I was really happy for everyone out there when the skies were dotted with so many perfect examples of Cumulus humilis. It was like a numismatist finding a perfect Indian head penny. If you were like me, and I suspect you are, you were just going CRAZY taking pictures of those flat little pancake clouds. Those clouds were pretty much limited to about 1,000 feet (300 m) thick at most
Not cold enough for ice in them, of course, since the temperatures at Cumulus cloud tops were only around -3 ° to -5 °C (28 ° to 23 ° F, respectively). Around here, ice USUALLY does not appear in clouds until the temperature is lower than -10 °C at cloud top.
Yesterday began with some light snow falling on Mt Lemmon…well, it was falling downward TOWARD Ms Lemmon, actually. Fell out of some thick Altocumulus clouds up there around where the cloud top temperature is… what? OK, silly question for you, probably lower than -15 °C (5 ° F).
Let’s check the sounding to be sure, remembering that the launch site (University of AZ) was downwind of air flowing from the NW yesterday that went over the Catalinas, so a sounding at the U of AZ might suggest higher temperatures than this cloud was actually at since the air was probably descending before it got there.
Indeed, as just seen by me, the TUS sounding indicates that layer, up around 14 kft above sea level, 11 kft or so above Catalina, not a city, but rather a Census Designated Place or CDP, was “only”at -10 ° C.
I reject that as the temperature of the virga-ing cloud over Ms. Lemmon! Its a little too warm IMO.
8:41 AM. That white haze under the Altocumulus clouds is composed of ice crystals, concentrations probably a couple or less per liter of air. Likely stellar or plate crystals, ones that form at temperatures less than -10 ° C. Almost certainly no aggregates of crystals; concentrations too low to form “snowflakes” which are aggregates of single crystals. Snowflakes form when higher concentrations of crystals collide and get locked together, as in stellars, and their cousins, dendrites, that grow in a similar temperature regime. Dendritic crystals are usually seen in deeper clouds than these because those crystals have time to grow extensions in various directions, are not just “planar” ones. If the cloud is thin like this one, not much growth can take place in the droplet cloud and simpler crystals like hexagonal plates and stellars (Christmas card crystals) fall out. There is a lot of hand-waving here….10:20 AM. A horse named “Zeus” looks to see if any Cumulus clouds are forming over the Mogollon Rim to the NE, or, maybe he’s fixated on the horses in that corral below…
By afternoon, the skies over Catalinaland were spotted and dotted with spectacular Cumulis humilis examples. (The littlest shred clouds are Cumulus “fractus.”)
I’ve left the time of the photos off today. After all, there was only one true time yesterday, “perfect humilis time!” or as we like to say, “PHT.” Immerse yourself.
“BN”, sometimes referred to in the media as the, “Godzilla Niño” of 15-16.
Before, one year ago, the drought status as presented by the National Drought Monitor folks there in Cornhuskerland, Lincoln, NE:
First, a legend, no, not a story, though we could write one, “The Legend of the Ghost Niño of 2015-16“, but rather a guide to the colorful drought intensities on the maps below:
One year ago
Western drought status as of April 7th, 2015.
Now let us look closely below–you’ll have to–to see what the Big Niño has done to ameliorate drought so far THIS water year (since Oct 1):
Western drought status as of April 5th, 2016!
Of course, the giant low centers spinning around in the central Pacific sent a stream of large waves over and over again that blasted the Cal coast. That was expected, and verified. But not much else did. Drought should have increased in the Pac NW–recall it was forecast to be drier and warmer due to Niño conditions. Instead, the Pac NW had record amounts of winter rain!
Cal, especially, central and southern were to be slammed. Southern Cal residents were advised to consider purchasing sandbags in one media story last fall. And, of course, we here in AZ are profoundly disappointed; conditions have only improved some in the north part of the State.
Well, of course, there’s not one dry meteorological eye in the house after a bust of this magnitude. And when our best models predicted giant West Coast storms that looked like the kind we were expecting due to the Niño, even though they were 10-15 days out, they seemed sure to happen. CMP, bloated with confirmation bias, was sucked in several times this past winter.
Sure, we knew that Niño correlations with weather are not 1.00, that is, perfect, still, the “signal”, the size of the Niño, was so huge we figured it had to come through with those mighty storms striking the lower West Coast as happened in 1982-83 and 1997-98. Those correlations, as strong as they were, of course, were limited in number since these large events are rare. Those correlations will, let us say in place of cuss words, “degrade.”
Oh, me, what will we say when the next Big Niño appears?
The weather ahead
You’re probably pretty excited about the wind and very cold air just ahead. CMP is. And, with the jet stream at 500 mb (18, 000 feet or so–5.5 km above sea level) eventually circumscribing us with its charateristic moist lower region of air, we should just enough moisture for some isolated very light showers, probably just in the Catalinas, during the period of low freezing levels that hits late Friday and continues through Sunday. Low freezing levels mean even moderate Cumulus clouds could form ice, leading to virga.
Amounts could, at the most, only be a few hundredths here, and most likely we will be missed; precip just limited to snow flurries on Ms. Mt. Lemmon and thereabouts. The U of AZ mod sees the cold blast arriving late Friday after dark.
On the other hand, Saturday and maybe Sunday as well, will be good days for you to practice your ice in clouds detection skills in smallish Cumulus clouds.
The weather way ahead
Still looking to see at least two more troughs and chances of rain during the last two weeks of the month. NOAA ensembles suggest so. Best chances, 23rd-25th, and again around the 28th or so.
Some cloud shots from our little 0.01 inch rain day on Tuesday:
6:02 AM, Tuesday. A summer-like scene, complete with thunder frames the post dawn hours.10:35 AM. After the morning excitement cleared off, a pretty Cumulus congestus erupted north of Saddlebrooke town. There’s a hawk in the photo.12:12 PM. That Cumulus congestus and its sisters, were able to reach the level of glaciation, and wind shear, send a plume of ice downstream toward the east, and rain below that overshooting turret.2:36 PM. Pretty much the perfect cloud for ice in cloud studies. As the air warmed aloft and capped the Cumulus clouds, this one just poked up high enough to form some ice. It would have been a great sample to determine the temperatures and cloud conditions at which ice onset in clouds on Tuesday.4:16 PM, Tuesday. Those shadow and sun highlights that make our mountains so darned pretty. I just never will be tired of these views!
It doesn’t get better than this for April in old Arizony. We’ll make up a lot of lost precip ground this month. In this series, you’ll see MANY days with the maximum winds curling around us, good for precip here as one trough after another barges into the Great SW from the Pacific. !Fantastico! !Commensar la lluvia del Niño! !Ya lo creo!1Getting pretty excited here.
With this series, April rainfall in the Sutherland heights should be twice or more above normal (that is, at least an inch). ‘Bout time.
The End.
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Oh, yeah, the title. I slipped off the keyboard some in the dark and got some inadvertent gibberish. But gibberish sells. Lot of people will now drop by, their curiosity peaked and piqued, “What the hell izzat about?”, focusing on the key word, “storm.” People in deserts like storms. Gibberish is one of the innovations that’s been developed here, btw. You don’t see it too often, except maybe in political campaigns.
1Oh, yeah the title; “has bi-lingual content” We’re desperate for readers here, and this is clearly a cheap ploy (is that redundant, “cheap ploy”?) since I know only a few sentences in Spanish, though my second wife was Hispanic2; that should count for something. Also, I do know that the first exclamation mark should be upside down, but can’t do it.
2Being as nosy as you are, you probably want to see her, maybe you don’t believe me, too, I just said that to get more readers….
Yesterday was a great day both for airborne researchers studying the onset of ice in clouds, and for my followers to test their “ice” Q detecting abilities, to come up with a clever play on words there.
What was so great about yesterday’s clouds?
Well, they were real cold, bases up around 9,000 feet above Catalina (about 12,500 feet above sea level) at -7° C (19° F). Excellent. Nice data point.
Cloud tops?
This is what was pretty great for you and me; they didn’t overshoot much, the clouds were pretty flat, not very deep, not a lot of flight time needed climbing to cloud top to see what it was around here. That means that if you are flying around up there sampling clouds for ice content, that the tops you smashed with your aircraft were pretty much the ones at the temperature that the ice crystals you ran into later formed at. Remember, when cloud tops first rise up, they usually have little detectable ice (the ice crystals are too small for your instruments, or, they haven’t formed yet, takes a little time.
When there are big overshooting tops, an inexperienced, well, crummy researcher in an aircraft finding the ice, as it is usually found, lower down in the cloud, might put the origin of the ice at the temperature of the collapsed top, not at the lower temperature where it formed and the original top reached up to.
So, the lack of much overshooting made it a great day to assign the ice you found to the right cloud top temperatures.
What else was great?
It was a marginal day for ice formation here in the Catalina area, so you get a good data point on when ice starts to form in clouds given that base temperature. As the cloud deepens upward, more ice would be expected with the lower temperatures.
And, as noted by Ludlum way back in the 1950s, and by Prof. Battan right here at the University of Arizona which I did not attend, btw, that level at which ice and precip onsets changes from day to day (largely related to how warm (crazy isn’t it?) the cloud base temperature is. On days with warmer cloud bases, the ice onset temperature is also higher. For example, in summer here, its not unusual to have ice onset between temperatures of -5° and -10° C (23° and 14° F) when bases are warmer than about 10° C.
Anybody still out there?
So, yesterday, with the deepest Cumulus clouds around 2,000 to three thousand feet thick right in our area (they were deeper elsewhere), tops were running around -15° C, this temperature, as you know, leads to the formation of plate-like crystals, hexagonal plates, stellars (Christmas card crystals), maybe some spatial dendrites (stick out in different directions) if the latter crystals were in the Cumulus cloud long enough. If the concentrations of ice get high enough, you’ll get “snowflakes”, interlocking dendritic crystals. A single, good-sized snowflake might have 20-50 individual dendritic crystals.
Is anybody still out there?
Below some shots from yesterday afternoon when there were traces of ice spewing out of local clouds. Did you see those regions and note them in your cloud diaries, that’s the important question.
3:23 PM. A nice view of the overall scene around here with our small Cumulus clouds (Cumulus humilis and mediocris). You see a house in the distance off this dirt road. Pretty say when you think that in America some people still live on dirt roads.3:49 PM. Oh, there’s a nice little Cumulus toward the Charoleau Gap. Doesn’t seem to have any ice…. Let us look closer, and, of course, we look for ice to appear at the downwind edge where cloudy air has been in the cloud the longest, see if anything is falling out.3:49 PM zoomed view. Oops there it is, a little ice, single crystals, concentrations likely lower than 1 per liter of air. You wouldn’t expect to find any “aggregates” here, since they require higher concentrations of ice to bump into each other and lock together. Wow, this is an incredible amount information based on a little hazy spot in a photograph!4:13 PM. Lets look over here toward the south. OK, there’s an obvious ice haze beyond the Catalinas, but what about the cloud in the middle? See anything coming out the downwind (right) side?4:13 PM zoomed view of the fall of ice crystals out of this cloud. This patch of ice haze is so obvious it would have been pretty embarrassing for you not to have noticed it, made a note about it. Of course, we care so much about ice because that’s where nearly all of our rain here in Arizony comes from, as you know, recalling the work of Wegner, Bergeron, and Findeisen, where it was shown that an ice particle in a water cloud will grow at the expense of the droplets around it. For a time, it was thought that all precip of consequence was due to that process, but not so. Ask Hawaiians. Or powder snow lovers about storms consisting only of little dry ice crystals, no water drops in those clouds.
Stormy weather still ahead as noted here I don’t know how long ago. April looking more and more to be a generous month of rain here in Catalina. But will those showers be too late for May flowers?
In the meantime, step aside; a cold front is upon us, a dry one, unfortunately. Should arrive by noon, bringing some small Cu here and there, some Stratocu piling up against the Catalinas, and maybe some lingering Altocumulus lenticular clouds which we got right now (4 AM) downwind of the Catalinas.
As of 4 AM AST, the 24 h temperature change. The blue blob shows the encroaching cold air.
Barometer will rise, too, as the cooler, denser air piles on top of it. There’ll likely be a brief windshift to the NW, followed by backing to the SW again.
Over the next couple of days, the deep cold air in the interior of a lingering, massive trough will settle over us, dry up top, but enough moisture in the lower layers below to produce eventually deeper Cumulus, though not today, ones likely to reach up to the “glaciation” level, which will be close to -12° C to -15° C in this situation beginning later tomorrow through the April 1st. The bases of the clouds will be near the freezing level.
Glaciation means that ice will form in those Cumulus clouds, and some (snow) virga will drop out the bottom. So, some snow showers or just light rain showers are likely on the Catalinas, maybe a trace or hundredth here, too, beginning later tomorrow through April 1st.
Should be some really pretty deep blue skies, too, cloud shadows producing quilt-like patterns on the mountains, that sort of thing we are so lucky to enjoy here.
As you know, this end of month March “lion” (at least in wind, anyway) was long foretold in the NOAA spaghetti. Remember how we could laugh at model outputs that didn’t have a big trough here at the end of the month?
But now we wait and see if we can drain a cloud or two of a hundredth. Overall rain chances not looking so “strong” now out of this whole several day situation. Dang.
Clouds will be around today, especially after the cold front goes by, but its unlikely they’ll have anything drop out the bottom.
Why?
“2warm4ice”, to be that bit textual.
Model says today’s cloud tops won’t reach -10° Ç, our magic temperature where we can usually start to thinking about ice forming in AZ clouds, those with our usual cool bottoms.
Of course, if you’re really sophisticated, you know that the temperature at which onsets in “continental” Cumulus clouds like we have here in old Arizony, is related to cloud base temperature:
The warmer the cloud bottom, the higher the onset temperature for ice1, “strangely believe it”, as we like to say here after Jimmy Hatlo the cartooonist thought of it first when he was making fun of RIpley’s “Believe It Or Not.”
Now onto the forecasting frontier, forecasting weather patterns way ahead, to far in advance and too specific to be truly professional
Let’s start with something easy. Its gonna warm up real good after this big trough goes by– see spaghetti below, where a big ridge moves over us for a couple of days. It won’t last.
Valid at 5 PM AST, April 3rd. Notice, too, that unlike most of the spaghetti pe degree of chaos introduced by the deliberate errors input at the start, have little effect (as usual). The blue and red contours are bunched really well. So the positions of the ridges and troughs are normally well predicted out to this time.
Then, uh-oh, as Robert Ellis Orrall used to sing, in 192 h, predictability begins to fall apart, but not real bad, and it shows a trough is moving in over us.
Valid at 5 PM AST, April 5th. Red contours are bunched enough so that a nice sized trough in the SW is pretty guaranteed.
Finally, at the extreme end of the medium range forecasting frontier, this:
Valid at 5 PM AST, April 12th. Stormfest Southwest!
Hence, the conclusion that we share that April, will in fact, have measurable rain. Of course, we only average about half an inch in April, as the overall climatology begins a serious a battle against rain heading into the ovenly days of May and June.
The End
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1The old English cloud scientist, Frank Ludlow (1952, Quart J. Roy. (haha, “Royal”, oh my) Meteor. Soc.) noticed this first, then that great Soviet Communist cloud scientist, A. M. Borovikov and his companions did (1961, Israeli Translations). Finally, Rangno and Hobbs woke up and noticed this tendency in 1988, (Atmos. Res.) and then again in 1995 (J. Appl. Meteor.–you’ll have to go quite a ways to find the relevant diagram) in their cloud studies and in comparisons with other ice onset reports.
People were wearing jackets as temperatures got locked down below 80° F the past few days, the wind blew once in a while, sometime lifting baseball caps off “gray hairs”, and gray skies hovered over Sutherland Heights for TWO and a half days!
A surprise, few-minute gusher in the early afternoon yesterday was enough to tip the old Davis tipping bucket rain gauge once1, too, to add another 0.02 inches to the 0.08 inches we were drenched with the night before.
What’s ahead. I dunno.
Really thought THIS storm was gonna be a doozie here, not in Mexico as it is now, for Pete’s Sake. Some weeks ago it was read by my reader (s?) here that we had only a 10% chance of LESS than 0.20 inches. In fact, we had a 100% chance of 0.10 inches.
I did not see that coming. But at least March 2016 has recorded SOME rain. Some insects benefited I’m sure.
Climate folks (Climate Prediction Center) are still predicting a wet March-May for us, at least as of mid-Feb. Unfortunately, its only a little more than two inches that makes that three month period wetter than normal here in Catalinaland as we begin to dry out, and heat up.
Time for another, “I love this map so much”, so fully packed with portent:
“Valid” (what a joke) in two weeks, March 24th, 5 PM AST. Giant low moves SEWD toward the Cal coast. Strongest winds on the back side tells you its shifting southeastward. Look how big it is!
Frankly, now as the jet stream in the northern hemisphere goes to HELL in the spring, the “Lorenz plots” or “spaghetti” are pretty clueless. As an example of “clueless” look at the spaghetti plot that goes with the map above:
For March 23 at 5 PM AST. No real clustering of lines anywhere so forecasts will be wild for this far in advance. That low could really be anywhere. There’s not quite so much chaos in the heart of winter when the jet is strongest and geographic jet stream anchors are strongest, like Asia.
Bottom line: NO rain days ahead, maybe a close call over the next TWO friggin’ weeks. Expect to see 90s on a day or two, as well. “Dang”, as we say in the Great Southwest.
Some clouds of yore, including yesterday.
As a cloud maven junior person, you should compare the shots below and try to chronologically unscramble them using your photos. Also, I would like you to name these clouds. Please keep your answers to yourself. hahaha (ACtually I am being lazy and just threw these in “willy-nilly” (huh, what’s that from? Will have to look it up some day.)
Am working on a true science story-book talk, something I wanted to write up before “tipping the bucket” as we meteorologists say about death. Its kindle-sized, maybe would take 3 h to present if it was an actual talk, having more than 250 ppt slide-pages! I won’t be at the TUS book fair, however, this year….
The End.
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1FYI, when a meteorologist dies, we meteorologists say that he has “tipped the bucket”, NOT “kicked the bucket.” Its an especially reverent phrase for us.
Looks like it will be on March 7th. Pretty sure thing at this point, maybe 75%-99% chance of rain here in Catalina, combining “spaghetti1” with other forms of forecasting.
7 AM AST Addendum: Hell, why not go for some amounts due to extra confidence:
Min in The Heights: 0.20 inches (10% chance of less); max, 1.00 inches (10% chance of more). The average of these “mental ensemble2” extrema, 0.60 inches, which is usually closer to the actual value.
This best guess estimate for the total between midnight March 7th and the evening of the 8th, or over about a 42 h period. Weather gaming is fun.
What’s your prediction?
—————-T. I. P.————————————
Remember, too, as a “truth in packaging” disclosure statement, that this forecast is being made by the SAME person who forecast about 12 days ago or so, rain here in the last week of February which didn’t happen, along with large Cal and AZ blasting storms in early March.
In fact, here and in southern Cal, we had “anti-rain” in the last week of February! This in the form of high temperatures, dry air, and that combination resulting in unusually high evapotranspiration rates with those high temperatures (anti-rain, since whatever surface water, soil moisture, plant moisture is disappearing into the air). In other words, that forecast could hardly have been more incorrect.
Hell, to cuss some more, almost as bad as those forecasts for a drier than normal winter (DJF) for the Pac NW by big forecasting authorities like the Oregon State Climatologist among many others.
In fact, when they were making those forecasts, they were staring at record wetness in the Pac NW! Incredible! Both SEA and PDX have set DJF records for the amount of rain this winter! Wow. It doesn’t get much worse than that, except maybe here sometimes.
People are mad, too, in southern Cal where they were advised to buy sandbags due to the excessive flooding and rains foretold for their winter. Well, we’ll see if March can bring back some of the lost credibility, though, frankly, its hard to do.
Think of all those global warming forecasts of a steady rise in global temps made back in the early part of this century which didn’t happen. Wow. Lost some credibility there, and those forecasters had to move to a new expression, “climate change” to cover up the bad forecast.
Temps on the rise now, so watch out! “Global warming” rising from the ashes more and more now, too.
Changing the subject quickly, the Washington Huskies softball team had a pretty great weekend at the Mary Nutter Classic Tournament in Cathedral City, CA, where it was real hot (90 F), too. The University of Washington was the writer’s former employer.
Whistling here: where are you Niño? Com’ere! Hmmmph, nice name for a dog I think, which is what it has been so far for the Southwest.
The End
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1 Formally, called “Lorenz plots” by yours truly, and should be by others.
Valid at 5 PM AST on March 7th. All the red lines are WAY down there in Baja California central. Means a pretty sure thing that the jet stream will be south of us when this incoming trough goes by and as you know well by now, when the jet at THIS level is south of us, you almost always get rain. Some 95% of the Nov-Apr rain that falls in Tucson falls with the jet at this level to the south of us.
If you don’t believe me, and slept through it during the power outages when it was COMPLETELY dark last night, here is a MEASUREMENT of the event from a private weather station, The arrow points to the event, 58 knots, which is about 67 mph. This is the greatest wind measured by the PWA in seven years, here and a few down there on Wilds. The measured (here, the max one-minute speed) wind is, of course, LESS than the actual greatest 1s or 2s puff, likely well over 67 mph. Unless you have a fancy ultrasonic anemometer, too much inertia in the cheaper ones to get those instantaneous puffs.
NEW: Got to 100 mph on Mt. Sara Lemmon before tower on which an ultrasonic anemometer was installed blew away.
Hope your trees are intact:
WInd measurement over the past 24 h from a Davis Vantage Pro Personal Weather Station located somewhere in Sutherland Heights. (Remember in Israel, that popular top 40 radio station that said, “Braodcasting from SOMEWHERE in the Medeterranean” and every one knew it was that ship located a half mile or so offshore of Tel Aviv. Played Springstein, that kind of thing for all to hear.
Only 0.17 inches tipped by the Davis Vantage Pro, but with wind blowing as it was, you KNOW that’s going to be substantially low. We really can’t measure rain that accurately in any thing but perfectly calm conditions. The more accurate measurements are made if your gauge is sheltered by vegetation that is about the height of the gauge top right near the gauge, but then increases like the inside of a bowl as you gradually move away from it in all directions. No trees, please, too close! Preferably your gauge is on the ground not up somewhere, too, which would exaggerate the losses from wind.
Now, I will go outside and measure the rain in two ground mounted gauges, one a NWS-style 8-inch gauge, and the little toy 4-inch gauge from CoCoRahs, that national group that wants your measurements! Sign up now. Here are the other totals:
NWS gauge, 0.22 inches
CoCoRahs gauge, blew over, no total! Dammitall! Wasn’t as protected in the weeds as I thought. That total “likely” was around 0.24 or 0.25 inches. CMP had privately predicted, 0.28 inches for this storm, whilst a major forecast professor from CSU who lives in Catalina predicted an INCH1!
Brutal out there, too. Temp only 43° F, still windy.
The weather way ahead
Sorry to say no rain for Catalinaland in our latest computer forecasts through the middle of February as the Big Niño hyped so much here and elsewhere is turning out to be big poop so far.
Cal rains only great in the far north of the State during January, and in the northern Sierras.
Sucked in by the Big Niño thoughts here, CMP was predicting quite the mayhem in Cal during the last 15-16 days of January, and 25-30 inches at some locations during that time here is a table for that period from CoCoRahs. Note Shelter Cove, near the King Range, has the most. Totals are sorted in descending order, Jan 13-31.
No doubt your curiosity was piqued and peaked by seeing how much rain could fall on you if you lived in Shelter Cove, on the Lost Coast of California. Well, here’s what its like there. Has an AP, too!
A view of Shelter Cove, showing airport and control tower. Yep, you can fly right in!Another view of Shelter Cove. King Range is in the distance. NO DOUBT, rainfall up there WAS more than 25 inches if about 22 fell at Shelter Cove!
May try to get some more of that Cal precip since Jan 13, finding a modicum o direct verification of that huge amount of rain prediction.
No Mavericks surf competition yet, though larger waves have been battering the Cal coast over the past two-three weeks. Below, surf for today.
4:04 PM. Nice lenticular, devolving into flocculated Altocumulus downwind. The cells the form downwind from the smooth upwind edge are likely due to the latent heat released when condensation occurs, causing weak up and downdrafts to develop father downwind.5:58 PM. Dusty sunset. No worrisome dark spotting on sun.
The End
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1Maybe the “Ivory Tower” has not only protected him from the hiccups of the “real world” due to tenure and that kind of thing, but also from discerning what real weather will be like. hahaha. Just kidding. Sort of. Recall CMP was NOT tenured, but just a “staff” meteorologist with a “light” at the end of the funding grant tunnel, year after year for about 30 years. So, I am pretty mad about “tenure”. Hahahaha, just kidding maybe.
“Tenure” was a recent subject of a Science Mag editorial (“Wither (wither) Tenure“), too; costs everybody, especially students, a LOT of money, it was said.
Too, often young bright researchers are blocked by senior professors having tenure and making large amounts of money that hang on well past their productive years.
Cloud Maven Person: Resigned from the U of WA Cloud and Aerosol Research Group due to feeling he wasn’t earning his high “Research Scientist III” pay anymore, brain dimming, though there was a pile of money that he could have continued on with. Title of resignation letter: “Time to Go”. This free-ed up monies for staff folks that remained in our group, too.
Com’on decrepit tenured faculty, give up! Resign now!
PS: My friend tenured fac is STILL active, gives talks/presentations around the world still, even though he’s quite a geezer now, as is CMP.
“Phase Space 3”, no, its not an expression from Star Trek, though it would sound pretty good if it was. Rather, its the location of an oscillation in tropical winds that goes around the world in 40 days as a rule, not 80, from west to east. Right now the MJO is in kind of a muddle, not much to it, dawdling around Indonesia. But it is forecast to strengthen next week, looping back around and heading into Phase Space 3!
Some folks have connected weather patterns elsewhere to the various “phase spaces” the MJO is in, people like Zhou et al (2011), as you will find at the end of the above MJO discussion.
What kind of patterns that are relevant here?
Well, they have found a degree of correlation, not great, that when the “MJO” (has a nice ring to it; could be a coffee brand I think), moves into phase space #3, it tends to be wet in the western US.
So, if the MJO is not bamboozling the Big Niño we have in some way, this could be quite the one-two punch.
However, they may NOT be additive as in a 1-2, to destroy any solid information in today’s blog.
Zhou et al, did not look at the combined effect of a Big Niño AND the MJO in Space #3.
So, we’ll just have to see what happens next week as January closes out. Storms, cold ones, still in mods for Catalina and AZ overall as that happens.
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In the meantime, let’s look at some precip data, gathered by NOAA here. This will be good for you to look at, too.
Cal rain update
Honeydew, CA, up there near the King Range, now up to 26 inches for the month of January, though the “Sacramenta” Valley not filling up with water as practically foretold here a coupla weeks ago. Heck, that’s only happened once anyway, way back in 1862 (California flood–read about Stanford here), so maybe CMP was overcome with forecasting adrenalin.
Fire hose jet into CA with stupendous rains hasn’t materialized, but the darn thing keeps showing up now and then. What’s up with that? Not sure. Thought due to persistence in the mods, something stupendous would happen….eventually, and before January closed out.
Below are rain totals for just the past FIVE days in Cal! Nice. This episode is taking a chomp out of Cal drought, at least in the northern half of the State.
Honeydew up there in that table, with 10.07 inches is in the lee of the King Range, that place where I told you to go to storm chase. The KR is to the SW of Honeydew. While Honeydew is wet, likely a coupla inches or more on the SW facing slopes of the KR.
Below, what it looks like right near the King Range:
Home on the Range…the King Range, that is. KR peaks fill up the background in this shot. I thought you should see what its like up there, before moving there just because I recommended it so that we could get needed rainfall measurements in that area, closer to the peaks than is Honeydew. Rainfall average likely more than 100 inches at that house down there. Nice summers, though.
Let’s see what Cal waves are doing….going big!
As of this morning; some big boys are pounding the coast. Maybe they’ll slip in the Mavericks surf competition one of these days.
More Cal drenchers and big waves on the way in rapid succession, and grand total just for the last half of January are very likely to be within, or even exceed, 25-30 inches at one of the wettest points.
The weather WAY ahead.
Looks more and more like something significant in precip here near the end of January, as a colossus storm smashes Cal and the coast, then rolls radidly SEward into AZ. Another snow episode toward the tail end of that storm here in the Heights seems a strong possibility, too. We’ll be shivering, no matter what, during it and after it passes.
The End.
(Missed some real doozie sunsets of late, too. Dang.)
