Do we really need the letter, “u” in “quiet”? Just checking… “Lake” is for all the puddles around right now in Catalina after the nice half inch to inch rain the day before yesterday.
There used to be actual lakes in Catalina, btw, “Twin Lakes” they were called, as old timers know. That’s why we have a boat store here, and quite a few street names with nautical themes, like “hawser”, the name of a big marine rope for towing boats.
Before launching into the usual tedious cloud discussion and photo barage, those one of you that got to the bottom of yesterday’s blog may have noticed that it linked to a LONG article in the venerable Los Angeles Times reviewing media weather forecasting as it was in 1981. A friend and met man, Mark Albright, actually READ the whole thing, and alerted me to the following INTERESTING quote in that LA Times article, which I thought you should see, too.
I’ll frame this with the old Consumer Reports header, “Quote Without Comment”:
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“Robert Cowen (Christian Science Monitor) says there is too much gullibility in newspapers about the possibility of climatic disaster. Too many reporters listen to people who want to make a reputation with wild predictions. Thus, even the nation’s better daily newspapers periodically publish stories under such headlines as “There’s Doom in the Air” and “The Sun Goes Bonkers” and “New Dust Bowl Could Bring Starvation” and “Ice Age Coming? Chilling Thought for Humanity.”
“Every time there’s a drought or a long hot spell, I get swamped with calls from reporters asking, ‘This means the climate is changing, doesn’t it?’ says Diane Johnson, head of information services for the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “All the media want to know usually is . . . ‘Is there a new Ice Age coming?’,” Johnson says. “They hardly ever want to know the whys or the imponderables.”
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Well, HERE, we want to know “why”, dammitall! At least about cloud stuff.
Next rain not due in for at least a week, so enjoy the puddles while we have them.
Seems like undercutting dry air has ruined our chances for Cumulus-style isolated shower today. Currently there is an elevated layer of Stratocumulus, tops above Ms. Mt. Lemmon. That layer will make for a nice sunrise, so be ready. Other than that, just a few pretty, and small Cumulus, hold the ice, today.
Yesterday’s clouds and why
“Balloon Over Fog” yesterday after sunrise, that was about the most exciting thing that happened yesterday. No ice-in-clouds seen, which was a disappointment; no ice, no precip. Tops never reached our usual ice-forming level of about -10 C (14 F), as you know; mainly hung around -5 C, according to our TUS weather balloon soundings. For people not familiar with weather balloons, that’s not a weather balloon over the fog in the photo below, btw.
7:35 AM. A hot air balloon floats peacefully over an unusual March fog occurrence in Marana and Avra Valley. Altocu on top. Don’t see the balloon? See speck at sky/horizon interface center of photo.9:35 AM. Lots of water coming down the mountains again as shown by the glistening rock phenomena. Most normally dry washes and creeks should continue to run with another H2O infusion continuing the flows started by our gargantuan late January rain. Poppies looking good now, too.
Below, just examples of a postcard day in Catalina, AZ, those kind of days that make you glad you had one more day on this planet.
The setting sun produced the normal “colorization” of the Catalinas that we savor, and when you look around in the desert at this time of day, even the treacherous teddy bear cholla has real beauty at this time of day.
The clouds were somewhat of a disappointment yesterday, not the stupendous photogenic day CM was expecting.
Maybe CM is total fraud, gets Big Oil funding and should be investigated by Rep. Grijalva as other weather folk are, like the great Prof. and National Academy of Sciences Fellow, Dr. Judy Curry, a friend, and about whom I say on a link to her blog here, and from this blog’s very beginning, “The only link you will need.” I said that because Judy2 is a top scientist, and is eminently fair in this polarized issue.
I am in real trouble! Will remove that link immediately1 before our very own “climate thought enforcer”, Demo Rep. Grijalva, AZ, finds it using a spy bot! No telling how far down the influence chain it will go, maybe all the way down to here, where there is virtually no influence!
Back to clouds…….
Only late in the day did the delicate patterns expected to happen ALL DAY appear, again, with iridescence, always nice to see.
The media, Bob, and our good NWS, of course, are all over the incoming rain in great detail. In fact, it will take you half a day to read all the warnings on this storm issued by our Tucson NWS.
So why duplicate existing information that might be only slightly different than the prevailing general consensus on the storm amounts, and then maybe be investigated for going against a consensus? No, not worth it. Best to be safe, not say things against The Machine. (OK, maybe overdoing it here.)
In the meantime, the upper low off southern Cal and Baja has fomented an extremely strong band of rain, now lying across SE Cal and the Colorado River Valley where dry locations like Blythe are getting more than an inch over the past 24 h. Same for northern Baja where some places are approaching 2-3 inches, great for them. You can see how the rain is piling up in those locations here. In sum, this is a fabulous storm for northern Mexico and the SW US, whether WE get our 0.915 inches, as foretold here, or not! Rejoice in the joy of others. Looking for an arcus cloud fronting the main rainband, too, that low hanging cloud in a line that tells you a windshift is coming. Still expecting, hoping, for thunder today to add to the wind and rain drama.
Also, the present cloud cover, as the trough ejects toward us, will deepen up and rain will form upwind and around here as that happens, so it won’t JUST be the eastward movement of the existing band. This means you might be surprised by rain if you’re outside hiking and think the band itself is hours away. Expecting rain to be in the area by mid-morning, certainly not later than noon, with the main blast (fronted by something akin to an arcus cloud) later in the day. OK, just checked the U of AZ mod run from 11 PM AST, and that is what it is saying as well! Wow.
Finally, if you care, yesterday’s clouds:
6:45 AM. Your sunrise color, thanks to a line of broken Cirrus spissatus. Jet stream Cirrus streak, as a matter of fact, moving along at about 110 mph.9:47 AM. Ruffle of Sc topped Mt. Lemmon, while strange clouds formed just upwind of them. These kinds of shapes suggest an inversion where the air resists further upward movement and a smoothing occurs at the top similar to a lenticular cloud. Photo taken at the Golder Ranch Dr. cattleguard. which really doesn’t work that well, as the neighbors below here will tell you.The 5 AM, March 1st, balloon sounding for TUS.9:53 AM. Looks like a crab with four pinchers. How funny.12:23 PM. Shredding tops of small Cumulus like this indicate that the air is very dry just above their tops, and the shreds racing off to the right, indicate how fast the wind increased as you went upward.2:58 PM. Something is changing here. Notice how the tops are bulging and not immediately being torn into shreds. The air was likely moistening above cloud tops, and the inversion holding the tops back, weakening as our storm gets a little closer.4:19 PM. A line of still larger Cumulus had formed to the west, indicating more moistening and “de-stabilization” of the air. However, the upper low was not advancing toward us any longer and no further development occurred as stagnated, ratcheting up its rainband over eastern Cal and western AZ. The TUS balloon sounding suggested tops were getting close to the normal ice-forming level here, -10 C, the slight inversion on the morning sounding at 13,000 feet above sea level, and the one likely to have caused those smooth morning clouds, was gone.6:07 PM. Just before sunset from near Oracle where we took mom for her BD. The heavier Cumulus clouds faded with the sun. They will arise today!
Below, just some pretty patterns observed later in the day. Click to see larger versions.
3:28 PM. Cirrocumulus began to appear.3:36 PM. Twisted, tortured Cirrus (fibratus?).3:50 PM. Another view of Cirrocumulus. Though these clouds are still composed of liquid droplets, the 5 PM TUS sounding suggests they were at about -30 C in temperature. It happens.4:00 PM. An incredibly complex array of Cirrocumulus overhead. Due to perspective, its about the only view that you can really see how complex the patterns are.4:20 PM. Some iridescence for you.6:00 PM. At Oracle, AZ.6:22 PM. Finally, from the “Not-taken-while-driving-since-that-would-be-crazy-though-it-looks-like-it-was” collection, this oddity. Looks like an high temperature aircraft contrail (aka, “APIP”) in the lower center. And the trail seems to shoot up into the cloud Altocumulus cloud layer (or down out of it). Have never seen that kind of aircraft track before since it looks so steep! “High temperature” here means that it formed at temperatures above about -35 C.
Whew, the end.
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1Not!!!!!! I thought this was a good read about this deplorable new stage of “climate thought enforcement” now in progress. It was brought to my attention by climate folk hero, friend, and big troublemaker, Mark Albright. Wow, maybe Mark will be investigated, too! Maybe I should excise his name….
2I remember, too, how cute she was when she worked my lab/office at the University of Washington in the mid-1980s, and thought about asking her out, to detract from a serious commentary here. She was a Penn State grad student, not a U of WA employee; still, to ask her out would have been untoward. A human commentary like this, one about feelings and things, help boost blog attendance.
1) Let yesterday morning’s color show speak for itself, just incredible, speaking for it anyway.
2) Please review the U of AZ time lapse film here to understand why it takes the biggest computer Fujitsu can build to calculate what the atmosphere is doing. Also reviewing this let’s you escape from the tedium about to be presented below.
3) Expect a similarly photogenic day today.
6:42 AM. First light, this incredible scene. Altoculumulus lenticularis downstream from Catalinas. Thought I would misspell Altocumulus to see if anyone is reading this. Sun seems to be coming up earlier and earlier….6:42 AM. Looking to the left or north of the lenticular….6:44 AM. That lenticular again, the bottom structure now highlighted.6:49 AM. What can you say? So pretty all around. Another lenticular was in progress to the main one.6:53 AM. If the scene wasn’t spectacular enough, a display of iridescence (rainbow colored area) then enhanced the original Ac len even more. It doesn’t get better than this and I hope you saw it “live.” I was just beside myself, taking too many photos, losing control, rationality.8:28 AM. Both lenticulars still in place, but now augmented by a layer of Altocumulus perlucidus (honey-combed look) and a scruff of low clouds that topped the Catalinas marking the invasion of a low level moist air. The feel of rain was in the air then, too.8:28 AM, the same time as the prior photo, but looking upwind over Oro Valley, toward Marana and beyond at a line of Stratocumulus, with Altocumulus perlucidus and patchy thin Cirrus above those. Even here, the scene seemed exceptional.9:41 AM. That Altocumulus deck began arriving overhead and you could see the little “heads” trailing ice crystals like comets with long tails. When the heads are gone, you’d call it Cirrus and never know how it got those fine strands. In the meantime, the Stratocumulus and Cumulus clouds were slowly getting deeper.1:19 PM. Looking over Catalinaville1: Stratocumulus was becoming the dominant cloud form. No ice, no precip, too warm at top; also, largest droplets in them below the Hocking-Jonas Threshold (30-40 microns in diameter) for collisions with coalescence to occur, if you care to learn things.3:42 PM. One of the many pretty scenes yesterday, these Altocu perlucidus, no ice. So, much warmer and lower than those trailing ice in the earlier photo.4:19 PM. Then, as the Stratocumulus filled in again, we got our late afternoon “light show”, those drifting spots of sun illuminating our mountains, though here our own Sutherland Heights subdivision, if that is what it is. So pretty.5:19 PM. Can’t be inside when these scenes are happening…. Have problem.6:13 PM. That sunset glow we see on our mountains every day, except a little more dramatic when dark clouds are overhead.6:19 PM. The day finished as gorgeous as it began as a clearing to the far west allowed the sun to light the bases of the overhead Stratocumulus layer.
The rain just ahead
Rain masses will be forming to west of Catalina today and will pound eastern Cal and western AZ for about 24 h before roaring in here tomorrow morning. Staying the course, best guess, from extremes of at least 0.33 to a max of 1.50 here, is 0.915 inches (the average of the worst and best case scenarios) here in “Catalinaville” as the total amount from this “hit” tomorrow and the showers afterwards into later Tuesday, as a second storm part comes by. Thunder tomorrow seems likely from this keyboard as the big rainband goes over.
During the passage of the rainband tomorrow, rainrates are likely to get up to an inch an hour, at least briefly, (this is the rate, NOT the duration) and typically, with several hours of moderate (0.1 to 0.3 inches per hour) to heavy rain (greater than 0.3 inches per hour) we should get a nice drenching.
The weather way ahead, 10 days or more
After a long dry spell following this upcoming rain, spaghetti is strongly indicating we have more troughiness in our future after the temporary dry spell!
Check it out, spaghetti connoisseurs2:
Valid at 5 PM AST, Saturday, March 11th. Note clustering of red and blue lines in trough off Cal.Valid at 5 PM, Sunday, March 15th. Southward bulging red lines, so many of them, indicate a very good chance of a trough here at that time. Blue lines, for a colder part of the jet stream, also tend in this direction, a good sign.
The spaghetti plots, taken together, indicate to the present Arthur that the chance of rain twixt spaghetti 1 and spaghetti 2 shown above is about 70%. It will be extremely FUN to see if this interpretation works out for rain between March 11-15th, at least one event anyway, to continue overusing that word.
The End, finally.
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1Didn’t Jimmy Buffet do a song about Catalinaville? Has a nice ring to it. Maybe we should think about it… Or maybe, in a vein similar to Carmel-by-the-Sea, “Catalina-by-the-Catalinas.”
2Remember, spaghetti is better than the model in the medium range forecasts that are presented based on the global data. Spaghetti is there to help you decide whether that model output is from the WRF-GFS looney bin or not. Here’s how:
Spaghetti is the result of DELIBERATE little errors put into the model when they start crunching the data to see how the forecast that you see on the maps could go wrong if there are errors in the data.
Of course, there are ALWAYS errors in the data! So, when the Fujitsu Computer DIvision made gigantically capable computers for us that were better than the ones we could make, ones that could do teraflops per second, we in the weather community could then run many permutations of the same model with itty-bitty errors in the initial data to see how the results changed (diverged) in the longer term.
Remember, too, in weather itty-bitty differences can add up to large ones in the longer term. So, when the model permutations with little errors cluster and DON’T diverge, it provides more confidence that the forecast storm, for example, is more likely to happen in that fuzzy forecast range of beyond 10 days or so. End of giant footnote.
But, on second thought, people who have nothing to say, often say it anyway….and that’s pretty much what happens here everyday anyway….to repeat “anyway” again anyway.
Things continue to roll along for a juicy dump of rain, snow and wind beginning here on Monday.
12:15 PM. “Micro” snowstorms. Look at the snow trailing down! It would be composed of itty-bitty crystals (a couple of hundred microns in maximum dimension), probably “bullet rosettes.” I bet Boston folk would like to have these snowstorms instead of the ones they’ve gotten.4:00 PM. There were some Cumulus fractus, poor guys never even got to the humble or “humilis” stage. You should still have logged them in your cloud diary, however. Note the horrific vertical wind shear here as indicated by tops being ripped off to the left, showing how much the wind increased with height from the bottom to the top of even these shallow clouds. I guess I can’t expect you to have a sophisticated comment like that in your diary, but would hope for it.6:20 PM. Some Cirrus eye candy for you. Sunset seems to be happening later and later.
In fact, the chance of MEASURABLE rain in Catalina is at least 100%, maybe as high as 300%, between 5 AM AST, Sunday, March 1st and 5 AM, AST, March 4th. Namely, its gonna happen.
Now, its not gonna rain that whole time, likely starting later in the day on the 1st. Pretty darn exciting to have a sure thing in the future! Check out this 4-panel presentation of maps from Enviro Can, I really like them:
Valid for Monday, March 2nd. Heavy rains foretold in western AZ by this time. Likely will be here by this time, too, though THIS model thinks the rain is still to the west.
Perhaps going farther than one reasonably should, the likely minimum amount will be 0.33 inches (10% chance of less) and top amount, gee, this situation has a big top, 1.50 inches, due to this trough’s deep reach into the sub-tropics, meaning it could pulling extra wet air toward us if everything works out in the “best” possible scenario. The best guess, between these two extremes is the average, or about 0.9 inches during our rainy spell. Should keep the washes flowing, though this one being colder than January’s tropical rains, should pile up lots of snow on top of Ms. Lemmon, so
Moving ahead to yesterday……
A pretty nice 0.09 inches fell yesterday morning in The Heights. “Nice”, because some model runs a few days in advance of this had no rain as a dry cold front went by.
When did the cold front pass?
9 AM yesterday, marked by a freshet from the NW with gusts to maybe 20 mph, with a falling temperature. Fell from 51 F to 42.x F by mid-morning, snow down to about 5,000 feet on Samaniego Ridge, too, though it melted almost immediately.
A push of wind like that virtually always builds a cloud above it, and yesterday was no exception. Here’ the cloud associated with that “freshet”:
8:31 AM. Wind shift line cloud shows up NW-NE of Catalina. Get ready!8:32 AM. Mini-rainbow appeared for just a moment.8:34 AM. Tiny holes in clouds produce pretty highlights on Eagle Crest as the windshift line cloud approaches.8:34 AM. Ditto above.9:03 AM. Windshift and line cloud pass over Sutherland Heights. Starting to rain here, though very little.9:03 AM. Close up of the bottom of the windshift line cloud.12:39 PM Post frontal passage quiet time with flattened clouds.1:28 PM/ Clouds swell up, first ice seen. Can you find it? More to north at this time.2:24 PM. Lots of pretty cloud “streets”, Cumulus clouds aligned in a line. Here’s a common one coming at you, one that comes off the Tortolita Mountains on Cumulus formation days with a westerly wind in the boundary layer (the layer between the ground and the tops of these clouds).3:19 PM. Walkin’ dogs now, but spotted trace of ice overhead in that SAME cloud street coming at me from the Tortolitas. Uh-oh. Do you see the trace of ice up there?3:21 PM. Few raindrops beginning to fall. Can you detect that bit of a rain haze on the left of center in this photo, out toward the Torts? Very hard to see, but there was an nearly invisible “shaft.”3:33 PM. Tiny snow shaft hangs from this same cloud line as it began to shift to the south and east. Can you find it?
Of course, the best part of days like yesterday is the play of the light and shadows on our mountains:
5:19 PM.5:58 PM. Stratocumulus clouds above the Charouleau Gap.
Its been this way for quite a while, actually since the big rains of late January, but I only found out about it yesterday: “Thousands Gather Under Cloudy Skies for Beach Fun at Catalina State River and Beach Park !” (if one were writing a newspaper headline). See below.
2:40 PM. Here, dozens of kiddies are seen frolicking in the water of the Sutherland River at Catalina State Park.2:44 PM. Soft Cumulonimbus capillatus and calvus turrets line the distant SW horizon while hundreds frolic in sand and water at Cat State Park.2:46 PM. “Ricky” (real name, “Parikit”), who also happened to work in the SAME lab office as the writer for a few years, prepares his daughter for the popular beach activity of sand castle construction.
Before reaching the beach at the State Park, saw some luxuriant spring undergrowth among the trees, and a nice Cumulus turret, one that went on to grow up and be a weak Cumulonimbus:
1:51 PM. Typical of the lush grasses along the Birding Trail at Cat State Park, also due to the generous January rains.2:21 PM. Nice. Altocumulus clouds (upper left) lurk around a Cumulus congestus turret over the Catalinas.3:36 PM. A remarkably summer-like sky, Cumulus congestus in the foreground, Cumulonimbus capillatus cloud lining the SW horizon. Temperature, 70 F.
The weather ahead, as you and I both hope it will be
Been a lot of phony storms in the 10-15 day range indicated by the WRF-GOOFUS model, ones presented here with regularity, then ended up jilting us. So, today when the Canadian model came up with an appreciable rain pattern for AZ in only SIX days, Feb. 21, it was time to exult, switch models, and climb back up on the blog saddle:
Valid at 5 PM AST, Saturday, February 21st. Based on the global observations taken at 5 PM last evening. AZ covered in rain!
What’s even better in this map is that the rain has only begun on the 21st. As you can see, the bunching of the contours off the Cal and Oregon coasts and west of the center of the low, upper left panel, tells you immediately that more rain would be ahead for us if this configuration is correct. That’s because the low will propagate southward, and closer to us, not move off in some untoward direction with a stronger wind field on the back side than on the front (east) side. Also, in a pattern resembling the Greek letter, “Omega1“ as we have in the eastern Pacific and West, lows like to nest in the SE corner of the “Omega”, getting cutoff, stagnant, out of the main jet stream flow, all of which prolongs bad weather in that sector of an “Omega” (here in the SW US). So, lots to be optimistic about today. Strong support in spaghetti for this Omega pattern, too.
Now I haven’t looked at the US WRF-GFS model based on the same obs because it might have something different, a storm that’s not as good as the Canadian one, and I don’t want to know about it. Still feel pretty hurt by the big storm presentations for AZ that weren’t very sincere in that model. And, as we know, sincerity is mandatory in a relationship, even one with weather maps.
While yesterday did not have the drama of the prior few days, there was aerosol drama anyway, a real battle took place against the forces of evil, represented by air loaded with urban smog, and good, clean air to its north, in which we were initially immersed.
A rare fog bank streamed out of Tucson toward Marana, Continental Ranch, and south Oro Valley and beyond. The moist air near the ground associated with our recent deluge, and capped by an inversion, combined with very light winds allowed fog to form in the first place. Its westward trajectory into the southern reaches of Oro Valley is associated with the normal sloshing of winds in Tucson, from southeast in the morning, to northwest in the afternoon on “undisturbed” days. On most mornings, all we see is a haze layer close to the ground that streaming out of Tucson down that way. In this case, the smog layer was in the form of fog, droplets wreaking with all kinds of untoward particles and chemicals like sulfates, nitrous oxides, hydrocarbons, etc., these from cars, wood burning stoves, factories, etc, all the things associated with modern life in an urban center except for wood burning stoves. As a smog-containing fog, it was pretty, however.
However, most of the time, maybe nine out of ten, that thin smog layer stays south of Catalina, can’t quite get here. But yesterday, the forces of evil resulted in an advance of the smog-fog to Catalina. A southwest wind came up in mid-morning, and like a tidal wave, that low thin layer slurped its way up the Catalina Mountain sides and Oro Valley, rolling over everything, growing deeper as the long absent sun warmed the ground, dissipating the fog, leaving the aerosol contained in it, “naked”, as it were.
It seemed for a time that a slight north wind might rule the day, and the smog would stay south of us as it usually does. Instead an ugly southwest wind developed, as often happens here in the afternoon, as air starts rising off the Catalinas to form Cumulus clouds.
And that’s part of what happened yesterday to bring us smog, besides us being in the protected lee of the Catalinas due to northeast winds aloft. When you’re in the lee, sometimes moisture and aerosols remain trapped there, like those cattails I used to pop open at the north entrance of the University of Washington’s Atmospheric Science Department on days with a strong southwest wind and those seeds would circulate in the lee for maybe an hour in really interesting swirls that could be seen due to all the seeds floating around and around, incoming people waving their arms to get them away because they would stick on your clothes. I was younger then (40s maybe), and I guess it was pretty childish. I’m not like that today, as demonstrated by this blog. I wish I had some cattails today, though.
7:04 AM. Fog streams westward from TUS.7:06 AM. Close up of “sfog” bank. Looks pretty outside, but its not inside. There are people like that, too.7:27 AM. Another close up, almost surreal looking with Kitt Peak Obsy in the background.7:35 AM. If you ever need to get warm, popping up out of the fog and Stratus is a turret due to a heat source over there maybe off Tangerine Road, I-10 area.7:57 AM. It seemed to be a little closer….. Hmmmm.9:44 AM. NO doubt about it, its creeping on cat’s feet toward Catalina! I have never taken so many photos of fog before, too. You could see trees and other prominences disappearing as this smog-laden fog came closer.10:54 AM. The warming air had dissipated the leading edge of the fog, leaving only shreds of Stratus fractus clouds that were coming toward Catalina. But now the the invading smog with it was revealed for all to see, that hazy layer below those clouds along the mountains.11:35 AM. The smog was reaching Catalina, the smog front advancing here along the side of Samaniego Ridge, with almost a little arcus-like Cumulus cloud marking its advance (left of center). It was a profoundly disturbing moment that what seemed like it was going to be a visually pristine day, was now going to be mucked up by some Tucson smog.12:35 PM. Got pretty bad down there by Pusch Ridge, before more heating mixed it up into Cumulus and Stratocumulus clouds topping the Catalinas.Also at 12:35 PM, but looking north into the pristine air that was to the north of the smog bank. This was not clearer looking just due to not seeing aerosols in the back scattering view in which itgs much tougher to see aerosols–they’ll look dark or brown. not whitish. The prior pictures call out areas of smog due to “forward scattering” of the sun’s light toward you by the aerosol particles.
5:24 PM. The sun set amidst the smog and so the light on the mountains had a slightly more orange look. It was still pretty the way the scene was framed by Stratocumulus clouds.5:55 PM. The sun sets amidst a well-loaded aerosol layer, looking orangy-red, and producing the reddish orange cloud base in a polluted Stratocumulus layer. The yellowish orange sky below cloud base, with faint undulations in it, shows that a smog layer is present, and, if you look closely toward the Tucson Mountains at left, you will see the top of the smog layer is becoming visible as an inversion forms, trapping it once again.
a lot….beginning tomorrow afternoon or evening, not today. Today is “pause” day. Also, its trash day today here in Catalina, mentioned here as a public service.
Slow moving, sub-tropical system to drop several inches of water content in rain/snow in mountains, sez our best model, that run by the U of AZ. Thank you, U of AZ, btw. Below a snapshot of the total precip from that 5 PM AST global data crunch, “nested” for AZ. This plodding gigantostorm should keep the water coming down the washes, luxuriate our sprouting wildflowers, some of which, like desert asters, are beginning to emerge and even bloom1:
Total precipitation ending just after midnight, Feb 2nd, as seen by the WRF-GFS model run from 5 PM AST last evening. Catalina/Oro Valley appears to be in a bit of a shadow, so while Ms. Lemmon and vicinity are forecast to get several inches of water content in rain and snow, Catalina gets an inch–though hard to see in this graphic. Why? Likely south to southeast flow coming downslope off the Catalinas. But, I think its WRONG!
Lot’s of gray sky photograph opportunities ahead. Get camera ready. Not much in the way of rain seen in mods after this, so enjoy this rain “chapter” of your life as fully as you can.
Yesterday’s clouds
After another light shower boosted our storm total another 0.02 inches, a fabulous, wonderful, almost Hawaiian like day followed with a little humidity in the air, deep blue skies, and white puffy clouds, ones a true cloud maven would call, Cumulus clouds and would be ashamed if he just said they were “puffy clouds.”
7:34 AM. Sun tried to break through some puffy clouds over the Catalinas after our 0.05 inch shower. A few, very small shower cells were around, but didn’t look like much at this time.7:53 AM. Gee, a strong, though narrow rainshaft developed SSW of Catalina, upwind! Suggests a Cumulonimbus-like protruding, icy-looking top up there on top of the shaft.
8:08 AM. The three amigos rainshafts, headed this way, evnetually dropped another “surprise” 0.02 inches. Earlier model runs had indicated the rain would be over by dawn yesterday.
8:34 AM. One of the “amigos” hit Ms. Lemmon and Sam Ridge nicely. Ms Lemmon racked up 0.59 inches out of the storm overall. Very nice, considering our 0.07 inches total.8:53 AM. As we know so well, sometimes the best, most dramatic shots are those after the rain passes, and the rocky surfaces glisten in a peak of sunlight, here enhanced by crepuscular rays due to the falling rain. A rainbow was also seen, but not by me somehow.
8:54 AM. Closer look at glistening rocks toward the Charouleau Gap.
11:45 AM. The deep blue sky, the puffy clouds topping Sam Ridge, the strong sun, the bit of humidity, the bird flying along on the left, gave the sense of one being in Hawaii I thought.12:32 PM. Puffy clouds still top Samaniego (Sam) Ridge.
2:28 PM. Small puffy clouds provide a “postcard” view of Catalina, Saddlebrooke and environs. Visibility here well over 100 miles. Never get tired of these views! You got some Cirrocumulus up there, too.
2:51 PM. Another postcard view of our beloved Catalina. Rail-X Ranch and the Tortolitas off in the distance, left. Nice patterned Cirrocumulus up top above the little puffy clouds.
5:58 PM. The day ended with a nice sky-filling sunset as a Cirrus layer was lighted from below by the fading sun. The lines of virga show that while Cirrus clouds don’t have a lot of water vapor to work with up there at -40 C (also -40 F), the crystals that form are still large enough to settle out as precip.
The End
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1Desert Aster (I think) in bloom seen on the link trail from the Baby Jesus Trail to the Deer Camp Trail.
Seen on big hike, Jan. 22nd. This plant will be so happy by next week!
7:20 AM. Altostratus with pouches of virga7:23 AM. Ditto. Ac len is the fine line cloud upper center.7:27 AM. Ditto, pretty much.7:30 AM. Nice lighting (not lightning) for just a few seconds.8:19 AM. Altocumulus trailing snow/virga. Tops, though the coldest part of the cloud, are composed of mostly of droplets at temperatures far below freezing. A few ice crystals form and drop out leaving the supercooled droplet cloud mostly intact.
12:55 PM. Just about the first boundary layer cloud, this a Cumulus fractus fragment. Hope you recorded this event in your cloud diary. Its pretty mandatory to note developments like this if you want to move on to the next level of cloud-mavenhood.
3:03 PM. Those boundary layer clouds, Cumulus ones, were reaching their maximum depth about this time. This would be a Cumulus mediocris, estimated depth 2500 feet or so.5:14 PM. Whilst clouds locally never got beyond the “mediocre” stage, or produced ice under them, to the north where the air was colder aloft, Cumulus clouds were able to grow taller and become Cumulonimbus capillatus (hairy looking with ice) incus (the last term just meaning it has a flat anvil, a flat head.)
5:47 PM. This post sunset shot shows layers/lines of smog at the same level where some flat Cumulus remains are. The smog is so visible because the air is ALMOST saturated near those clouds at their level, and some of the smog particles (hygroscopic ones) have deliquesced, have gotten much larger by absorbing water vapor, or might even be haze droplets where water has condensed on them (“smoglets”). It therefore, by definition, cannot be a “pretty sunset.”
The model rain ahead; two episodes
The low that plunks down off the coast of Baja this weekend from southern California, circles around out there for a couple of days, before deciding to move back over southern California with clouds and rain. If it was a song, it would be The Wanderer. Yes, that fits. Its expected to scoop up a generous helping of middle and high clouds from the deep tropics as extra baggage. The “extra baggage” (model predicted rain) arrives here late on the 26th (Monday) and continues off and on through Tuesday night. The first clouds, of course, high ones like Cirrus, will begin arriving a day ahead of the actual rain, on Sunday.
It is virtually certain that there will be some high-based Cumulonimbus clouds and thunderstorms in these masses from the tropics, though maybe not here. Most of the rain is projected for eastern California and western Arizona where rain is really needed–and how great is that?
However, we should be in for a quarter inch or so, anyway. Last time I guessed limits on a storm, even the lower limit of 10% chance of less than 0.05 inches wasn’t even realized. Pretty pathetic forecast. But, moving forward and forgetting past errors, this one seems to have a similar range of possibilities, the least amount 0.05 inches, the most, 0.50 inches. The chance of measurable rain here in Catalina in this first 36 h storm period is probably, from this typewriter, about 80%.
“But wait! There’s more!” “Maybe!”
A second system floats in right after that and from Jan 29th through early in Feb, and more welcomed showers are possible.
You can check out these prognostications in a more professional way at IPS MeteoStar, this link to the latest model run from 11 PM AST last evening.
Wednesdays here in Catalinaland are, of course, trash and recycling days. And, along with T and R day, we found ourselves amidst some pretty pretty scenes, and in some cases, extraordinary ones,….and a little rain (a trace here in The Heights). I reprise those scenes in case you missed them; you probably did because you’re not some kind of photonut like the writer.
However, be advised that some of the mid-day photos will show smog, smog that was ingested into our poor clouds.
That smog bank, emitted from the Tucson area, almost reached Catalina yesterday during the day. It came up around Pusch Ridge and up along the west side of Samaniego Ridge and almost reached Catalina before its advance was halted by a north wind push and it retreated to the the south. My heart was beating so fast that it might overrun us! Marana and Oro Valley were heavily contaminated for awhile. And smog is like a cloud cancer1.
7:46 AM. A rare display of Stratus along the Tortolita Mountains. If you were hiking and were in this, it would be fog to you, still Stratus to me viewing it.7:46 AM. Rare shot of what appears to be ground fog or just fog rolling eastward out of Tucson. Some flakes of Altocumulus above, and a higher layer of Stratus on the Tucson Mountains.
8:49 AM. This was an amazing sight, to see a thin Stratus cloud fronting an early morning Cumulonimbus capillatus. The Stratus is hard to see, but its the thin dark line on the horizon above Priscilla’s house below the turrets and ice of the Cb. The only other time I have seen such a sight was in Seattle after a snow with Stratus clouds and fog all around the city, but with warm Puget Sound sending up plumes of big Cumulus clouds.
10:37 AM. The day was not without some cloud levity, as these “twin tower” Cumulus clouds show, drawing attention to themselves.
11:26 AM. First ice in clouds becomes visible. It was obvious a few minutes later, but if you saw at this time, or can find it here, you are a pretty CMJ, worthy of an accolade. Of course, if you looked at a radar map of the area, you would have known where to look in advance since there was a small echo in this complex by this time. The precip just was not enough to form a shaft. Note, as well, that Twin Peaks, Continental Ranch area is NOT visible due to the smog bank that was going to move up this way, as it turned out. And look how gorgeous it is toward the Tortolita Mountains!
11:38 AM. OK, here the ice from that turret in the prior photo is now obvious (center frizzy area). However, it was also obvious that the smog toward Marana/Continental Ranch was now closer, even while we had a north wind here in Catalina. Was that southwest wind going to win and mess up our fantastic skies?11:42 AM. Here you can see the smog as it was advancing around Push Ridge and had gotten farther north along the side of Samaniego Ridge. Those lower cloud fragments along Pusch Ridge at the top of the smog tell you that the air was more moist than the air our Cumulus clouds were forming in, and therefore, that this advancing smog bank likely associated with deliquesced aerosols from cars and other urban effluents (aka, “air sewage”) accumulated during the Tucson fog earlier that morning that was now being mixed into a deeper layer and heading this way! To think of breathing air like that. in a short while..it was a ghastly thought.
12:12 PM. To make a short story long, the advance of the smog, with its lower based clouds got as far as Golder Ranch Drive over there by Samaniego Ridge (whitish area below the lowest cloud base on the left), before receding under a freshet of north wind. However, some southern parts of Catalina were affected for a short time.
1:14 PM. By this time, larger complexes of Cumulonimbus clouds, pretty weak ones, were developing over and north of the Tortolita Mountains and upstream of us offering the hope of some measurable rain in Catalina, the smog pretty much pushed back to the southern parts or Oro Valley and Marana.
2:00 PM. Widespread light rain showers were in progress from these weak Cumulonimbus clouds, but sadly, bypassing Catalina. But huge visual payoffs were ahead as the clouds broke at times, and some stunning sights emerged.
2:35 PM. Stunning….to me, anyway. View this in full screen mode for best impact. Later, more accessible stunning.
3:01 PM. Breathtaking; in total awe of this scene! Note gliaciated tower at right.
4:28 PM. And those scenes just kept coming! It was hard to be indoors for even a minute.
5:28 PM. The fading sunlight and the fading Cu only got more breathtaking. And we realize how lucky we are to be here and see scenes like this so often.
5:38 PM. The smog belt, held at bay during the day, still lurked to the SW of us, compromising our sunset by providing a reddish-yellowish sickening hue to it, a sign of a smoky presence, that may compromise today if we’re unlucky.
The weather ahead and way ahead
Well, RIP El Niño, an EN expert has written me just yesterday. Not much left of it he says, having a attached a map of ocean temperature anomalies to kind of rub it in. So we can’t count on hot water in the eastern Pacific to help fuel Southwest storms as was expected by the CPC and others last spring. But, that doesn’t mean that there can’t be a juicy late winter and spring, but the odds are down.
And, we won’t see clouds like yesterday until the long-foretold-by- spaghetti trough arrives around the 22nd of January, and with it some chance of rain. Doesn’t look like it could possibly be very much. BTW, Only 0.02 inches total in three days of light showers in the current situation. :{
BUT…..in the longer term, spaghetti is once again HINTING at a break-on-through-to-the-other side situation, your writer’s favorite as a kid, 10-14 days from now. A high builds up along the West Coast and in the eastern Pacific, gets too big for its britches, can’t maintain its giant north-south range, drifts farther and farther north and begins to break up, kind of looking like a horseshoe with the open end down (toward the south) as the jet stream “breaks on through to the other side” and “underneath”, that being a jet stream comes through from the warm subtropical central Pacific to the southern areas of the West Coast.
The north part of the West Coast and Gulf of Alaska are dominated by higher pressure with lower pressure to the south, so its kind of an upside-down-from-normal looking weather map, pretty rare, and that’s why its cherished by yours truly.
The End, at last!
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1As you know, when clouds are heavily contaminated with air pollution, they can’t rain as easily because the droplets are smaller inhibiting rain in two ways: by preventing the formation of drizzle and rain drops, and making it more difficult for ice to form since the formation of ice happens at higher temperatures when cloud droplets are larger. So, clouds have to be taller when they are polluted to produce rain, either way.
