First, some instructional material: You should be looking for your camera now, as seen in the first shot! Those Cirrus clouds to the SW are moving at you rapidly (95 kts, 115 mph at 30-35 Kft ASL!), and so there’s not much time! In this first shot you can already detect some Cirrus uncinus, Cirrus… Continue reading Cirrus uncinus display; the tops of storms made visible
Category: Definitions
Exit right (or to the east)
Here’s what happened on top of us yesterday, that gorgeous snow day with so many wonderful sights to see. These maps below, courtesy of San Francisco State University , for 500 millibar pressure level, about 18,000 feet above sea level, for 5 AM LST as the snow band moved through Catalina, and then 5PM LST, a… Continue reading Exit right (or to the east)
“Smells like desert snow”
Seattle’s Curt Cobain might have said something like this if he had lived in the desert. Alluding, of course, here to the SEATTLE teen angst band, Nirvana, and their big hit, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. BTW, a song covered later by Bill Nye the Science Guy in an educational ditty, “Smells Like Air Pressure”. But… Continue reading “Smells like desert snow”
“Send in the clouds”….then the wind, the rain, the cold front, the snow
Too bad Steven Sondheim wasn’t a meteorologist. He might have written some great weather songs. Instead, he chose to write about “clowns.” Hmmmm. Perhaps he WAS thinking about some weatherman in those days when he used the word “clowns.” Who can forget that the LA Times headline about weather forecasting in 1981; the headline that… Continue reading “Send in the clouds”….then the wind, the rain, the cold front, the snow
Virga anyone?
Mr. Cloudmaven person foretold certain cloud types would occur yesterday in conjunction with “storm” 3 yesterday (which was really only the passage of an upper level trough over us–see map for 5PM yesterday). Let’s see how he did, that is, whether he is an actual “cloudmaven”: (0=not observed, 1 observed, -1, cloud observed, not predicted:… Continue reading Virga anyone?
Bloggin’ cold, maybe snow here in Catalina
But first, “storm” 3 of six as foretold many days ago by our wonderful numerical models having “billions and billions and billions” of calculations (to use a numeric phrase made popular by the late Carl Sagan) is going to pass over today. Hoping for a sprinkle late in the day, but virga seems likely in… Continue reading Bloggin’ cold, maybe snow here in Catalina
“Little snowstorms in the sky, I think I’d like to have some pie”
You’re probably smiling now remember singing this little ditty as a kid, maybe singing it with your friends on the bus, whenever you saw “Altocumulus floccus virgae” clouds such as are pictured in the first photo. Wasn’t it great when you saw these kinds of clouds while on a vacation trip and mom and… Continue reading “Little snowstorms in the sky, I think I’d like to have some pie”
0.07 inches
It was beginning to seem like measurable rain could not fall again here! But then those Stratocumulus clouds because closing in in the afternoon, then soon after that some snow virga began to trail down from them here and there, and the next thing, large regions of the sky were suddenly shedding virga and rain… Continue reading 0.07 inches
Moist but mostly dry
Though HUGELY disappointing because only a trace of rain fell here as of 7 AM this morning, and only a little in the Canada del Oro wash watershed (amounts here), nevertheless, what a nice, classic passage of a cold front. A cold front, as it sounds, marks the advancing boundary of colder air that is displacing… Continue reading Moist but mostly dry
Trick and treat sunset yesterday evening
Late yesterday afternoon, the sun appeared to be setting in the wrong location, about 20-25 degrees south of where it is supposed to be at this time of year. Perhaps something horrible had happened, I thought. Retirement with a happy ending here in Arizona was too good to be true, I thought, and now it… Continue reading Trick and treat sunset yesterday evening