We’re often confused with the California island, Catalina, and even places in Spain. Google “Catalina” and see if I am lying again. Oh, maybe that was Catalonia, SP…
Nevertheless, isn’t it time to think about a new name for our “Census Designated Place”, Catalina? In fact, at one time, each Catalina island and our Catalina, each had a marina to further confuse things by adding superficial similarities….
Think about it.
Some sunrise scenes among too many available to the writer from his camera card:
Let’s look at the Tortolita Mountains.Cirrocumulus on the fade.Highlighted Cirrocumulus.About as complex as a patch of Cirrocumulus could be. It did seem there were TWO levels of Cirrocu here, which might help explain criss-crossing patterns.Nice Altocumulus lenticularis in the usual spot downwind of Lemmon when the flow is from the W-SW up there.Wide angle view of our spectacular sunrise. How you experienced it live.
Now, for sunset color:
5:47 PM. Will think of something later.
As you may know, there is some violent weather hitting the West Coast, California in particular. Let’s see what the Reno office of the NWS has to say about the incoming storm:
“…BLIZZARD WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 AM PST WEDNESDAY…
...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 10 AM WEDNESDAY TO 4 AM
PST THURSDAY...
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN RENO HAS ISSUED A BLIZZARD
WARNING, WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 AM PST WEDNESDAY. THE WINTER
STORM WARNING IS NOW IN EFFECT FROM 10 AM WEDNESDAY TO 4 AM PST
THURSDAY.
* TIMING: DANGEROUS BLIZZARD CONDITIONS DUE TO HEAVY SNOW AND
STRONG WINDS WILL CONTINUE TODAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY MORNING.
PERIODS OF MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOW WILL CONTINUE THROUGH
WEDNESDAY NIGHT.
SNOW ACCUMULATIONS THROUGH THURSDAY MORNING: 5 TO 10 FEET ABOVE 7000 FEET WITH 3 TO 7 FEET AT LAKE TAHOE LEVEL.(Note: The large font size, the capitalization, suggest, as we know, that the writer is screaming, which I am.)
* WINDS: SOUTHWEST 20 TO 30 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 60 MPH THROUGH
WEDNESDAY MORNING. SIERRA RIDGE GUSTS OVER 100 MPH.
* SNOW LEVELS: BELOW LAKE LEVEL...MAY BRIEFLY RISE TO 6500 FEET
THIS AFTERNOON BEFORE FALLING AGAIN.
* IMPACTS: DANGEROUS LIFE THREATENING BLIZZARD CONDITIONS WITH
NEAR ZERO VISIBILITY WILL EXIST FOR TRAVEL AND OUTDOOR
ACTIVITIES WITH HEAVY SNOW ACCUMULATION ON ALL SIERRA ROADS.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
THIS IS A LIFE THREATENING SITUATION. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO TRAVEL!
ROAD CREWS AND FIRST RESPONDERS MAY NOT BE ABLE TO RESCUE YOU.
STAY INDOORS UNTIL THE SNOW AND WIND SUBSIDE. EVEN A SHORT WALK
COULD BE DEADLY IF YOU BECOME DISORIENTED1."
As we know, extremely heavy snows in the Sierras can trigger cannabalism, It is our sincere wish that those affected by this severe storm curb his or her appetite for humans, i.e, that cannibalism does not break out in the Reno-Tahoe area, or ANYWHERE (capitalization for emphasis) in the Sierras during this terrible storm or its aftermath.
The End
————————– 1Thanks to Prof. (emeritus) Roger Pielke, Sr., Colo State, for passing this warning along. His son, a great scientist as well, btw, has the exact same name, and that’s why THIS Roger goes by “senior.” Thought you’d like to know that.
Valid Saturday morning, 5 AM, January 21st. Spaghetti was indicating a big change about then, but this is ridiculous (maybe not credible). This scenario would bring a very violent storm into southern Cal and Arizona about this time. That white region represents wind velocities of over 100 mph at 500 millibars, around 18,000 feet above sea level, and EXTREMELY unusual occurrence for that region off San Diego, CA. That would provide the energy for an exceptional lower level storm.
Is this the Big Niño pattern we’ve been waiting for all these years (well, one, anyway)? Its the kind of thing we looked for last winter during the giant El Niño and there was all that publicity about how much precip the Great Southwest would likley get. Then it was pretty much a “no show.”
Could this really be a lagged Big Niño pattern caused by a stratospheric phenomenon known as the Quasi-biennal Oscillation or “QBO”?
It was posited years ago by a researcher in a peer-reviewed journal article (not The Atlantic or Reader’s Digest) that I have been too lazy to look up, that the QBO can induce a lag in El Niño effects.
Hmmmmm.
Personally, I blew it off when I read it, but now have hope that person was onto something.
Also, in Science mag recently, it said that the “QBO was positioned to produce heavy rains in Europe”, the first time I have heard that the QBO was associated with weather in the Weathersphere where all weather occurs, clouds and storms and sh… like that. Hahaha, it is so funny to cuss right there, out of science context!
(Its not really called the “Weathersphere” but rather, the “Troposphere1“, but thanks for reading that anyway. ) ((Too much laughter-inducing caffeine imbibed this AM…))
The Troposphere is BELOW the stratosphere as my one blog reader might already know, but its generally thought that doings in the stratosphere don’t have much effect on the Troposphere. Well, unless there’s a lot of smog up there produced by a volcanic belch (like Pinatubo, which cooled the earth for a coupla years back in ’92-’93). That’s 1992 and 1993.
Will be fun to see what REALLY happens. And, oh, I guess things are collapsing sooner than around the 20th, too. But will defer to Bob and the other fine professional meteorologists to let you know about that happenstance. (There are some great photos from Yellowstone by Mike L in Bob’s last post!)
The End
—————————— 1It was suggested by this keyboard pounder in a scintillating article, oh, 50 years ago or so, in the Spartan Daily student newspaper, San Jose State, not Michigan State, that the “Troposphere” be renamed, “The Pollutosphere” due to all the crap we put in it and that we rename Earth, “Polluto”). Think of what the other civilizations out there think of us as they see things flying off the planet into outer space; “There they go, littering again….”, besides their evaluations of the increasing aerosol depth of the atmosphere.
Polluto? Fits doesn’t it , with all we’ve messed up; microplastics throughout the oceans, smog most everywhere, invasive plants and species wiping stuff out, burning up forests, etc. Perhaps renaming Earth could be seen as an honorarium of sorts for the late planet, “Pluto.” Well, that was a depressing summary. Need more coffee…and more thinking about storms!
This from a NOAA spaghetti plot interpretation by the author Arthur. Take a look:
Valid the 17th of Jan at 5 PM AST. No rain, no way! Look at the bulging lines N of CA and AZ, humped northward, indicating the presence of a storm-blocking ridge!
But, like most house of cards, by the 21st that ridge is long gone. So sometime around the 20th or so, of course, a little fuzzy at this point), look for a drastic change in the weather as troughs and storms develop. And, I will opine that we’ll see some snow this time around. See below:
Valid 21 Jan, at 5 PM AST.
That’s my excitement for today for you. Will check back on this in a few days, who knows, with more exacting information.
Once again we had a brief period of optical fireworks, as a rare “circumzenithal arc” developed overhead of Catalina in some Cirrus strands. Hope you saw it and bragged about it to your less observant friends. After saying that, follow it up in a moment of feigned reflection, speaking to no one in particular, with a comment about “how sad it is when people don’t notice the beauty in the world around them.” Your friend will appreciate what a sensitive person you are. That would be great!
Here are the scenes so many missed because you only have SECONDS to see them light up, peak out and disappear (but I saw it!):
9:28:31 AM. First highlight begins, center, leading edge.9:28:44 AM. Here we go!9:29:43 AM. Starting to really light up!9:29:45 AM. Zooming in…. Of course, like a rainbow, you would have to be exactly where I was to see this exact same sight, but I was alone and therefore, the only person in the world to see this.9:30:29 AM. Last little wisp of color goes over.
Whew, that was pretty much the climax of this event. Began to relax. calm down, as the possibility of seeing more “arcs”, began to fade. No more Cirrus was upwind.
Most of these I have seen have been due to aircraft-produced ice particles (“APIPs”, as named by Rangno and Hobbs way back in 1983, J. Appl. Meteor.), i. e., contrail like events produced by aircraft that occur at much higher than expected temperatures in “supercooled” clouds.
No Altocumulus clouds were around this line of Cirrus uncinus clouds at the time this passed over, though there were plenty around, however. Likely this was produced upwind by an aircraft in Ac clouds, and the Altocumulus droplet clouds just evaporated.
These aircraft produced ice clouds start out having prodigious, unnaturally high concentrations of ice, thousands per liter, and that in itself would lead, due to the competition of vapor among them, to tiny, pristine ice crystals like solid columns that would refract the sun’s light. So, that’s my thought on the origin of this line of Cirrus uncinus, the line itself raising suspicions about its origin. It extended much farther than shown in these photos, and was intermittent, likely reflecting where the Altocu was, and where there were holes in the coverage.
11:03 AM. Iridescence, about as good as it gets.11:07 AM. More iridescence. Hope you saw this, too.
Next, holey stuff.
Never seen anything quite like what happened in those quasi-laminar clouds that developed later in the morning over and near the Catalinas, so must show :
11:08 AM. Intrusions of dry air started punching holes in clouds all over.11:09 AM. Holes started to appear in adjacent clouds.11:09 AM. Zooming in at this strange phenomenon.11:11 AM. Geeminy Christmas, the sky is falling!11:12 AM. Closer to life size here. Pretty remarkable. Outside border of hole seemed to have collapsing cloud filaments supporting a localized downdraft punch.11:12: More holes began to appear next to the main one.11:14 AM. More hole craziness!11:15 AM. Wow. Look at the complexity in that hole.11:17 AM. This lenticular had an exceptionally smooth top, but a hole started to develop underneath and a little downwind.11:17 AM. Another dry air hole punch appeared. What an interesting day this has been so far, and its not even noon!
Well, as you could imagine, I could go on and on about this, with many more photos, but need to quit here. And besides, it pretty much cleared off in the afternoon, and the hole phenomenon ended.
12:49 PM. Wow, look how much thicker a seemingly uniformly thing layer of Altocumulus perlucidus is in those dark areas!! Not! Those are shadows from a higher splotches of CIrrus, some of the “uncinus” species. This is what I do here, try to pull a fast one on you.12:02 PM. The prior shot was looking S under the Ac per layer later in the day. Here’s what the sky looked like to the N a little earlier, providing the explanation for dark spots in that Ac layer. Haha, really fooled you at first!
Now, we take this break for art, and not fun:
“Saddle with Undulatus”. Yours for $1200, and, of course, free shipping!“saddle with Undulatus”, zoomed view, full-sized jpeg! Yours for $1800!
Some water was still flowing in one of the little creek tributaries to the Sutherland Wash yesterday. Nice.
1:53 PM.2:01 PM. Short-lived patch of Cirrocumulus undulatus (right) with larger Altocumulus elements (left) all at the same level. Also, if you can find it, and aircraft-produced patch of ice. Testing 1-2-3…..
Big rains in Cal mountains and Bay Area, some hill totals over 6 inches past 24 h, lower sites, 1-3 inches. Floody rains will take a big bite of out of drought during the nest 12-14 days.
Nothin’ reliably seen here, though, except passing high and middle clouds.
Then this, looking straight up when CMP first noticed it because he wasn’t paying attention:
11:24 AM.
A few minutes later, as it moved away:
11:27 AM.
What happened? How cold were these Altocumulus clouds?
(Answers printed upside down below).
There were more, off in the distance, too.
Here are a few more shots of this phenomenon:
11:29 AM. As it went over the horizon to the east. You can really see how strange it made the sky look. Note, too, the contrail from a much higher flying aircraft (at Cirrus levels).4:02 PM. Those fine trails of virga (center of photo, trailing in strands to the right), were “probably” created by an aircraft. They don’t look natural to me, though when this happens without producing a ice canal or a clearing, its much more difficult to be certain. Those trails look too flat, a result of likely very high concentrations of ice crystals, all of which remain small due to the competition for the vapor in that cloud, and would be too small to collide with cloud droplets. There would be no hole or canal because the rise rate of the layer is producing droplet cloud faster than the ice crystals could take it away. In the prior photos with the ice canal, which did not fill in, you can guess the rise rate of the layer that produced the Ac per was nil. Those clouds did not fill in as the ice settled downward and out of the layer. Whew, lotta typing just then.5:23 PM. Numerous holes were being punched in that cold Altocumulus layer out to the southwest of us. If you are pretty observant, you know that there is an airway out there, often filled with contrails. These, though are likely produced by those aircraft below the normal Cirrus levels, but rather would be ones departing or landing, in descent or climb modes, maybe from TUS?5:41 PM. Zooming; pretty virga, but not natural.
Now, we’re really quitting because I have other things to do, ones that have to be done, like discovering why our attic has so many rodents in it? Well, one, every so often, dammitall. Why is life one problem after another?
The pre-dawn TUS sounding, PRESUMMED representative of that Ac per layer. It would have been where the two lines pinch together, and if somehow you can read the temperature, its between -25° and -30° C.For the evening aircraft effects, there are two choices of layers. Probably was the lower, warmer one IMO.
——————————–
Answers not printed upside down instead:
It was an ice canal created in a highly supercooled layer of Altocumulus perlucidus. How cold? Whenever you see one of these in a middle cloud like Altocumulus, you can guess that its colder than -20° C. They’re rarely seen in warmer clouds. The TUS soundings suggested this layer was between -25° and -30° C. It mostly was ice free, bur regions of some slight (natural virga) were seen,
It was probably created by a jet, though the rarer prop aircraft can’t be ruled out. Seems to be associated with cooling around prop tips or some say over the wing cooling momentarily below around -40° C, though visually I would offer that its from the water-loaded exhaust, at least in jets, rather than air cooled as it goes over the wing.
0.24 inches was recorded after 7 AM yesterday, bringing our voluptuous rain total to 0.95 inches1. How nice.
Dry spell ahead now, maybe a LONG one. “Fiddle-dee-dee.”
Yesterday: another day shallow precipitating clouds and “ice multiplication”
Seemed to be another day of “ice multiplication” here in southeast Arizona, a term that was coined in 1969 by Peter Hobbs of the University of Washington when he and his group reported that clouds were snowing on the peaks of the Olympic Mountains when the cloud top temperatures were warmer than -10° C (14° F). They had a hut on the top of Mt. Olympus at 7,000 feet! Lots of stories about that experiment, many swirling around Abdul Alkezweeny, a Peter Hobbs grad student in those days. An aircraft with skis landed up there to bring supplies! Imagine. (Yours truly was not embedded in the Hobbs group at that time.) It was an exciting time in that group, prior to the acquisition of their first research aircraft, WWII B-23 “tail dragger.” Peter himself, did not fly in this with RARE exception. Many flights were quite sickening, bumping around in Cumulus and small Cumulonimbus clouds, spinning around power plants stacks, wings vertical to ground….
In a nostalgic mood, posting this photo of our venerable B-23 research aircraft in which I spent SO MANY hours!
His group’s observations, however, were not the first, but were among many airborne and ground reports in the mid and 1960s that left jaws dropping about how much ice was in clouds at these moderately supercooled temperatures, even in clouds with tops as warm as -4° C. It was believed, in various ways that ice nuclei measurements were made on the ground, or in aircraft measurements, that not much ice would be found in clouds until the top temperatures was lower than -20° C. In fact, it was generally believed that only about one ice particle per liter would be found in clouds with tops as cold at -20° C, while actual observations were telling a much different story.
This discrepancy between measured ice nuclei concentrations is a scientific enigma that is still being investigated today! And it appears that me and you cloud maven juniors out there got to see it again yesterday, the second day in a row to see an cloud-ice enigma (“nigma” for short)!
Let us continue this module by examining the assertion of “ice multiplication” with the TUS balloon soundings for yesterday morning and evening as rendered by IPS MeteoStar:
The TUS rawinsonde balloon data from yesterday morning. Launched around 3:30 AM AST.The TUS rawinsonde profile yesterday afternoon, balloon launched at about 3:30 PM AST.
These soundings strongly suggest at the start and end of the day, that coldest cloud tops were warmer or no colder than -10° C.
However, the fly in the oatmeal here is that a cold front and associated wind shift came through in the mid-morning hours, heralded by an little arcus cloud, and cloud tops would have been somewhat colder during that period of rain; we don’t know for sure how much, and satellite imagery suggested lower temperatures, though possibly due to over-riding CIrrus cloud above the “Nimbostratus” layer that produced the steady light rain.
However, the rain before the front went by, and the very light rain showers that fell in the late afternoon were likely well represented by the TUS soundings. That’s my case! Wish I’d had a cloud-instrumented yesterday and the day before. Woulda got a paper out of it: “Ice multiplication rampant in Arizona!”
Yesterday’s actual clouds
No more hand-waving…. Let’s see if it really was raining near the time of the TUS soundings above. Picture of the day:
5:18 PM. Rainbow goes INTO a RAIN GAUGE! Amazing. Proves that it was raining, though very lightly (RW–) at 5:18 PM, when the sounding profile was likely valid for these light showers. Q. E. D.! Yours for $2,000, today only. Should get a lot of money out of this photo. I had to practically have the camera on the ground to get the right alignment and illusion. 8:08 AM. Misty, light rain showers shower on the Catalinas and in Catalina itself.
8:50 AM. Misty light rain continues from relatively shallow clouds. No shafting observed, something that would suggest much taller cloud tops. These were likely “mounding” up there, like rolling hills, mounding the most prior to releasing slightly heavier rain. Here’s where you would be thinking, “Could this be ANOTHER ice multiplication day? Wow, if so.” And, of course, the thought of it being a warm rain process day (no ice, thank you) can’t be ruled out either, since rain can form at below freezing temperatures in clouds, though supercooled raindrops are the most vulnerable to freezing at high temperatures, to go a little deep here, and complex the interpretation some.
That was phase one of yesterday’s weather, rain from shallow clouds.
Phase 2 is, “The front marches in across the OV! Cloud depth not so certain, but is probably not real deep, as inferred from the disappointing amount of rain that fell so lightly from the frontal band in spite of its dramatic entrance, fronted by an arcus, wind shift cloud.”
9:55 AM. Here comes the front and arcus wind shift cloud!10:06 AM. Here the approaching front and wind shift appeared to have jacked up a cloud top near Pusch Ridge. Was thinking, as you were, maybe we’ll get some thunder today.10:14 AM. Arcus cloud rolls fast across the OV; rain follows.10:19 AM. Arcus cloud passes over Sutherland Heights, and light curtains of rain begin to fall from it.11:26 AM. The end is near. The sun became visible after only an hour of steady, very light rain, and a tenth of an inch of rain. Thought there might be a gush in this, but, no. This also points to shallow, mounding or even flat cloud tops, not tall ones. This was not a good sight.
But, as those who live here know, some of our best scenes are AFTER after the rain has stopped and the skies partially clear. Yesterday was no exception. But first, the Stratus, which you don’t see too often:
1:09 PM. Looking north at a Saddebrooke highlight. Stratus is beginning to break up out there.1:11 PM. Stratus in the cold air following the frontal passage (“FROPA”, in weather speak or texting). Not budging yet.1:35 PM. Yep, only 25 or so min later, this! So pretty. Stratus fractus lining the area around Charouleau Gap.2:30 PM.2:57 PM. Cumulus puffing up by the minute. Will they form ice?3:04 PM. Just a pretty scene of Cumulus over there toward Saddlebrooke.4:02 PM. A bit of a surprise as a group of precipitating Stratocumulus like clouds came rushing in. No shafts, suggesting tall tops were seen, so likely again just mounding tops up there.5:24 PM. As the last sprinkles ended and the sun peaked through an opening to the SW, our mountains and clouds lit up with an orange tint. As the air cooled the Stratus fractus clouds (highlighted) again were once again straddling the side of mountains near Charouleau Gap.
Looks like only streamers of high and middle cloud from the tropics as California gets blasted with extremely heavy rains over the next two weeks. Totals in favored central and northern California coastal ranges, and in the central and northern Sierras will fall between 20 and 30 inches of rain during this period. A great place for you and me to be would be near the King Range, Shelter Cove (see below), or Honeydew to see those pounders.
Part of Shelter Cove, CA, with King Range in the background. A coastal jet rams the King Range and causes prodigious rains from ordinary looking storms. Average precip more than 100 inches, farthest south point for such a high average rainfall on the West Coast.
The End
—————————– 1The online gauge is a Davis tipping bucket. It has been consistently under-measuring totals recorded in the NWS 8-inch diameter gauge, and the 4-inch diameter, ground-mounted (it sits on the ground among grasses and weeds) CoCoRahs gauge. CoCoRahs is a national organization of rain and snow measuring nuts (haha, just kidding-they’re really precipophiles like me) all over the country and overseas as well. You can find them here. Part of the reason for the under-measurement of the Davis instrument is loss due to wind. That tipping bucket sits up at about 6 feet off the ground, thus sees a lot more wind than gauges on the ground. A gauge on the ground, away from tall objects, is always the best way to go! The reason for this explanation is because if you go to Wundermaps or Weather Underground and see the total for this site, it is ALWAYS going to be low compared to the actual amount that fell. This is a degradation that has come up over the past year or two.
3:55 PM. Rainbow fragment and solar home, an extraordinary combination.. It was yesterday’s visual highlight. Yours for $1995.95. And, if you order now, we’ll throw in a second, exact copy of this extraordinary, magical scene FREE!
Here’s a nice one from the day before as the clouds rolled in, starting with Cirrus and Altocumulus, lowering to Stratocumulus later in the afternoon.
Yesterday’s clouds; an extraordinary day with a little drizzle amid light showers
Hope you noticed the true drizzle that occurred yesterday, namely, fine (larger than 200 microns, smaller than 500 microns in diameter), close TOGETHER (critical to the definition of “drizzle”) drops that nearly float in the air. They may make the least impression, or none, when landing in a puddle.
When you see drizzle, you have the opportunity of chatting up your neighbor by educating them informally to what drizzle really is (many, maybe most, TEEVEE weatherfolk do NOT know what “drizzle” is, btw), and 2) by telling your neighbor, if he/she is still listening to you, that the droplets in the clouds overhead must be larger than 30 microns in diameter, or better yet, “larger than the Hocking-Jonas diameter of 38 microns, at which point collisions with coalescence begins to occur” and “drizzle is not produced by ice crystals in the clouds overhead; they’re not enough of them to produce ‘fine, close together drops.'” Your neighbor has likely left the building at this point, but, oh, well, you tried.
Here, in Arizona, shallow clouds, such as we had yesterday, hardly ever can produce the broad droplet spectrum in which clouds have droplets larger than 30 microns in diameter. Its because this far inland from the ocean, where the air is very clean, the air has picked up natural and anthro aerosol particles that can function as “cloud condensation nuclei” (CCN). As a result of ingesting dirt and stuff, clouds have too many droplets here as a rule for the droplets in them to grow to larger sizes. They’re all mostly less than 20-25 microns, sizes in which even if they collide, they can’t coalesce.
In “pristine” areas, if you go to one, such as on a cruise out in the oceans, droplet concentrations in clouds are much lower, and even a little water that might be condensed in a shallow cloud can produce a broad spectrum, one that extends to droplet larger than 30 microns.
So even little or shallow layer clouds can precip over the oceans, produce drizzle or light rain showers (in which the larger drops are bigger than 500 microns in diameter). Of course, here we recall that the (whom some consider “villainous”) geoengineers want to stop drizzle out over the oceans so that clouds have longer lifetimes, are darker on the bottom, and reflect more sunlight back into space.
Those guys can be lumped into the same ilk as those who want to change the color of the sky from blue to whitish or yellowish by adding gigantic amounts of tiny particles in the stratosphere, again for the purpose of cooling the planet! Unbelievable. Please ask before doing this!!!
A Pinatubo sampler for what “geoengineering” would do to our skies, say, sunsets in particular. I took this photo from the University of Washington’s research aircraft in 1992 off the Washington coast in onshore flow. But we saw these same sunsets, sunrises, yellowed by the Pinatubo eruption of June 1991 everywhere we went, including in the Azores in June 1992.
OK, pretty boring, whiney, really, so inserting picture of a nice horse here to make people feel better if you’ve been depressed about what our scientists have been pondering to do about global warming other than controlling emissions:
8:57 AM. Zeus. Led cloistered life for 13 years; likes to bolt, now that he’s getting out on the trails.7:40 AM, yesterday, Dec. 31st. The low hanging Stratocumulus clouds, about 1500 feet above Catalina, and the mountains had a bit of an orange tinge. It was probably due to sunrise color on a separate much higher layer.
Later….drizzling Stratocumulus, same view:
10:30 AM. Stratocumulus praecipitatio, if you want to go “deep” into cloud naming. “Stratiformis”, too, covers a lot of the sky. Note misty-like view, lack of shafting.12:48 PM. More Stratocu P., an example of those clouds in the distance that kept dropping little and light rain showers on Catalina.1:01 PM. Highlighting amid the RW– , (weather text for “very light rain showers”). Stratcu P., with maybe Stratus fractus or Cumulus fractus below. The shadowed, dark shred clouds in the mddle would be Stratus fractus IMO.3:55 PM. Zooming in on that pretty rainbow. You know, this is a cloud heaven here. I hope you all appreciate it! Maybe that’s why I get upset over “geoengineering” and changing the sky anywhere.3:57 PM. Between showers, but new ones erupted upwind. This one have a shaft, implying a higher cloud top than the prior, non-shafting clouds that brought us semi-steady RW–.
The second extraordinary thing about yesterday was that the top temperatures of these clouds was around -10° C (14° F), temperatures that ice does not form act as a rule in Arizona. To get ice at temperatures that high, you also need larger cloud droplets, and they have to occur in the -2.5° C to -8° C range. In this range, it was discovered that falling ice crystals, mostly faster falling ones like “graupel” (aka, soft hail) when colliding with larger drops, ice splinters are produced. The cloud droplets must be larger than 23 microns in diameter in THAT particular temperature zone, something that would occur more often in our warm, summer clouds, but would rarely be expected in our winter ones.
Why?
Again, it goes back to clouds in inland regions ingesting lots of natural and anthro aerosols that cut down on droplet sizes in clouds (by raising droplet concentrations in them). Our recent rains have helped cut down on that process on ingesting dirt, for sure, and was a likely player yesterday. Furthermore, our winter clouds are moisture challenged relative to the summer ones with their tropical origins and high cloud base temperatures, a second reason not to expect larger droplets in our winter clouds.
Here is the TUS sounding with some writing on it for yesterday afternoon from IPS MeteoStar. (Satellite imagery was also indicating warmer than usual tops for precipitating clouds yesterday.):
The TUS balloon sounding (“rawinsonde” in techno speak) launched at about 3:30 PM yesterday afternoon. Balloon rises at about 1,000 feet a minute, FYI. Typically they pop up around 100,000-120,000 feet! Instrument package is parachuted down so it doesn’t conk somebody on the head. Sometimes they are found and returned to the NWS and re-used! How great is that?
Here’s the punchline: If clouds are drizzling, then they are ripe, if the tops get to lower temperatures than about -4° C for what we’ve termed “ice multiplication” or “ice enhancement”. A very few natural ice nuclei at temperatures between -4° and -10° C, say, starts the process, those forming “soft hail” which then leads to ice splinters. This is the leading theory of this anomaly of ice in clouds at temperatures only a little below freezing, if you think 23° to 14° F fits that definition.
There are exceptions where this process did not explain the ice that formed at such high temperatures, so standby for further elucidation about how in the HECK ice forms in clouds at some point in the future.
As usual, no time to proof, so good luck in comprehending what’s been written.
The weather just ahead:
The second main rainband is just about here at 9:25 AM. Cloud tops will be deeper and colder than in the prior rains, raising the possibility of some thunder today, and maybe another third of an inch of rain. Watch for an windshift line cloud (“arcus” cloud) might well be seen today. That’s always dramatic and exciting here in Catalina cloud heaven.
What a day for cloud maven juniors and me, too, watching the Altostratus opacus (but sometimes “translucidus” cuz you could see where the sun was) become Altocumulus! It happens pretty often and is the result of lowering, and warming of the cloud tops, but I need to generate some excitement on an otherwise somewhat dull day.
What else is happened as tops warmed? Good-bye virgae (“virga”, in plain speak), except in a couple of locations that raised the question, “Was it hers (Mother Nature’s) or ours (aircraft effects)?”
The TUS balloon sounding through all that Altostratus opacus virgae. Launched at about 3:30 AM. The top temperature is so cold (-60° C, -76° F) we don’t even want to know here in Arizona that such temperatures are possible. So, you can imagine all the ice that might form in a moist layer of air. The bottom is even cold at nearly -15° C, there were the temperature jumps out to the right. This is a situation we call “overrunning”, where warmer air is going over a colder air mass. This cloud was about 22,000 feet thick, 7 km at this point.
The slight spread between the two lines illustrates the classic representation of what we measure when the balloon passes through an all ice crystal/snowflake cloud like this version of Altostratus was yesterday morning. The humidity element on the balloon measures the humidity relative to liquid water, not ice, so there will be some spread between the dew point temperature (line on the left) and the temperature (line on the right) when the balloon ascends through an ice cloud. Saturation with respect to ice is indicated here in that deep “overrunning” layer, something also likely to happen tomorrow to the writer’s “company” fubball team tomorrow.
And here’s the TUS sounding launched yesterday afternoon when we only had Altocumulus opacus clouds, just as dark as Altostratus opacus, but much thinner. Tops around -10° for the most part, but there may have been some turrets to around -20° C. The balloon almost certainly passed between clouds, did not go exactly through a Altocumulus cloudlet. Don’t worry if you can’t make out the actual temperatures on the lines sloping up to the right, just take my word for everything I say. You can easily see how much it dried out in the middle and upper cloud regions between the morning sounding and this one.
Yesterday’s clouds and the transition
8:29 AM. Altostratus opacus virgae (has some downward pendants of ice and snowflakes coming out of it). The TUS radar had some sprinkles showing up here and there.8:29 AM. Altostratus opacus virgae (has some downward pendants of ice and snowflakes coming out of it). The TUS radar had some sprinkles showing up here and there. If this seems familiar, the caption is identical with the prior one. Redundancy is one of the niches we practice here, mostly in cloud photos of the same thing.
Now let’s look over here:
8:29 AM. The same.9:19 AM. “Thin spots in overcast”: we used to say that a lot in our human weather reports of ages gone by. Here the thin spot makes this Altostratus translucidus.. While there is an irregular look to this Altostratus due to virga hanging down, there is no indication of liquid water elements, ones that would show up as sharply-outlined darker elements. While this is hours later than that morning TUS sounding, it is likely that in spite of this thin spot, the Altostratus layer was still many kilometers (thousands of feet thick). Ice crystals and snowflakes are far less numerous than droplets in liquid clouds, and, therefore clouds composed of ice are more transparent given equal depths. Compare the visibility in a dense fog with being in a light snowfall.9:38 AM. Example of a some sharply-outlined liquid clouds embedded in the Altostratus layer have formed. The growth of ice crystals and snowflakes is enhanced in liquid clouds because they represent regions where it is saturated with respect to WATER, and highly supersaturated with respect to ice (the relative humidity with respect to ice is well over 100%). Also, if the droplets in these clouds are large enough (larger than about 15 microns in diameter) they can be collected by the falling ice and snow, adding to their mass of those, causing them to fall faster.10:29 AM. Had numerous, dramatic outbreaks of mammatus around this time, probably representing the fall back of turrets on top of the Altostratus as this time. We will say no more about mammatus since the author has tended toward the prurient to break up the tedium in past notations about” mammatus.” This might be viewed as an upside down look at the cloud tops at this point, BEFORE they collapsed and dropped below the main bottom of this layer. At the top (rumpled area), regions of a liquid cloud layer are beginning to appear, a sure sign that tops are receding.11:55 AM. Moving along,looking upwind across the Oro Valley. Still looks composed mostly of ice (Altostratus opacus virgae here), but liquid clouds are on the far horizon.1:21 PM. Altocumulus opacus rules. The deep icy cloud is all gone by now. No virga. Notice, too, in spite of being less than a kilometer thick, this cloud looks as gray as the Altostratus that was many kilometers thick. The droplet concentrations in a liquid cloud such as this might be 200, 000 per liter, while the ice concentrations in that Altostratus cloud were likely in the 10s per liter. The smaller particles in Altocumulus clouds, average perhaps only 15-20 microns in diameter also are able to reflect far more sunlight back into space, and less sunlight reaches the bottom making it darker. In contrast, the (ice) particles in the Altostratus would be hundreds of microns to millimeters in diameter (i.e., precip-sized).2:22 PM. Looking around at these cold Altocumulus clouds, generally not showing virga, you begin to wonder if those areas you do see have been the result of an aircraft passage, as here in that little spot of virga.2:28 PM. Some breaks in the overcast allowed some nice scenes to fall upon our mountains. Here, the Charouleau Gap is highlighted.
From the global ingest of data at 11 PM AST last evening. Indicates that green Catalina will be in the half inch to three quarters of an inch between now and New Year’s Day afternoon. Comes in two segments, the first overnight tonight, and then another starts New Year’s Eve. Seems reasonable. Probably not quite reasonable is the red on the Cat Mountains, indicating 3-4 inches accumulation during this time, probably a bit overdone. Both storms are rather small in size, so the amount of rain depicted in these model runs has varied a lot. But, they seem to be settling on something decent. Seems the least we’ll end up with has to be more than a third of an inch, worst case scenario. See Bob and the NWS for a good look at these incoming events. We’re mostly about clouds here.
Undercutting flow from the tropical Pacific is on schedule. So, a good chance for major rains along the southern portions of the West Coast in a few days, with a pretty good chance they’ll leak into Arizony.
