Worn out from yesterday, which resembled the day before with the late “bloom” of fabulously photogenic Cumulonimbus clouds, much lightning, and an equally fabulous sunset. Took too many photos (200 plus I think) kind of out of control, due to excessive excitement again; hard drive filling up. Locating brain now in this cup of coffee.
First, before the cloud photo diary for yesterday, this wonderful, uplifting look at the weather way ahead from NOAA’s spaghetti forecasting machine last night, calculated from global data taken around the world, to be redundant, at 5 PM AST last evening, valid for 5 PM AST Friday, August 30th:
Isn’t this great?! One of the best maps I’ve seen this summer. Looks like the summer rain season1 hereabouts will be in pretty good force through the end of August now after abosrbing this NOAA check of chaos theory. Maybe Sutherland Heights will catch up to our average rainfall for July and August by the end of the month, 6-7 inches. Now sitting on only 3.2 inches since July 1st.
Yesterday’s clouds and storms
Here’s how it all started:
10:38 AM. Cumulus specks began to appear over Ms. Lemmon an hour or two earlier than the previous day, always a good trend.11:21 AM. Early sign of an aroused atmosphere, one ready to produce deep clouds. Thin, spindly clouds shooting upward rapidly, sometimes, as here, in the formation of an obscene gesture.12:57 PM. And before 1 PM, this early Cb (calvus) off the mountains to the NW! I was really preparing for giant storms ALL day in the area. But, that’s NOT what happened. They faded soon after this. Ms. Lemmon, never mind the raging heat, became devoid of clouds. It was nothing less than astonishing that it could be cloud free in the middle of the afternoon with such an “auspicious”, if rude, early start of Cumulus clouds.
3:08 PM. Its 106 F in Sutherland Heights. This view of piddly-pooh Cumlus clouds over the Catalinas didn’t seem possible, in a sense, an amazing sight. All the day’s early promise was somehow gone, drier air was moving in, and that thought made the heat even more intolerable, though I don’t mind it myself, adding a personal note here.3:25 PM. Its a 107 F; cloud drought over the Catalinas continues. May seem silly, but this was just an incredible sight I thought.5:51 PM. Within half an hour, the Cumulus began to perk up. Could the same thing happen, that sudden explosion of Cumulus into Cumulonimbus like yesterday occur AGAIN? Yes
5:51 PM. “Muffin” Cu congestus, center, has top high enough already to produce ice and precip!6:13 PM, 22 min later. “Muffin” Cu cong has grown into a small Cumulonimbus with this pretty rainshaft. But LOOK at how the clouds have filled in toward Sutherland H.!
6:53 PM. By this time more clouds were building upward, joining the fray, as here, and the whole sky was filling in. There was some stupendous cloud to ground lightning strikes with this one, but didn’t capture them.
7:05 PM. Hard to put into words how pretty a sight this was, and so dramatic, full of portent.
7:18 PM, 13 min later, the dump has come. This was the cell that produced almost continuous lightning toward the west into the early evening.
7:14 PM. In the meantime, this cloud base was expanding in the upwind direction toward Saddlebrooke-Charoleau Gap, eventually to be our rain-producer last evening just after 8 PM AST.
Today’s weather? You’ll want to see Bob’s view and, of course, that of the TUS NWS, or your favorite TEEVEE forecaster’s. U of AZ experts though today would be better than yesterday!
The End.
——————————-
1Sometimes confused with the “monsoon” of India and south Asia, which is really a MONSOON with a giant low center circulating air around it for millions and millions of square miles. Hey, Jabalpur had 17 centimeters of rain yesterday, 6.70 inches, and the rain is supposed to get heavier in the next couple of days!
Yesterday was interesting because Mr. Cloud Maven person1 gave up on ANY rain around here as late as 5:30 PM yesterday, when the sky was punctuated by only Cumulus mediocris clouds. Sure, there were large, and quite pretty Cumulonimbi to the NW-NE over the distant high terrain, but it seemed Ms. Lemmon could not take part in producing the rainfull joy those distant clouds indicated as she so often does; was a real Cb wallflower. See below.
5:21 PM. Under 104 F skies, Cumulus mediocris over the Cat Mountains having bases way up at about 14 kft above sea level (of course, less high above sea level in future decades) produces a yawn.5:23 PM. Nearly solid mass of Cumulonimbus tops line N horizon.
Within half an hour, things began to change. What happened? Sometimes when you see changes taking place all around you its a sign of some upper level trigger, some pattern in the upper level winds that is causing the air below to come together under it, and produce large areas of clouds and thunderstorms, a little cyclonic swirl. I can’t really see anything to explain the suddeness, so I will quit this topic rather than leaving you hanging. I think I will show you two ant cones now.
Thought break: 7:57 AM, before the cloud development mystery, two symmetric ant cones. But why? There are many mysteries in life that can’t be solved, so I’m not feeling bad at all.5:45 PM. Nice, but still, at this size can only produce sprinkles and virga. Note slight bit of virga above Pusch Ridge. This WAS a sign that these modest clouds with high bases were beginning to reach upward to the glaciation level, where ice forms, a level that changes in height from day to day generally because it is partly dependent on the aerosol content in the air. This began happening in several clouds almost simultaneously! I am sure you started to get worked up, as I did.5:58 PM. Cute narrow shaft falls from a glaciated turret that has also climbed that bit farther from the prior photo. You also can see that while there is a big fluff of ice up there above the base, the rain that falls out represents only a tiny portion of where ice formed in the cloud. This would be the graupel/hail region of the cloud, melting of course on the way down because its so friggin’ hot, to be colloquial there for a second.
Cutting to the chase, these surrounding cloud eruptions that occurred simultaneously, suggesting some help from above:
6:01 PM. Rainshaft fibers began emitting from this pile of Cumulus crumpulus. It was amazing since it now seemed everything was starting to rain! And rain reached the ground under this in Oro Valley. Stupendous, because now you’re looking everywhere for something to go over you.
7:02 PM. Great looking oval base about to “unload.”
7:11 PM. The hammer is down. Likely 0.50 inches or so in this short-lived water bomb.
6:51 PM. “Man with hat and beer”; sun illuminated rain in background.
7:01 PM.
7:11 PM. Part of the spectacular electrical show last evening.
7:14 PM. Residual Stratocumulus clouds supply targets for fading sunlight.
Some pie, H-pie: Whereas a modest push of moisture into Tucson and central Pima County was deemed insufficient to produce rain here yesterday, some drops DID fall here producing a trace late yesterday afternoon.
But some areas of the Catalinas got clobbered with White Tail, over there around Sabino Canyon, collecting 2.17 inches (!) and Samaniego Ridge over thisaway, 0.47 inches, the latter from a pile of Cumulus congestus clouds that blossomed into a Cb with a dense rain shaft right before the writer’s eyes. This after he had opined to his wife that he doubted those dark clouds would rain on the western side of the Catalinas…. Hmmmm.
They thundered and rained a plenty, and the wind that came out of that shaft dropped the temperature some 15 degrees here in Sutherland Heights with wind gusts to more than 35 mph. Furthermore, that outflow, spreading out across Oro Valley and parts NW, and went on to launch one new thunderstorm north of Saddlebrooke, which was very nice, of course. Didn’t think that would happen either as very dry air was working its way in already from the SW.
As the clouds massed over Catalina-Sutherland Heights, was returning from a fabulous tour “investigating” the results of 8-12 inches of rain in Jul of the area around Sierra Vista-Fort Huachuca along HWYs 90 and 92 then through Coronado National Memorial Park (about 10 inches fell at Visitor’s Center in July), then over Montezuma Pass (6575 ft) and on to Sonoita.
Holy Smokes was that gorgeous; highly recommended. Traveling down HWY 90, With Stratocumulus topping the green, forested Huachuca Mountains, and the green in the foreground, one thought of Hawaii. Some photos from that trip FYI. It’ll be a LONG time before this happens again! Also, some summer wildflowers are in display as well.
10:12 AM, Sierra Vista.10:20 AM, Sierra Vista. Some kind of flower. I am a cloud maven, not a flower maven.11:13 AM. Entrance sign to the Park, in case you didn’t believe that I went there to see the effects of a lot of rain.11:13 AM. Another view going in, one from the viewpoint of driving on the wrong side of the road for the purpose of startling you, getting your attention here.11:22 AM. Rain gauge at the CNMP Vistior’s Center. I thought you would like to see that. Looks a little too enclosed by vegetation, and unless the rain is falling straight down. If its windy, its likely to under catch the precip. Should be in an opening twice the distance as the nearest high thing, something like that, quite an opening.11:55 AM. View of small Cumulus from the top of Montezuma Pass (elev. 6575 ft) in the CNMP. Temp was 81 F is all.12:07 PM. A view of the Pass environs, with moderate-sized Cumulus clouds. So green.12:24 PM. Another flower of some kind, who knows what? There were a lot of these things on the way down the Pass toward the west.12:56 PM. Hell, its beginning to look like KS here. What is with that? Also, it was disheartening not to see any cars for long stretches, cars likely containing people looking at the effects of historic July rains.4:52 PM. Got back just in time to see this thunderstorm develop. The blast of wind came about ten minutes later. A day doesn’t get better than this one.
5:45 PM. So pretty, this Cumulonimbus northwest of Saddlebrooke resulting from the outflow from the rain shaft shown above.
Hot dry days ahead for awhile, as you know. May have to generate some filler material….
Not expected by this brain yesterday, but several of those many more Cumulus clouds than expected also fattened up to heights where ice began to form, also not expected. As you know, that means precip fell out, at least up there. As a weatherman-cloud person, there are always surprises every day (!) to delight and disappoint you. Its quite and exciting life we lead.
How cold were those tops?
Well, you know, colder than -10 C on a day with very high and COLD cloud bases1. How high and cold were the cloud bottoms yesterday. Oh, about 0 C (32 F, of course) at 14,000 feet above the ground, 5,000 fee above Ms. Mt. Lemmon, the taller tops extruding upward to between -15 C and -20 C (5 F to -4 F), about right for the amount of ice that developed, “eyeballed” concentrations of a few to 10s per liter of air in those clouds (for size, think of a liter size plastic bottle of Bud Light with some ice crystals in it). (Remember, a LONG time ago in another area of the Universe2,3, Mr. Cloud-Maven Person flew into such clouds with instruments aboard his Cloud and Aerosol Research aircraft and can say things like this with what appears to be some authority.)
Here are those clouds from yesterday, which I am sure you logged with excitement in your weather diaries:
2:55 PM. While out plant shopping at DS (Desert Survivors Nursery) this. Can you find the dead completely glaciated turret remains?
3:57 PM. OK, I’m making it easy on you here to find the ice. Wasn’t there a song like that back in the 60s? “Make it easy on myself, oooo?” I will look on the internet; it has everything!
4:59 PM. Largest of the the ice-producing, “Cumulus virgae”, or are they, having precip, “Cumulonimbus mediocris.” I like the latter better, not that you would care that much.
7:18 PM. Nice sunset, though.
Today the cloud bottoms are 1,000 feet lower than yesterday afternoon. But is it a diurnal effect where bases are always lower in the cool mornig (“morning”; intentionally spelled wrong to see if you’re paying attention) than in the afternoon? BTW, if you like soundings, go to the “Happy State of Wyoming, the nation’s happiest4, to see all the soundings you want at the University of Wyoming
But, we have a windshift in the middle levels traipsing over us late this afternoon (U of AZ TUS sounding forecast here), and that will be, we hope, something like a fork lift; help to push cloud tops up just it goes by. (However, I can find no evidence of such a windshift in larger scale models, so MAYBE I have mistaken a diurnal shift induced by our mountains as a “trough”. A trough would be a lot better, a diurnal turning of the wind, not so great a weathermaker. Another one of those “surprises”; they can come from all quadrants.
SO, high based Cumulus, some growing into Cumulonimbus clouds here and there, with some sprinkles because the bases are too high for a really good rain. But, hey, if you want a really good forecast, not a crummy one like this, see Bob and the NWS.
—————————-
1Remember cloud bases can be cold, but NOT temperatures, which are high and low. The AIR is warm and cold.)
2Remember the solar system is speeding along (45,000 mph or so) in the Universe around the Milky Way Galaxy to god knows where (the constellation Hercules, according to the Stanford Solar Center).
3Quite fond of footnotes; they add a scholarly aura to trashy writing like this.
4OBJECTIVE HAPPINESS BY STATE We’re not THAT happy in AZ, BTW, but people are really happy in Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota. Huh.
Thought maybe a nice distraction from yesterday’s rain disappointment would be looking at some file boxes from the University of Washington’s Atmos. Sci. basement. This shot taken a couple of days ago.
Enjoy thinking about what might be in these boxes, and what you would do with the contents. Have some extra coffee, talk it over with friends, think about how much you might offer if one of these boxes was something on a quiz show, and you had one thing you knew what it was, but had to take your chances on what might be in one of these boxes1? Or if saw them in storage locker you were bidding on. How much? Lots of possibilities to think about.
———weather part——
You started to get a bad feeling about yesterday, in spite of the juicy clouds on Samaniego Ridge, bases around 15 C, extremely warm for AZ, meaning full of extra condensed water compared to our normal clouds, when the north wind began to blow, and the temperature was struggling to go beyond 80 F.
Usually, when the cloud bases are low, it doesn’t take a LOT of heating to power them up into Cumulonimbus (Cbs) clouds because the condensation itself releases heat. But struggling to reach 82-83 F here was just too little heat.
Late in the afternoon we did have a nice, if weak, Cb on the Cat Mountains (no thunder, of course, it was that weak). They did get half an inch on top of Mt. Lemmon and a couple of other places, so at least SOME rain fell near us.
And, not only did we have the “juice”, high amounts of water in the atmosphere over us, but also a nice cyclonic swirl passed overhead yesterday, too, something we normally look to cluster Cumulonimbus clouds into large groupings with major rains. From the U of WA, you can see it go by here.
To finish off thoughts of yesterday, some mood music to go along with those thoughts, I would like you to now hear covers of “pretty songs” by the Circle Jerks.
—————————-
Here are your clouds from yesterday, I know you’ll want to see them again, mope around some more about what could have been. We will begin our review of yesterday’s clouds with today’s morning rainbows:
6:00 AM. Sloping rain shaft tells you that the drops are very large, rain not too heavy.6:02 AM. Bow over the Oro.11:03 AM. Those oh so promising Cumulus congestus clouds lining the Catalinas!4:19 PM. Finally a Cumulus congestus that looked like it would exit the juvenile stage and mature into an adult (Cumulonimbus).4:36 PM. And it did grow up. This is what produced the half inch on Ms. Lemmon.
No real chance of rain now for a few days. Oh, me.
The End.
———-
From 30 years ago or so…. Wonder what historians would say now?
1Example of a quiz show where you bit on a mystery box if you want, or take the thing that’s offered in front of you.
Let us first begin first by NOT exulting too much over our own rain, but let us revel in that rain that has fallen in the Plains. New Mexico, too. From WSI Intellicast this beauty for the past 7 days:
A radar-derived sum of the rain that has fallen in the past seven days over the USA. Please observe the yellowish and orangy areas in Kansas, indicating that between 8-16 inches has fallen! Oh, my. Let us remember, too, that July and August are supposed to be relatively dry months in these areas; the wetter times in May and June.
Below is our national drought status at the onset of the week above (for July 30, 2013), and indicates why so many of us should be thankful for this past weather week:
The national picture of drought as of July 30, 2013. It will be updated later today.
Well, they didn’t get so big, so soon over the Lemmon, as foretold by one model referred to yesterday, but there was something later in the afternoon near the top of Lemmon. Can you detect whether that the turret shown below is mostly “glaciated” or not? You know, that’s why I do this, to learn you up on clouds and when they got ice and therefore are precipitating out the bottom even though here you can’t see the bottom. It all for YOU. Its no problem for me, of course.
5:04 PM. A Cumulus turret has protruded above the others behind Ms. Lemmon. If it’s glaciated, it might be better be termed the head of a Cumulonimbus calvus (“bald”) and would have rain underneath it. What do you think? Only the C-M knows for sure. Sounds like something from a radio program I’ve heard somewhere. But, you should try anyway. Answer at the bottom if I remember to put it there.6:31 PM, Swan and Trotter, with metaphorical “Dead End” road sign, lower right. While to the uninitiated this Cumulonimbus capillatus anvil may have appeared to be heralding a storm, overspreading the Catalina sky the way it was, the lack of cumuliform portions, the fraying edges, not hard ones, indicated it was in its dying phase. Photo of anvil with metaphorical sign; yours for $2,000 (more than usual because some mental effort was expended). Now that I am thinking about money, I think I will demand a million dollars to continue blogging, and see what happens.
2:47 PM. RIght here you knew that the model run that had an echo by 3 PM on Ms. Lemmon was going to be off as we see but a Cumulus mediocris forming after the usual mid-day clearing.
Nice sunrise this morning….
5:48 AM today. Sunrise over the Charoleau Gap. Mulitple layers of Altocumulus, some fine virga.
Another morning of remnant rains moving through right now, rather than the full blast. As usual, these clouds and rain showers are likely to be dissipating in the later morning before doing much.
Looks like one last day of possible big showers here….check this out from the U of AZ, 11 PM run (WRF-GFS mod).. Lets hope so, cuz its gonna be dry after this for a few days.
“Alas”, now there’s a word to don’t see every day…probably a little stiff from laying around so long.
Those Cumulus that shot up over the Catalinas early yesterday morning were a magnificent sight, and so full of promise. And while thunder was heard here just after 11 AM here in Sutherland Heights-Catalina, the showers just did not get off the mountains around here as hoped, though there were a few big boys (or “gals”, to be gender neutral) around to the NW-N and down to the S-SW during the afternoon. Here are the Pima County ALERT totals for the past 24 h. Lemmon had a good drop of 1.46 inches; that’ll surely keep those mountain streams going. But as you will see, not much elsewhere. Just a trace here, our mode for this summer in Sutherland Heights-Catalina area it seems.
BTW, all available model outputs (U of AZ 11 PM run not available at this time) show fewer showers than yesterday, though to CM, it looks like a very similar day to yesterday in sat imagery and such1. So, it would seem we have a another day with a chance for a good rain in the afternoon or evening, about like yesterday when some showers did form off the mountains and could have landed on us. Besides, even without rain, it was a pretty day anyway. Its all great.
Here is yesterday’s cloud history with its early promise, ultimately only fulfilled only on the Catalinas around here:
6:35 AM. Our usual broken layer of Altocumulus clouds. But, being composed of droplets, are especially subject to dissipation as the sun comes up, irradiates them, and ground plumes begin rising to help finish the job off.
10:32 AM. EVery single and married cloud-maven junior should have been EXTREMELY excited and filled with anticipation at the sight of these towering Cumulus clouds, these early risers (Cumulus congestus erectus). They demonstrate that that the atmosphere was “loaded” for action, that is, was really unstable, ready to produce deep clouds and heavy showers. Above the Cu, the remnant of the morning’s Altocumulus layer.
11:36 AM. Has been thundering on the Lemmon for about half an hour. These next two photos show the risk of being under a nice, darker cloud base with no sign of rain coming out, and then 3 min later (from a video I took), the mountains are obscured in blinding 1-2 inch rainrates per hour.11:41 AM. A couple minutes after the shaft dropped down. This was another really good sign about this day, the dark bases weren’t going to be “Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders2” so-to-speak in terms of alternative music of the 1980s, but rather, the “real deal”; were shooting up to….the level of glaciation and precip formation! I probably did not have to tell you that last thing when you saw shafts of precip coming out eventually, but suddenly, out of every darkened base.
12:12 PM. “Twin towers”, able to escape the mountains.
12:51 PM. These beauties. Topmost turret on the left is loaded with ice–can you tell? This is pretty hard to do at this stage. In a couple of minutes, the results of that ice began to show up at the base.
12:53 PM. Shaft beginning to appear below base. This is the most exciting place to be if you’re under it, since the drops are huge, have made it through the now collapsing updraft. Lightning had already occurred by this time, so you have to watch out for these early stages of thunderstorm formation since, underneath it, you might not see the ice forming, and know that the electrification process is well underway.
12:57 PM. Puttin’ the hammer all the way down.
7:24 PM. Scattered Altocumulus with Altostratus above (a bit too thick to be just “Cirrus.”
—————————
1BTW, if you want a really GREAT forecast by a true expert, rather than a “shoot from hip” kind of one that CM so often offers, you have to read what Bob has to say today when he posts it. U of AZ experts also often refer to his careful analyses.
2Here they sing about something we probably don’t want to happen to Catalina, Arizona.
Its not a motorcycle gang, though it would be a good name for one comprised of meteorologists. Don’t think that’s gonna happen.
If you were watching carefully, and you had no radar capability on your smart phone, you could have still detected the presence of clouds producing rain. Here’s what they looked like, in a kind of a washed out, low-contrast view toward the southern horizon. AZ mod didn’t have them there, so it was a nice surprise to see them. It suggests that the chances of scattered rain today, and rumbles from the The Lemmon, are pretty good. Model output from yesterday DID have that for today; rain on The Lemmon this afternoon into this evening, drifting northwestward onto the valley. Yay! Waxing rain gauge so that the first drops don’t stick in the dust covered collector part, but zoom down into the inner cylinder (the part that magnifies the amount collected so you can read hundredths). You don’t want any water molecules from those drops, “leaving the building” before they get in.
Here’s a photo of those thunderheads crossing the border yesterday afternoon:
2:58 PM. A surprise sight.
Nice to see some Cumulus mediocris shading Mt. Lemmon, too.
2:51 PM. Mediocre Cumulus clouds hover over Lemmon.7:18 PM. By this time, Altocumulus clouds, including some lenticular ones were invading the sky, Along with scattered Cirrus way above them, promised a great multi-colored sunset.
And here it is, nine minutes later:
7:27 PM. Altocumulus and CIrrus clouds, due to their vastly different heights, provide contrasting sunset color.
So, there are pretty much all of your clouds for yesterday. What more can I do?
The End
This just in: just when you think you can’t possibly do anymore, this sunrise;
In case you missed it, today at 5:45 AM. Clouds: Altocumulus opacus.
And it was yesterday. But if I titled this blog page that, I would get people complaining that they weren’t looking for a cloud and weather report from the prior day. Still, “hot and pretty” it was with those small Cumulus shadows drifting across our Catalina mountains, the shadows ever changing like the patterns in a kaleidoscope. Can anyone tire of these views? I don’t see how.
This last photo shows a “cloud street”, an intermittent line of small Cumulus clouds,generated by either the Tucson Mountains, or maybe even as far south as from Kitt Peak. This line of clouds demonstrates that one of our best wind directions for rain is from the SW, as it was yesterday, and that was about the direction of movement for our those big rain cells on July 15-16th that drenched so much of the west slope of the Catalinas. This direction brings air that is moving upward due to the increasing height of the terrain north and northeast of us, and storms are not compromised by downslope flow as they were the day before when the wind rushed out of the north.
Many of you will want to know if I saw any ice from these clouds yesterday, to compare with your own notes. The answer is “no”, I did not see any. The sounding below shows why. Tops of the clouds were only about -5 C (23 F) and that’s too warm for ice to form in a cloud in Arizona–can happen over the oceans, or in clouds with real warm bases, but not here, not yesterday. Yesterday’s cloud bases were up around 12,000 feet above sea level, highest tops about 15,000 feet, so the thickest clouds in these photos were maybe 3,000 feet thick (1 km). See below.
Atmospheric sounding for Tucson from a balloon launched between 3:30 and 4 PM yesterday.
July rain “factoid”:
Douglass, Arizona, has just passed the TEN inches mark for rain this month, a remarkable amount that is several inches over the prior record! Definitely have to get down there to see what TEN INCHES does to plant life there, maybe see some nice puddles, running streams, the whole great scenes of water in the desert. I think you should, too; get out of the house, experience some summer life out there, stop watching so much TV… :}
No rain likely here through the end of July. Boo-hoo.
Great rainshowers pummeled a few nearby areas yesterday; Horseshoe Bend just NE of Saddlebrooke, got 0.75 inches yesterday with another little pulse of water coming down the CDO later. But once again Nature bobbed a rainy apple in front of us, only to jerk it away, to mix metaphors royally. BTW, has there been a baby yet?
I wonder, too, if you saw in yesterday’s sad weather “play”, the colliding outflows NE of Saddlebrooke? Or the the ideal, dark, expansive, flat cloud base indicating a great updraft was feeding the rain shafts just to the north of us, ones that were propagating this way, riding the rain-cooled outflow racing toward Sutherland Heights, that wind shoving the air up as it pushed S, forming new clouds over it?
All this looked so promising to the non-cynical observer. As a meteorologist I was, of course, videoing these events to the north LONG before they happened since we often see this sequence develop to the north of us. But after you experience so many disappointments, as we have here in SH, you begin to expect bad no matter how promising they look at first. Its kind of like being a Cubs fan. You KNOW nothing good is going to come of the season. So that’s where I am now, pretty much like a hopeless Cubs (or a Seattle Mariners) fan.
Have, of course, in five summers, seen this happen before, that is, “The Great Dissipation”, when rain is but yards away, moving down from the N and then doesn’t make it. You probably have, too.
Part of the reason, maybe a large part, is that the wind rushing south from areas north of Saddlebrooke, and especially out of the Charoleau Gap, is going downhill. This means that the upward shove out of the rain shaft is being compromised by downslope motion at the ground. Often, in spite of this downslope motion at the ground, the upward shove is still enough to keep a respectable cloud base going, feeding more precip into the rain shafts that develop above. So, while there have been other situations where strength of the “incoming” is weakened, there was still an upward shove strong enough that we still get drenched.
But not yesterday.
The cloud bottoms/updrafts, necessary for new rain to form and reach here, broke up just as they arrived over Sutherland Heights, with one last gasp rain streamer, the end product of the last decent cloud base/updraft, landing only a mile or less away to the east before giving out completely. Man, that was tough to see.
Here’s a photo diary for yesterday, which, BTW, was one of the most photogenic summer days ever IMO (took around 300 shots (!), though part of that excess was because my camera malfunctioning and had to repeat many):
5:24 AM. Cumulus turret beyond the horizon casts a shadow on Cirrus clouds as the sun comes up behind it. Very pretty..
8:34 AM. Now here’s a great sign, a fingerling Cumulus shooting up from the Catalinas this early!9:39 AM. This is really looking good due to the bulk and towering aspect of the clouds.9:43 AM. So pretty, so isolated, and shows that even the Tortolitas can launch large clouds early yesterday, another great sign for an active day.9:51 AM. Clouds continue to be quite aroused over the Catalinas, nearly reaching the glaciation level already! I was quite excited myself and took a lot of photos of these.10:12 AM. Rain! (from a Cumulonimbus capillatus–looks fibrous in its upper portions due to ice crystals and snowflakes11:12 AM. Within an hour, Lemmon was rumbling, as was this giant off to the N of Saddlebrooke.11:26 AM. The unusual scene of two outflow winds colliding, just behind the dark base in the foreground. Things were looking so great because you knew there would be an out rush of wind at us, maybe maintaining that big dark base that’s necesssary to keep the rainshafts going its the bottom of the chimney feeding the Cumulonimbus turrets, getting them up there where they cold enough to form new rain/hail/graupel. Its only a few miles away, too!11:39 AM. Learning module. Here’s where your hope for a great rain should begin to fade, a wave of sadness washing over you. RIght here you begin to suspect something’s wrong, that big fat dark base looking a bit disorganized, not as large and flat, though still has a strong upshoot on the right side. Maybe the disintegration of the base will continue; once started it always does.11:49 AM. This is the trash base that made it over the house. Going to put on “The Who” now; you remember them: “Won’t get fooled again. New base same as the old base. Won’t get fooled again.” One of the great weather songs of all time.Dong, twelve noon. That diminishing base at 11:39 AM above had enough upward zoom in it to produce this narrow rain streamer as the base disappeared, got rained out. If you were out, there was a very close lightning strike at this time in Sutherland Heights.4:24 PM. But the day wasn’t over yet was it? BY late afternoon, new Cumulonimbus clouds had arisen, now drifting from the west that produced this unusual scene of spaced rainshafts.7:31 PM. The day ended with another one of our multi-colored sunsets, the ones we love so much in the summer.
Now to get through the dry, HOT few days ahead…. Will be tough.
However, take a look at this radar-derived precip map for the US for just the past 7 days, and just look at how the droughty areas of the SW and Plains States have been hit with tremendous rains during this period. So great to see so much, especially here in AZ and NM. From WSI:
Total precipitation as inferred by radar for the seven days ending today. Fantastic!
