Evening clump of Stratocumulus trails a little snow from its bottom. Lately we’ve had “blooms” energized convection, growth of Cumulus, but yesterday was, well, BORING!!!!! Nice little flourish of Cirrus, though.
The week in rain
Since most of Arizona is unpopulated, and even when there are people, not everyone reports rain, so we have to rely on radar-derived rainfall amounts to “fill in the blanks” Are you a “blank”? Think about it. Now looking back at this past 7-days, ending yesterday, and using radar for any sense of what happened all over the State here’s what we get, from WSI Intellicast. We had an amazing 7 days of rainfall, rains that did so much to dent the NW AZ drought with many inches of rain. Need more, of course, but here it is:
Radar-derived rainfall for the week ending August 27th, 2013. Look at those 4-8 inch totals W of Prescott! And indications of over 8 inches a tad west of Needles!
The weather ahead
U of WA mod, and his one, crunching last afternoon’s global data, have the size of clouds picking up today and over the next couple of days. Yay. Need more rain.
The End.
————– 1Furthermore, it was supposed to be a horror movie, and instead it had SINGING! Unbelievable. No wonder people were upset when they saw it!
Trying to adjust “working” schedule to accomodate exede.com data choke hold after 5 AM…
Here in the “The Heights” we’ve only had about 4 inches of rain so far in July and August, compared to a normal of about 7 inches. Still the recent five days in a row of measurable rain have brought life and flying ant swarms back to the desert. Great to see, well, maybe not all of it. From yesterday morning these shots:
7:37 AM. Grasses are rebounding as they can in the free range lands.Height of desert grasses where no cattle can go. Camera hog horse, takes a munching break to insure it gets a face shot.8:10 AM near the Sutherland Wash. Doesn’t compare to last year’s growth with nearly 8 inches of July August rain, still, it was nice to see.8:29 AM. Riparian scene at the Big Rock tributary to the Sutherland Wash. There was no water, though.1:26 PM. Early afternoon downspout mostly N of Saddlebrooke. Another great sight. There were numerous ones around, but as this summer has gone, none blasted “The Heights.” Only a trace of rain was recorded.2:09 PM. Photo of shaft with some ill advised advice written on it along with an arrow.3:07 PM. There were several nice deluges on the Catalinas yesterday. (Can a deluge be nice?). Anyway, this one looks to have inflated the water in the Romero Falls area.4:12 PM. What was especially great about yesterday was that the showers re-building over the mountains. Here, in the same exact spot as the one an hour earlier, a new shower has formed. It was a day that just wouldn’t quit. As darkness fell, still another complex with vivid lightning moved over the same area.4:23 PM. Marana storm trudges westward to bombard Dove Mountain area.5:31 PM. In spite of all the cool air around at this time, the many showers, another complex of thunderheads boils up to the ESE in the upwind direction. It just kept giving yesterday. This is the one that about an hour later produced the vivid lightning, with most of the rain falling again toward Catalina State Park. Shaft pretty much obscured lights down that way when it rolled in.
The End, except it looks a little drier today, but then, it was supposed to be a little drier yesterday, and really wasn’t.
It was great to see a huge Cumulonimbus squatting on Ms. Mt. Lemmon yesterday just after noon, then hours of intermittent thunder as new clouds piled high into the troposphere around it. One site, White Tail by Catalina Highway up there, got almost two inches in just an hour! So, the atmosphere was quite juicy yesterday.
Still, to see all those pretty curtains, rain ones, dropping down around us as new Cumulus powered up into Cumulonimbus clouds, many such events due to Cumulus spawned by outflow winds from the Lemmon dumps, was visually nice, but “unsatisfying” because none landed on me.
Too, we need to catch up to our nearly 7-inch normal July-August rain from the half that we have now, and we came up with only a trace here in the Sutherland district.
BTW, under “advanced observation taking”, you would have logged the first drops from the anvil overhang of the “storm on the Lemmon” at 1:51 PM. Well, maybe not exactly that minute at YOUR house, but I nailed it! Had to be outside though, and wait around for those drops, since it was not clear drops would even make it to the ground from what was over me. The wait was worth it.
Of course, those early storms, rising off the Catalina peaks, usually don’t make it here off the mountains early on with anything but sprinkles. Only later in the day, when we’ve been baked some more, do those giants start making their way on to the lower elevations, and yesterday they did.
Here is your cloud photo diary for yesterday, beginning with your precursors for a good cloud day:
10:51 AM. RIght here you should have been thinking, “Man, this could be a fantastic rain day!” Look at how thin and tall this cloud got, and it happened soon after the first scruff formed (Cu fractus).
11:14 AM, the prior cloud devolving into a reminder, with its narrow stem, of atomic testing back in the 1950s1 see historical note, “nuclear winter” scenarios in the 1980s. a way of defeating global warming…..(gallows humor). The flattening of the cloud at top indicates that there was a temperature barrier that still needed to be punched through as the day warmed.12:28 PM. Minimal lid capping prior cloud punched through as day warmed–see protruding top; thunder began at this time. I probably did not need to tell you that. Sorry.2:20 PM. Pretty curtains, just after drenching Pusch Ridge, drift S to deluge TUS–see today’s AZ Star. It is truly remarkable how much rain can fall from these clouds! Note the stranding here, detailing differences in the cloud’s structure above, generally associated with hail and graupel up there.
Today’s clouds and weather?
You know the drill. Early cloud conditions (due to Altocumulus opacus), followed by a slow burn off, then the rise of the Cumulus clouds. U of AZ mod expects a very active day today, so maybe the curtain will come down on Catalina this afternoon.
Farther out: “tropical river” still floods SE Cal and western AZ, as we remain on the edge, getting something but not the full force as those areas will. Remnant center passes over Yuma Sunday AM. Might be worth a trip. Hell, they could get their annual precip in 12 h, something to write to the family about if you’re there.
—————— 1 Historical note re “atomic testing”: It was a common perception in those days of atomic testing, generally scientists believed, by naive, uninformed peoples, that the explosions were changing the weather. So, when anything weird in weather happened, some would point to “atomic testing”, kind of like some scientists do with global warming and weird weather today. (“Real scientists” are more cautious about attributing a storm or other singular event to GW.)
The US Weather Bureau (ATOMIC EXPLOSIONS AND WEATHER USWB) and the US government went to great lengths to explain to these people why atomic testing could not have changed the weather; it was too small an event to have changed the weather.
In fact, with the rise of Chaos Theory, where it is deemed by some scientists2 that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil might have something to do with a tornado in Texas, of COURSE, atomic testing changed the friggin’ weather! We just don’t know how and where…
Also, it is normal and proper for scientists to correct, enhance, or reject prior theories as new facts come in. “Hey” think about how embarrassed the cosmologists were back in the 1990s or so when they discovered they had the friggin’ sign of the “Cosmic Constant” wrong. The Universe was expanding, ever more rapidly, not collapsing. Then, and this is really funny, they made up some magic called, “Dark Energy” to explain that inexplicable new finding! But, as the ideals of science demand, they did change their minds and theories! Not sure that happens so easily today in some domains I could think of.
2Nick, research faculty, U of WA, private communication, as seen in the Seattle Times.
Quite happy early on yesterday with Cu sprouting upward rapidly in the mid-morning, then it ended up being a sad day for us yesterday with only a trace. It appeared, with the early generation of towering Cumulus over the Cat Mountains, then thunder just before noon, that we were going to have a good chance of a big dump, a land-filling rainstorm, to make a play on the word “dump.”
But no.
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Next, in a continuation of negative thoughts, I propose a spending cap on college athletics. Here’s why from the NYT, no less1. In the short of it: the Duck has more money to spend than the Dawg, and, as a former employee of the University of Washington, I am upset. Yes I am THAT great a former employee. Even when working at the U of WA full time, I advertised the company teams AFTER working hours by wearing this and that with Dawg logos, that’s how good an employee I was.
But Oregon has crossed the line; its got to stop. Think of the poor AZ Wildcats, too, if you’re so inclined. The only worse thing that could happen is for the University of Phoenix, with all their money, to start a football program and join the Pac 12 after the WAZU Cougars drop out because they are so bad. (The Cougars ARE really bad, to get an in-state rival Dawg dig in. hahahaha, Cougs.
———-
Now, some clouds, real drama queens, but still pretty darn photogenic:
11:25 AM. Cu pile up nicely beyond the Gap. Note pileus clouds atop Cu left and distant right, a sign of good updrafts. I like pileus clouds.11:36 AM. While these two Cumulus clouds became marshmallows, the first ice (fibrous area, upper left) begins to show.
11:49 AM. Rain shaft begins to show, first thunder a few minutes later.
1:55 PM. With flow from the south, I was ecstatic at this point. Why? The big rain shaft to the south. Oh, no, too late for that one to be anything when it gets here. But, those Cu building over Pusch Ridge, they’re what needed to fire up and keep this complex going, and they are looking GREAT at this point, no doubt pushed up by the outflow winds of the rain just behind them. But it gets better….
2:18 PM. Heading upward into euphoria from ecstaticness (is that a word?) here as Cu congestus bases enlarge, don’t seem to have weak points in the center suggesting irregular updrafts. Its going to rain from them soon, no doubt it. And it did. But….not that much. Rain shaft behind and to the right, already thinning at this time.
So with all the drama shown above, here’s what ensued from that great looking base, demonstrating that you can only be “mostly be sure, but not all sure”, to paraphrase a Billy Crystal line in “The Princess Bride.”
3:02 PM. The pitiful “rain shaft”, if I may so elevate such light rain, on Samaniego Ridge, the outpouring of precip that eventuated from that great looking base. Little baby rain was falling here at the time. Traced is all it did.
What happened? The intensity of the shaft tells you how high the tops of those really dark bases got, and in this case, probably they probably got no higher than the marshmallow clouds shown above with their equally weak shafts. Not much rain, either, in the Catalinas.
Why didn’t the tops get higher?
The outflow shove wasn’t enough to jack them up, the air just a bit too cool feeding into the bases, weakening outflow winds. You can make up a lot of stuff. But, darn, it looked SO GOOD there for a moment.
Today? Well, the same scenario replayed over and over again it seems. Likely Cu building on the Cat Mountains again, probably not as early a start as yesterday–TUS sounding’s a little drier. I should see what Bob sez, since he really knows stuff.
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1 Sent to me by a science prize-winning friend2 with whom I shared Husky season ticks with. It was interesting since I got a minimal science prize of sorts, too. The headline: “Prize-winning meteorologists attend college football games together.” Kind of an unexpected scenario I would think.
2Got his prize, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and congratulations from Al Gore at the White House back in ’00 or so. (Can you put a footnote in a footnote?)
First about the rainfall around Arizona yesterday….
Jack is happy. Got 1.21 inches yesterday afternoon. Nice! No doubt some of our friends, fellow lowlanders, who can’t take Catalina-Sutherland Heights when the temperature rises above 82.5 F unlike you and me, experienced that cloud downspout that occurred at to Happy Jack Ranger Station in Pine, AZ, at almost 8,000 feet elevation.
For additional rainfall reports beyond those provided at “Happy Jack”, of course, we have to go to about 3 dozen other places because no one has managed to cull ALL of the rainfall reports we get into ONE daily list. Well, maybe the NSA has them all… Here are a few more links to rainfall data:
Not to mention the many “school net” and TEEVEE station-established rainfall reporting stations, and those folks who monitor rainfall at home but don’t report it to the rest of us who want to know about it. Maybe NSA can help out there, too. Hahahahaha, sort of. (BTW, I have nothing to hide to whomever is reading this; well, mostly nothing.)
——-EDITORIAL OUTBURST——
How strange it is that we cannot go to ONE friggin’ site and get all of the rain reports for the whole State! Would it be due to a lack of…….inter agency cooperation and competition, even among non-profit organizations???? (Insert creepy organ music here)
——-END OF EDITORIAL OUTBURST——
Back to rainfall observations…..
Douglas, AZ, if you haven’t heard from your favorite TEEVEE meteorologist who makes a lot of money1, has experienced its wettest June through August ever, with 13 plus inches, with about two weeks to go! This is for the purpose of generating a thought about a trip, a weather vacation, for you. That whole area down there, with its historic heavy rains this summer MUST be seen! Your weather diary will be sadly lacking without some notes about the vegetation, ponding and stream flows in that area. Damn well know I’m going again. There is a treasure of scenes, maybe new lifeforms, down thataway that won’t happen again in our lifetimes. The specifics below from the NWS:
SXUS75 KTWC 130105
RERTWC
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TUCSON AZ
605 PM MST MON AUG 12 2013
...DOUGLAS ARIZONA RECORDS WETTEST METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER ON RECORD...
RAINFALL OVER THIS PAST WEEKEND AT BISBEE-DOUGLAS AIRPORT PUSHED
THEIR 2013 METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER TOTAL TO 13.23"...WHICH ECLIPSED
THE OLD RECORD OF 13.07" FROM THE SUMMER OF 1964.
METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER IS THE PERIOD FROM JUNE 1 TO AUGUST 31ST.
THE 13.23" IS ALSO THE TOTAL FOR THE 2013 MONSOON. THIS RANKS AS 2ND
WETTEST MONSOON ON RECORD...STILL WELL BEHIND THE RECORD OF 15.90"
FROM 1964.
LASTLY...THE 2013 CALENDAR TOTAL OF 14.10" CURRENTLY RANKS AS THE
19TH WETTEST YEAR ON RECORD.
$$
On to clouds, yesterday’s:
As a CMJ, you should have noticed the harbinger of better things ahead for late yesterday afternoon and evening when we had “thunder on the Lemmon” beginning at 2 PM, about 4-5 hours earlier than the two prior days. Earlier is better.
Also earlier were the first scruffs of Cumulus clouds forming over the Catalinas, in this case about 2 h ealier than prior days, another “earlier is better” scene for rain here in Catalina-SH. Here are some scenes; hope you seen’em. Oh, my, another outburst of creativity.
First, before Cumulus, these “strangers”:
8:11 AM. Billow clouds, Cirrocumulus undulatus, if you want a tech name. They weren’t around very long, just a few minutes, hope you scene’em. Best seen as action figures in the U of AZ time lapse film for yesterday.
11:13 AM. Cloud street streaming off the Lemmon is pretty advanced for this time. Cloud bases, too, a bit lower than the day before. Lower is better (for rain amounts).1:43 PM. First ice on top of Ms. Mt. Lemmon. Should be in your diary. Can you see it? Answer in next image. I’m trying to learn you up on these things…dammitall. Note lack of a rain shaft at this time1:43 PM close up of glaciated turret showing above the cloud mass above Lemmon. There’s some writing on it. Thunder b
While this early TSTM fabove aded quickly, dropping only 0.28 inches on Mt. Lemmon, the “Dump of the Day” (say, those within 5 miles of here) erupted suddenly just after 5 PM over and to the south of the Golder Ranch development at the foot of the Catalina Mountains. The cloud-to-ground strikes came within seconds, not minutes from this dynamo, though like its predecessor, it did not last long. Still, parts of it moved far enough north to give SH (Sutherland Heights) 0.12 inches. Here it is:
5:16 PM. “Dump of the Day”, looking toward the Golder Ranch development from the parking lot at the top of Golder Ranch Drive. LTG was too scary to leave car.
And, of course, the day finished out with another one of those dramatic sunsets, and the lighting on the clouds at that time of day that makes us so happy to be here, that we can take temperatures above 82 F without having to depart for higher ground. Last evening, this beauty:
7:03 PM. Looking north beyond Saddlebrooke, and along with it, another fabulous evening of lightning. Doesn’t happen like this as a rule in that colder, high terrain that our “temperature refugees” head for. Much better down here for evening and nighttime LTG.
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1I dream about being a TEEVEE weatherman making a LOT of money. I could then take those weather vacations I’ve dreamed of, never mind the State Department Travel warnings, to Cherrapunji, India, where they once measured over a thousand inches of rain over 12 months; to the Island of La Reunion in the southern Indian Ocean where tropical storms have sat and dropped, and your jaw will also drop, 72 inches of rain in ONE day, and 66 inches in 18 hours in a DIFFERENT storm–before that one let up.
