Web crawlers: This is not about Rocky Mountain Silver Bullet Beer1.
Lotta wind last night. Gusts to 50 mph here in Sutherland Heights, stuff all over the yard. I didn’t mention anything about excessive wind coming last night, and so there’s no point in mentioning it now. I’m a cloud-maven, not a wind-maven….
Here’s yesterday afternoon’s sounding from Tucson, around the time we had all that ice pouring out of just about every Cumulus humilis and mediocris around:
The TUS vskkppm sounding, launched around 3:30 PM AST. A quite fascinating finding just now, is that when you type letters on the keyboard when you’re not looking at it, and miss by only ONE letter to the one you are targetting, you get a quite different word. Above, the Polish word, “vskkppm”, which was meant to be “balloon” in English2. The arrows denote bottoms and tops of those small Cumulus yesterday, -17 C and the deeper ones (a km or 3 Kft thick), tops maybe around -25 C,respectively; the bottom temperature exceptionally low for Arizona.
The high cold ones of yesterday afternoon
9:53 AM. Reminiscent of a summer’s day, Cumulus begin taking shape over the Catalinas. At this time, tops are near freezing, too warm for ice. As the day worn on, the bases and tops of the Cumulus clouds both rose, a pretty normal sequence.
1:47 PM. Not much happening yet, though Cu are now reaching “mediocris” in size. Nice lighting on mountains, though.
1:46 PM. Even flatter Cu to the NW-N at that time. I’m thinking, by this time “Where’s is the ice?”
2:40 PM, about an hour later, ice began to appear in several Cumulus clouds. Here in the distance (just above the house), some sprinkles likely reached the ground.
3:52 PM. Hardly a cloud around without a veil of ice crystals around it. Its likely that cloud tops (and bases) rose to temperature below -15 C during the mid-afternoon hours. Here, even Cu humilis are emitting little, hazy-looking ice plumes!
5:25 PM. A snow flurry even touched the Catalinas.
5:32 PM. Iced out! The little cloud that gave out the flurry on the Catalinas in its dying phase, no more liquid water in it, and so all of the ice crystals and snowflakes in it fall out or evaporate and in 20 min, it was gone.6:23 PM. Its not windy at this time. Wind hits just before 9 PM. Here tiny shred clouds, remnants of somewhat larger clouds, show their ice (veil on the right). BTW, its still windy this morning. Should die out during the morning.
There are really no good names for the clouds we saw yesterday. Maybe Cumulus humilis virgae? Cumulus mediocris virgae praecipitatio (to keep the Latin discriminators)? They have all the ingredients of miniature Cumulonimbus clouds, some vertical development, fall streaks and little shafts at times. So, these kinds of clouds, that are COMMON in the interior of the West during the cooler half of the year, really don’t have a good place in our cloud atlases. In fact, you won’t even find one in any cloud atlas! (Tell your friends how special yesterday was…)
The End.
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1 In fact, a legendary beer from Colorado, sung about below by no less than John Denver, or someone who sounds an awful like him, while also describing some football coaching history at the University of Washington Huskies.
2You should try this and see what other languages might be recovered from your keyboard by making just the slightest of errors.
3:05 PM. Classic Cumulus humilis (aka, “pancakeus”). Its not a bad thing to be humilis.4:03 PM. Here you got yer corral, yer horse poop and pee (dark area of soil in foreground), and off on the NW-N horizon, glaciating Cumulus tops; shallow Cbs most likely. Some rain up that way, of course. Don’t needa radar once you detect that ice. You did detect it didn’t you?
In case you don’t believe me again, see below! You can also find a few small amounts here in the USGS network.
24 h radar-derived precip totals for AZy (from WSI Intellicast) denoted by bluish regions. Not much more than a tenth was reported in USGS gauges, which is what’s indicated here by radar.
Today
More bigger Cu, likely some ice/virga visible. U of AZ mod thinks rain will be to the east and south of us. Darn. But, if you’re horny for rain, might be worth a family trip to, say, Douglas, take in a few drops. Nice town, Douglas.
WAY ahead
Big changes still ahead, though lately mod runs haven’t had as big of a wet change here as I would like to see, so not reporting on that.
Let us begin today’s cloud lesson by examining the perfect example of Altocumulus perlucidus translucidus:
9:11 AM. I am sure many of you were exulting over being able to add such a grand example to your perlucidus collection. Quite satisfying.5:02 PM. That Ac perlucidus got a little exuberant, thickened up to lines of Ac opacus (dense gray lines in the distance, topped by Altostratus and Cirrus to make the scene pretty gray. Kind of amazing how many gray days we’ve had in the midst of drought.6:27 PM. The aforementioned clouds led to a nice pastel-ee sunset.
The rains of March
From NOAA’s WRF-GFS model run based on last evening’s global data, this beauty below. A model cannot calculate more areas of rain and snow in, and west of the Rockies, than this one! So, headin’ for a big change here in the West, as we deserve, after our AZ non-winter. See caption for details.
Valid at 5 PM, March 22nd. The colored regions are those in which the model has calculated precipitation during the PRIOR 12 h. Its way out there, and could be “March Model Madness”, but, odds are we WILL be seeing rain here in Catalina after mid-month when the jet pattern changes. Rain also indicated here overnight on the 16th-17th, and a few isolated light showers around tomorrow afternoon and evening! “Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes”, as David Bowie might say, or was it The Who1 or both? Oh, well. I like to leave you with something to think about all day.
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BTW, Science mag, in their tradition of catchy, amusing titles in their plain-language summaries of peer-reviewed technical articles that appear later, ones that are generally not comprehensible, used this The Who song excerpt when titling an article about the Argentine “tawny crazy ant” (I did NOT make that name up!) invasion now affecting the southern US: “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss”, a title cribbed from the great The Who song, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Feb 28th issue, p974.
BTW, its hard to write a sentence that sounds grammatically fluid and correct when writing about the works of the great The Who band.
Speaking of ants, I used to collect big red ants when I was a kid and try to transplant them into my back yard; kind of start a local big red ant invasion. I thought you would like to know that about me.
Valid two weeks from now, Thursday, 5 AM, March 20th. Massive trough, at last, settles into the West for awhile, more in keeping with climo. Keep jackets at the ready. Rain? Dunno yet, but probably on the correct side of 50-50 beginning around the 17th. Changes! Warm and dry for a coupla days, followed by a parade of troughs, quite a few minor ones over the next week or so, before the Big One forms. Above, this is a VERY strong signal in the spaghetti for two weeks out, and so got pretty excited when I saw it, as you are now, too. So, when mid-March arrives, get ready!
Was going to close with this NWS forecast for Catalina (might be updated by the time you link to it), but then saw just now that Saturday, the day a cold, dry trough is over us, it’s predicted to be 76 F here in Catalina, too warm. I would prepare for upper 60s.
Canadian model has even had rain near us at times as this trough goes by on Saturday, but only here in the 11th hour (from yesterday’s 5 PM AST run) has the US model indicated that the core of the trough and rain near us on Saturday, as the Canadian one had for a few days before that. Hmmm…
The fact that any trough is ending up stronger than it was predicted, as the one on Saturday, is a good sign of being close to the bottom (farthest S lattitude) of the “trough bowl”, that location where troughs like to come and visit. So, maybe this is a precursor for us, this unexpected little cool snap on Saturday. Maybe climatology is beginning to work its wonders at last in the West.
Powerful storms begin affecting the interior of the West and Great Basin in 10 days, and that pretty much marks the time when the winds here start to pick up to gusty at times as strong low centers develop to the north of us, and the major jet stream subsides to the south toward us.
It will be the end of the warm winter era for us, too. While cold settles in the West, it will mean very toasty weather back East from time to time, something those folks will greatly enjoy.
———————–Climate issue commentary; skip if you’re happy with the climate as it is now—————————-
As you likely know, much of the upper Midwest had one of its coldest winters ever, and just a few days ago Baltimore (locally, “Ballimore”, as in “Ballimore Orioles”) had its lowest measured temperature EVER in March, 4 F!
“RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
0930 AM EST TUE MAR 04 2014
…DAILY AND MONTHLY MINIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDS SET AT BALTIMORE
MD…
A DAILY RECORD MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 4 DEGREES WAS SET AT BALTIMORE MD TODAY…BREAKING THE OLD RECORD OF 5 SET BACK IN 1873.
THE MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 4 DEGREES FROM TODAY WAS ALSO THE LOWEST MINUMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDED ON ANY DAY IN MARCH FOR BALTIMORE. THE PREVIOUS RECORD MINIMUM TEMPERATURE FOR MARCH WAS 5 DEGREES ON 4 MARCH 1873.”
(Thanks to Mark Albright for this official statement; emphasis by author)
If you’ve followed some media reports, the exceptional cold of this winter has been attributed to global warming, a hypothesis that has been questioned by climo Big Whigs. However, if it is right (which even lowly C-M doubts), parts of the upper Midwest may become uninhabitable due to cold in a warming world, quite a weather “oxymoron.”
Also, if you’ve been hearing about weather extremes and global warming (AKA, “climate change”) you really should read this by a scientist I admire, Roger Pielke, Jr., at Colorado State Univsersity, his rebuttal to a Whitehouse science adviser’s characterization of his testimony before Congress about weather extremes (they’re not increasing).
What seems to be happening in climate science is the opposite of what our ideals are. Our conglomerate of climate models did not see the present “puzzling” halt to global warming over the past 15 years or so as CO2 concentrations have continued to rise. However, instead of being chastened/humbled by this failure, some climate scientists seem emboldened and only are shouting louder about the danger ahead. Presently we are struggling with a number of hypotheses about why the hiatus has occurred (e.g., drying of the stratosphere which allows more heat to escape the earth, more aerosols in the stratosphere in which incoming sunlight is dimmed some as it was due to the Pinatubo eruption in 1991, ocean take up of extra heat, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current slowing down, causing northern hemisphere continents to cool off.)
UPdating at 8:28 AM: This from the “current”issue of Science (Feb 28th) about the Global Warming Hiatus (GWH): It might be due to the cold waters of the eastern Pacific, now reigning year after year almost for the whole time of the “hiatus.” (BTW, you’ve heard of it, haven’t you, that hiatus in rising global temperatures? If not, write to your local media sources about this. Its pretty important.) Science mag is $10 if you want to buy it off the newstand.
What ever the cause of the puzzling hiatus in warming, it was not accounted for in our best models right from the get go, and so, naturally there SHOULD be caution on everyone’s part until we know what happened and can get it right in those many climate models..dammitall! Unless we know what done it, how else can we have confidence that they are going to be very accurate 100 years out????
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Here are a couple of nice sunset scenes from March 4th, that same day it was SO COLD in Ballimore, these to help you cool off personally after I got you pretty worked up with climate issues. Hope I didn’t spoil your day, and try not to be mad at work thinking about it.
6:19 PM. Row of Cirrus lenticulars appears below CIrrus/Altostratus layer. I think they were too high to be Altocumulus lenticulars, and dissipated into ice puffs right after this shot.6:31 PM. Cirrus spissatus (thicker parts) with strands from Cirrus uncinus under lit by the sun.
3:53 PM. Three little rows of clouds are emitted from the Tortolita Mountains to the west, drift over Oro Valley. These kinds of “streets” are there, and usually emit form the same spots, every time we have a moist, but shallow layer of air, and there’s a bit of wind. We met men would call this situation a “cloud-capped boundary layer” where air rising to form these clouds doesn’t get any higher, usually due to a stable layer like an inversion. The visual divergence, where one of the streets looks to be going to the left, and the one on the right going to the right, is due to perspective. Cloud streets are virtually parallel to one another. The flow at cloud level was toward the photographer, me. You got Cirrostratus on top of these Cumulus/Stratocumulus clouds. (Where clouds like these are more isolated, we call them, Cumulus, when the same clouds group together into masses, we start calling them Stratocumulus. Its kind of a fuzzy area in our fuzzy classification system (see Catalina cloud maven’s cloud classification article in the Encyclopedia of the Atmospheric Sciences, 6 vols., yours for $2258.20, “only one left in stock”, Amazon says, and the great Judy Curry, is Ed.–better get it before its gone!
5:03 PM. That little zone (center, here) on the Tortolitas is still pumping out the clouds. Compare the back edge of this larger mass (which now would be Stratocumulus) with the origin point of the previous photo. The cloud street is the one on the left that goes off the screen.5:32 PM. That high Cirrostratus layer steadily thickened, becoming Altostratus here, as the afternoon wore on. Seemed like another storm was moving in. Those isolated Cumulus clouds and their “streets” filled in, too, becoming large, dark areas of Stratocumulus, adding to the false anticipation of a rain as a storm skirted Arizona.
The weather way ahead after the upcoming heat wave
I have been staring at this weather Rorschach test for a few hours now, and there’s not much to say about it, except that there seems to be two eyeballs near the North Pole, and maybe one of the yellow lines forming a jaw down there toward Greenland, possibly a tilted drivers cap toward Russia.
Clearly the global patterns are “unsettled”, to use one of our favorite forecasting words. (“We will have ‘unsettled’ weather over the next few days”, as one might say in Seattle most of the year.)
Below, “troughing” is suggested in the SW, but not much. The Asian trough, anchored along the coast of Asia, is shown moving offshore here as it should during the spring, and that in turns helps form a trough downwind in the SW US, as we see happen in the spring over the long term (in climatology). So we can only hang our hat on climo, that these uncertain times shown below in the plot below will resolve into something better than more drought.
We can also ponder the larger question of, “How’s come we can put a man on the moon and various space junk on Mars and can’t forecast the weather beyond about a week?” Its crazy.
Or even the vastly larger question concerning chaos theory, a theory that rests on the phenomenon that small perturbations in the initial state of unstable systems are able to make huge changes over time, thus:
“Will a space probe, going off into deep space, as is happening now, an artifact that’s not supposed to be there, unsettle the unstable Universe?”
Valid for 1700 AST, March 17, 2014.
Pretty thoughtful blog today, I thought. Usually don’t go this deep, but it just kind of happened.
…weren’t quite realized1 in the rain totals that our storm produced; the very exciting prediction of several inches of water content foretold for Ms. Lemmon didn’t happen (see ALERT gauge listing below, saved for pretty much the maximum 24 h period of our storm.)
Still, rains were substantial, the occasional morning lightning was great, and in a few places in PC (Pima County) the rain total did exceed 2 inches, with amounts of an inch and a half in the Cat Mountains. Good, better, but not as “great” as in expectations, except maybe at Park Tank, Reddington area, where the ALERT gauge says, 3.78 inches. Also, if you didn’t catch it, a stupendous sunrise and sunset; see pics WAY below.
Here in Sutherland Heights, 0.60 inches fell, by far most of that during the middle of last night when strong storms bounded in and abounded all over eastern AZ with a final rainband. Here’s what that 3rd and final rain “act” looked like on radar and in the satellite imagery last night (very exciting weather shape, BTW; “the curl”):
Radar and sat imagery from IPS MeteoStar for 1:15 AM. The heaviest rain fell just to the north of us. This “curl” configuration indicates that a potent part of the trough was passing by, causing clouds to explode upward from the tip of the “tail” near Rocky Point on their way to the NE from there. Got even bigger as they passed by us and headed toward Miami-Globe area. You can also see the three bands of rain that affected us, more or less still intact.
Precipitation Report for the following time periods ending at: 03:59:00 03/02/14 (also learn where stuff is) (data updated every 15 minutes) Data is preliminary and unedited. —- indicates missing data Gauge 15 1 3 6 24 Name Location ID# minutes hour hours hours hours —- —- —- —- —- —- —————– ——————— Catalina Area 1010 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.28 0.43 Golder Ranch Horseshoe Bend Road in Saddlebrooke 1020 0.00 0.00 0.24 0.43 0.67 Oracle Ranger Stati approximately 0.5 mile southwest of Oracle 1040 0.00 0.00 0.16 0.31 0.51 Dodge Tank Edwin Road 1.3 miles east of Lago Del Oro Parkway 1050 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.28 0.47 Cherry Spring approximately 1.5 miles west of Charouleau Gap 1060 0.00 0.00 0.35 0.55 0.83 Pig Spring approximately 1.1 miles northeast of Charouleau Gap 1070 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.20 Cargodera Canyon northeast corner of Catalina State Park 1080 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.24 0.35 CDO @ Rancho Solano Cañada Del Oro Wash northeast of Saddlebrooke 1100 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.20 0.31 CDO @ Golder Rd Cañada Del Oro Wash at Golder Ranch Road
Santa Catalina Mountains 1030 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.43 Oracle Ridge Oracle Ridge, approximately 1.5 miles north of Rice Peak 1090 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.39 Mt. Lemmon Mount Lemmon 1110 0.00 0.00 0.39 0.71 1.02 CDO @ Coronado Camp Cañada Del Oro Wash 0.3 miles south of Coronado Camp 1130 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 Samaniego Peak Samaniego Peak on Samaniego Ridge 1140 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.08 1.46 Dan Saddle Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge 2150 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.30 White Tail Catalina Highway 0.8 miles west of Palisade Ranger Station 2280 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.20 1.34 Green Mountain Green Mountain 2290 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.12 1.54 Marshall Gulch Sabino Creek 0.6 miles south southeast of Marshall Gulch
Santa Catalina Foothills 2090 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.75 TV @ Guest Ranch Tanque Verde Wash at Tanque Verde Guest Ranch 2100 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.16 0.43 DEQ Swan Swan Road at Calle del Pantera 2160 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.31 Sabino @ USFS Dam Sabino Creek at USFS Dam 2170 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.59 Ventana @ Sunrise Ventana Canyon Wash at Sunrise Road 2190 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.20 0.75 Al-Marah near El Marah on Bear Canyon Road 2200 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.71 AC Wash @ TV Bridge Agua Caliente Wash at Tanque Verde Road 2210 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.12 0.79 Catalina Boosters Houghton Road 0.1 miles south of Catalina Highway 2220 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.20 0.83 Agua Caliente Park Agua Caliente Park 2230 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.79 El Camino Rinconado El Camino Rinconado 0.5 miles north of Reddington Road 2240 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.16 0.91 Molino Canyon Mt Lemmon Highway near Mile Post 3 2390 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.39 Finger Rock @ Skyli Finger Rock Wash at Sunrise Road
Redington Pass Area 2020 0.00 0.08 0.55 0.67 3.78 Park Tank Redington Pass, 0.8 miles south of Park Tank 2030 0.00 0.04 0.28 0.39 2.09 Italian Trap Redington Pass, 0.7 miles east southeast of Italian Trap Tank 2040 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.16 1.14 White Tank Redington Road near White Tank 2050 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.16 1.14 Bellota Ranch Road Bellota Ranch Road near Redington Road 2070 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.24 0.87 TV @ Chiva Tank Tanque Verde Wash 0.5 miles south of Chiva Tank 2080 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.16 0.87 Alamo Tank Redington Road near Alamo Well
Rincon Mountains 4100 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 1.06 Manning Camp Manning Camp in the Rincon Mountains 4110 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.47 Rincon Creek Rincon Creek at X-9 Ranch
Greater Tucson 2110 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.71 TV @ TV Road Tanque Verde Wash at Tanque Verde Road 2120 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.20 0.59 TV @ Sabino Cyn Rd Tanque Verde Wash at Sabino Canyon Road 2300 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.16 0.63 Well D-37 Rosewood Street west of Harrison Road 2310 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.16 0.67 Well E-23 Rancho El Mirador north of Broadway Boulevard 2320 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.47 Beverly Well C-51 Beverly Avenue at Hawthorne Street 2330 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.08 0.51 Kolb Boosters Kolb Road at Golf Links 2350 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.39 Rillito @ Dodge Rillito Creek at Dodge Boulevard 2360 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.20 0.43 Rillito @ La Cholla Rillito Creek at La Cholla Boulevard 2370 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.28 0.63 Alamo @ Glenn Alamo Wash at Glenn Street 2380 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.35 DEQ Ruthraff Ruthrauff Road at La Cholla Boulevard 4160 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.12 0.55 E-8 Irvington Road near Pantano Road 4180 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.12 0.51 Pantano @ Houghton Pantano Wash at Houghton Road 6040 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.04 0.43 Santa Cruz@Valencia Santa Cruz River at Valencia Road 6180 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.39 ArroyoChico@Cherry Arroyo Chico at Cherry Street 6190 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.12 0.59 Arroyo Chico@Randol Arroyo Chico at Randolph Way 6230 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.12 0.55 Ajo Detention Basin Tucson Diversion Channel at Ajo Detention Basin 6240 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.12 0.63 DEQ Cntry Clb Country Club Road near Columbia Street 6250 0.04 0.04 0.16 0.20 0.75 Craycroft@Golf Link Craycroft Road at Golf Links Road 6260 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.08 0.55 Tucson Electric Pow Irvington Road at Belvedere Avenue 6270 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.16 0.59 Pima Air Museum Valencia Road at Pima Air Museum
Southern Tucson Area 6200 0.00 0.04 0.20 0.20 0.67 Summit Elementary Summit Street at Epperson Lane 6210 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.12 0.59 Franco @ Swan Franco Wash at Swan Road 6220 0.00 0.00 0.20 0.20 0.83 PC Fairgrounds Houghton Road at Dawn Road 6280 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.16 0.63 Wilmot Wilmot Road 2 miles south of Old Vail Connection Road 6290 0.00 0.04 0.55 0.55 1.42 Corona Sahuarita Road at Sewage Treatment Plant
Altar/Avra Valley Area Area 6370 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.31 1.77 Arivaca Las Guijas Mountains near Arivaca 6380 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.31 1.10 Altar Wash @ Hwy 28 Altar Wash at Highway 286 6410 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.24 0.59 Diamond Bell Diamond Bell near Stagecoach Road at Killarney Avenue 6420 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.20 0.31 Brawley@Three Point Brawley Wash at Highway 86 6430 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.28 Vahala Park Wade Road at Los Reales 6440 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.20 0.24 Brawley@Milewide Brawley Wash at Milewide Road 6450 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.16 0.43 Hilltop Rd Hilltop Road at Riveria Road 6460 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.28 0.35 Picture Rocks CC Picture Rocks Community Center 6470 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.16 0.35 Michigan @ Calgary Michigan Street at Calgary Avenue
Marana/Oro Valley Area 1200 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.20 0.28 CDO @ Ina Road Cañada Del Oro Wash at Ina Road 1230 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.24 0.31 Oro Valley PW Calle Concordia at Calle El Milagro 1240 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.28 0.35 Moore Rd Moore Road at La Cholla 1250 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.24 0.35 Pima Wash @ Ina Pima Wash at Ina Road 1260 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.28 0.43 Big Wash Big Wash at Rancho Vistoso Boulevard 1270 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.20 0.31 CDO @ Big Wash Cañada Del Oro Wash near Oracle Road 6020 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.24 0.35 Santa Cruz @ Ina Santa Cruz River at Ina Road 6110 0.04 0.04 0.08 0.24 0.24 Avra Valley Airpark Santa Cruz River 0.5 miles east of Sanders Road
Vail Area 4220 0.00 0.00 0.16 0.16 0.79 Rancho Del Lago approximately 1.8 miles northwest of Vail 4250 0.00 0.04 0.39 0.43 0.94 Pantano @ Vail Pantano Wash 1.5 miles southeast of Colossal Cave Road 4270 0.04 0.04 0.24 0.24 1.06 Salcido Place 6 miles north-northwest of Mescal 4280 Site temporarily removed due to road construction Cienega Crk @ I-10 Cienega Creek at Interstate 10 4290 0.04 0.04 0.20 0.20 0.91 Mescal 2 miles northwest of Mescal 4310 0.00 0.00 0.55 0.55 1.22 Davidson Canyon Davidson Canyon Wash 0.25 miles south of Interstate 10 4320 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.12 0.43 Empire Peak Empire Peak 4410 0.00 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.75 Haystack Mtn. Haystack Mountain
Green Valley Area 6050 0.00 0.00 0.47 0.67 1.61 Santa Cruz@Continen Santa Cruz River at Continental Road 6060 0.00 0.08 0.16 0.20 1.22 Santa Cruz@Conoa Santa Cruz River at Elephant Head Road 6080 0.04 0.08 0.12 0.12 1.34 Santa Cruz@Tubac Santa Cruz River at Tubac 6310 0.00 0.00 0.20 0.24 0.98 Keystone Peak Keystone Peak 6320 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.08 1.18 Tinaja Ranch near Caterpillar Proving Ground 6330 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.08 1.10 Anamax Mission Road north of Continental Road 6350 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.12 1.18 Elephant Head Butte near Elephant Head Butte 6390 0.04 0.20 0.35 0.35 2.80 Florida Canyon Florida Canyon Work Center
There were numerous storm totals over 2 inches throughout the State, mountain ones that can be seen in the USGS rolling 24 h archive here (amounts will diminish due to the continuous updating that goes on, as with the PC ALERT gauges), and in the rainlog network from the U of AZ, and in the CoCoRahs reports for Arizona, the latter two sites do not have complete 24 h totals ending at 7 AM AST until several hours after 7 AM AST.
Southern California rains exceeded 10 inches in several mountain locals over the past few days, almost 14 inches at one mountain site in Ventura County. So, SC’ans are quite happy, today anyway.
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Wow; those sunset clouds!
Good grief, there was quite the spectacular mammatus display late yesterday. Even resembled the great mammatus ahead of the El Reno tornado in OK last May. Then, as the sun set in a brief clearing to the west, the downward protruding bulges became lit, and the yellow-orange color of the fading sun light (as it passed through a great distance through the lower atmosphere and the shorter wavelengths of blues get scattered out) lit up the ground and foothills of the Catalinas. It was almost too gaudy to be real and not “shopped” as we say today.
6:51 AM. Sun burst on Stratocumulus bases.4:22 PM. Incoming Cumulonimbus mammatus. The core of this shower was far to the S beyond Pusch Ridge.
Started to rain here in at 3:45 AM…have 0.01 inches so far. :{
So far in AZ, Flagstaff area leading the way Statewide with about 0.90 inches. You can check out those amounts in real time here from the USGS, and here for Pima County. Also you can look at those amounts reported in real time at PWSs (personal weather stations) throughout Arizona on the Weather Underground “Wundermaps” as this exciting, much awaited day develops.
Point forecasts from the U of AZ “Beowulf “for today, based on 11 PM AST data, here. (Graphical version not yet completed.) You’ll see that a mighty amount of over 4 inches of water content is forecast for the top of the Lemmon (Summerhaven) from this storm. These calcs are usually a little high, but even 2 inches would be fabulous up there. Catalina, per se, does not appear in the point location list, but Oro Valley is expected to get around half an inch. We should do better than that here in Catalina/Sutherland Heights.
———-SC rain doings———
Forecast “10 in 24” at Opids Camp; got about 8, same for favored locations in Ventura County. Working on 10 for storm there as I write; another round of pounding rain moving into the LA Basin now. NWS tornado warning for east central LA expires at 4 AM today. (They saw rotation in a severe thunderstorm around Covina earlier this morning.)
BTW, go here to see how excited the Los Angeles branch of the NWS is today. You’ll see that their domain is a kaleidoscope of colors for warnings and advisories of all kinds! Ninety five percent of the time, they really don’t have that much to forecast in southern California, pretty boring really, so this is a great time for them to show their stuff, be excited, “show the colors.” (Me, too!)
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Some of yesterday’s cloud scenes
6:46 AM. Sunrise on the C-Gap.6:57 AM. Two levels of ice clouds, an rare site. The darker on just above the mountains is some icy remnant of an Altocumulus cloud that converted to ice. The whiter clouds are at Cirrus levels, likely some spot of droplets before almost instantly glaciating. The different colors give away the different heights, and also the difference in movement; one level moving relative to the other tells you this, too.8:37 AM. Microversions of Cirrus uncinus suddenly blossomed overhead; almost missed ’em. What was unusual was how tall the vertical parts were with tiny hooks at the bottom. That vertical part indicates a layer of air with no wind shear, a phenomenon almost always observed at cloud tops. The wind shear may have been “mixed out” by the up and down motions associated with cloud formation and dissipation.8:37 AM. Close up view of those tiny Ci unc.9:12 AM. “Webby” Cirrus. Has no official name that I know of.9:35 AM. Though the natural sky is slightly marred by a contrail, in general it was a thing of beauty all morning in particular with the high visibility, complex goings on in the cloud structure, deep blue sky, moderate breezes and temperatures in the 70s. This view, toward the Charouleau Gap, shows more of that “webby” Cirrus, and on the horizon, left of center, the rarely seen Cirrus castellanus which I report seeing almost every week here in AZ.10:37 AM. Less complicated Cirrus fibratus/uncinus patches moved in, followed by the development of small Cumulus clouds. Still very pretty though.2:50 PM. Your afternoon. The Cirrus thickened into a solid layer with gray, transitioning to Altostratus with these small Cumulus (“humilis”) below. TYpically thickening is due to the bottoms of clouds lowering (in this case, where the ice crystals falling out evaporate is perceived as cloud base) while the top stays about the same height. As the air moistens during the approach of a storm, the crystals fall farther toward the ground and the cloud thickens downward.
Rain beginning to pile up again in Cal as behemoth Pac storm moves in. See an actual, professional level weather map below, not a mickey mouse one. It will be good for you to see a complex weather map with all kinds of weather symbolia on it:
0.01 inches at Opids Camp, LA area mountain site, already (at 5:30 AM AST) out of predicted by C-M of 10 inches or so in the next 24 h; highest totals somewhere in central and southern Cal mountains likely between 10 and 20 inches for this one storm! California dreamin’1? Will keep you posted if I am right.
Here?
Really tough to forecast more than an inch in one winter’s day in a desert. Goes against the grain and the cactus, for that matter. Thought I would get some help from the great U of AZ Beowulf Cluster, but its still crunching the 11 PM AST data away as I write here at 5:30 AM. So, can’t wait for a really accurate answer. You should go there, though to get one….
Being crude, then, and I mean using a model with a huge grid spacing compared to that of the U of AZ Cluster model, the Canadian GEM indicates about 36 h of rain, 5 AM AST tomorrow to about 5 PM on Sunday, and even at a average of 0.05 inches over that time, you get 1.80 inches! Good grief. So, maybe now that BIG forecast by a BIG atmos sci faculty member at Colo State, “1.5 to 2 inches”, might be right, closer than my dinky 1 inch max forecast of yesterday. Its great to be wrong when you under forecast precip, but that’s about the only time!
Higher resolution US WRF-GFS mod run from 5 PM AST last evening has fewer hours of precip, BTW, partly because it DOES resolve the forecast in 6 h blocks, not 12 h ones like the crude Canadian model.
Also, the winds above us, being more westerly than southerly during the coming storm, is better for us here in Catalina. Deep southerly flows have to go over Pusch Ridge, and rain can be diminished locally that bit due to the downslope effect off the Ridge. Won’t have that tomorrow and Sunday, so that’s a plus.
The cut to the chase: minimum from this typewriter now HAS to be much higher than 0,25 inches as was indicated previously. Will go to 0.75 inches as the LEAST we’ll get (things don’t go well, main bands just miss Catalina, etc), with 1.5 inches as max by Sunday evening 5 PM.
Will not mention this forecast again, of course, if the rain in Catalina is outside these limits.
Yesterday’s clouds
Nice patterns and nice small Cu yesterday with great visibility again.
1:53 PM Finely granulated, and with a bit of color (iridescence) Cirrocumulus. Here, the Cc is at mid-levels, not at Cirrus levels. In our cloud classification scheme, which is a little funky, its only the tiny granulations that make it Cc and not Altocumulus. Happens a lot.
5:13 PM. Delicate Cirrus uncinus (hooked Cirrus).
6:18 PM. Sunset Cirrus uncinus, so pretty.
The End, except for a little peak at Opids Camp rain just now… Wow, was just 0.01 when I looked at the 3 AM ob, and at 6 AM is already over an inch!
Hope, too, you caught the beautiful sunrise just now. Will reprise it tomorrow.
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1Some of you will instantly recall the initial words to this pop tune:
“All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray, I went walkin’ for awhile on a winter’s day.”
These words were inserted after the “Mamas and the Papas” poke at LA smog in the original words were deemed by producers as less desirable in seeking a commercial hit. The original words that the song began with, before it was commercialized, were” “All the leaves are gray, and the sky is brown”, words that might offend Californians. Thought you’d like to know.
BTW, this video above is a PERFECT paradigm for this year’s sunny, warm and dry weather in the West, and the brutal winter back East. Take a look! Its great!
As much as 1-2 inches as far south as Ventura County so far, 3-4 inches in the coastal mountains of central Cal as of just now (4 AM AST). Rolling 24 h Cal State archive here. LA area rain here; keep an eye on Opids Camp and Crystal Lake FC. Totals in NW LA County just now going over an inch. Following this drought bustin’ sequence, while just a” two shot wonder”, will be like watching….I don’t know..something really exciting, a weather kind of Olympics, where the favored team “drought” is taken down unexpectedly by some upstart storm. Yes, I will play the Olympics card.
And remember, this is just the lightweight division today; up next, beginning Friday in southern Cal: “Sumo wrestling”, as a 400-lb storm moves in next to push aside “Team Drought” at least for the moment. (Is Sumo wrestling an Olympic sport?) Still expecting some jumbo rain totals in the mountains of southern Cal, such as more than 10 inches at places like Opids Camp in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Speaking of jumbo totals, a friend and expert weather forecaster (and big atmos sci faculty member at Colorado State who now lives part time in Catalina), sent a stunning e-mail to me yesterday expressing his opinion that Catalina will get “1.5 to 2 inches of rain” from the second “Sumo” storm, the one that eases into Arizona late Friday and arrives here by dawn on Saturday, and then continues for around 24 h. Cloud maven here can’t go that high in his guess, doesn’t have the “testicularis” you might say, to go that high; 1 inch max is all I can come up with, but would be ecstatic if in error!
Still, this is going to be FANTASTIC! Saw some perennial wildflower blooms on the trails yesterday (see below), ones in need of a little pick-me-up–actually a big one, and this will be great for them. Fauna, too, will be happy! It may be too late for the annuals…not sure. Poppies are few, and awfully stunted this year, as many of you know.
Don’t forget, too, before our storm; those gorgeous skies! Have camera and pen ready to document and make notes about them in your weather diaries Those skies we’ll be fantastic, too, like yesterday, which was a great day to be on a horse, watching the sky.
Even when its raining the skies will be fantastic!
How many of us, even if we’re from Seattle, are STARVED for low gray, dank and dark daytime rainy skies, clouds chopping off the Catalinas a thousand feet above us, listening to rain pounding on our roofs, then running off roof making puddles, those richer shades of desert green after the rain ends, the glistening, water-covered rocks on the Catalinas in the morning sun after the storm? Its a real treasure when rain falls here.
Yesterday’s clouds
12:23 PM. You got yer Cis spis (Cirrus spissatus) topping a few Cu fractus and humilis, if I may. It was so great to see those Cumulus clouds, reminding us that July and huge clouds are only about 125 days away!12:23 PM. You got yer Cirrus uncinus. Note fine strands hanging down. Amazing they can be so perfect, not erratic (see arrow), when the wind up there is about 100 mph!
3:54 PM. A great line of a Ac lenticular advanced over Oro Valley. This shot was about the best I got and its not that great.
3:55 PM. Not all about clouds..wanted to show you that I have more than one dimension. Here, a wild onion bloom maybe, slightly out of focus. Prickly pear is in focus, though.3:55 PM. Very nice Altocumulus lenticularis formed later in the afternoon downwind from the Catalinas.6:25 PM. Another very nice sunset due to some Cirrus spissatus and a few lower Altocumulus clouds.
On the weather horizon
Mods still have unusually warm weather here in the storm after life, 8-12 days out (cold in the East continues, too). But, then some Catalina rains continue to show up after that hot spell when you think May is already here.
It doesn’t get any better than this if you need rain and want 10 inches:
Valid at 5 PM AST, Friday, February 28th. Arrow (upper right panel) points to massive sweep of sub-tropical air into southern Cal, the whole SW really. This from the Canadian Global Environmental Model (GEM) based on last evening’s data.
Actually, 10 inches in a day is not so unusual in the mountains of southern California, which is something that’s going to happen if this model output verifies this weekend. Also, the storm takes a couple of days to go through, and so mountain totals of 10-20 inches are likely in the favored locations. Coastal areas would likely see 2-6 inches I think now with this configuration.
Twenty four hour totals of more than 25 inches of RAIN were observed in the southern California mountains in January 1943, and again in January 1969, to put a forecast of “just” 10 inches in one day in perspective.
Thinking about driving over there, to say, Hoegee’s Camp in the San Gabriel Mountains, where they once got 26 inches in a day (back in ’43). Would really like to see what heavy rain looks like in this basher; rocks coming down onto highways, windy, giant waves along the coast, a real weather hullaballoo. Maybe we should organize a storm tourism trip? Think of all the happy people we’d see, too, in this muttin’ bustin’ drought bustin’ bustin’ bustin’ bronc bustin’ storm, to kind of get in the rodeo frame of mind here to emphasize to the people of Tucson just how rough it will be on the city folk of southern Cal.
The good news here is that predicted rains have been increasing here in Catalina and throughout Arizona in the models as well. Maybe it won’t be too late for our spring greening to green up a little more. An inch is now possible here on the top end, minimum likely to be as much as a quarter of an inch (even if mods really off) ending on the 3rd.
Still looking at a close call, maybe some sprinkles before that from the first slug of rain that hits Cal, on Thursday, the 27th of Feb. Much of Arizona should get something from that first rain intrusion.
What a great cloud day it was yesterday! Fabulous.
Here are a few cloud shots:
Can you name them?
Today? Sat imagery makes it look like our middle clouds will be thick enough to produce isolated drops. Be sure to log any that you see.
