Very happy to post this breaking future news here on February 24th. Close rain call on the 27th, too, as the first of two significant troughs with their low pressure centers march into California, bringing a drought break there of some consequence. Likely an inch or two in the coastal areas south of SFO (“Frisco”; rhymes with Crisco), and maybe even LA area as well with the first storm. That first one continues across Arizona bringing widespread, though light rains the central and northern mountains on Thursday the 27th.
Valid at 5 PM Thursday, the 27th. Upper left panel shows “little brother” trough over Arizona, and most of State covered by a little precip (lower right panel). Big brother on the move offshore of Cal, flow reaching deep into sub-tropics.
Then “Big Brother” hits Cal beginning on the evening of the 28th, gets here late on the first or early on March 2nd. The LA Basin rains in the second one look like they’ll amount to 2-4 inches, and maybe something from a quarter to half an inch here in Catalinaland when it arrives.
Model?
Canadian GEM (General Environmental Model). Sometimes, like their hockey team, it defeats the US models in weather forecasting, and I am riding the fence that it will this time. In the interest of disclosure, the US WRF-GFS model has virtually NO RAIN in Arizona on the 27th (!), whilst the Canadian one has widespread rains (both using global data from 5 PM AST yesterday). So, I reject the US model, one that takes the first storm too far north to affect AZ much. (This has sometimes been a problem for our US models.)
Second storm?
Both models have rain on the 1st-2nd, but the Canadian, much larger amounts in southern California where I grew up and, while having poor grades after puberty and the realization of girls (!) hit, nevertheless had some success playing baseball. Could be nearly a month’s worth of rain in one storm in the LA area, which averages about 3 inches in Feb and March, both, IF the Canadian model verifies. Those kind of amounts upstream would also mean more rain potential for us here, too. But, the fact that they BOTH have rain, is really great to see. One would think that some rain is pretty much in the bag. I hope they put rain barrels out in Cal!
After the storm…
Oh, me, look at this “Lorenz” (the chaos guy) plot:
Valid March 8th, 5 PM AST. Its awful as a graphic to begin with, but when interpreted its even more awful in the kind of weather it implicates for us as we march farther into March: in one word, Hot and Dry! Easterners won’t like it, either, as the severe winter continues back there, Lake Superior might remain frozen over until April! Jet stream is flowing along the red and turquoise lines, so cold air brought southward where lines aim toward the southeast, as over the eastern US.
A pattern like the one above is hard to maintain in March since the climatology of March-May leads to a trough in the western US. So hoping the awful pattern above will give way by mid-March or soon thereafter, as do easterners I would bet. Below, likely fantasy, since its WAY out on the forecast horizon, but this historic forecast (would produce historically cold weather in the East if it did verify, chances probably less than 30% as a wild guess. I just now saw it and it was AMAZING!
Valid March 11th, 5 PM AST. LOOK at that high pressure area and cold air slamming down east of the Rockies and strong low over New England. Good grief! Would be headlines if it happens.
Yesterday’s clouds
9:22 AM. Great example of Altocumulus perlucidus.1:47 PM. Later became blobby with heavy virga; Altocumulus opacus virgae if you really want to know.6:22 PM. Skipping ahead, these formations led to another in a long series of nice sunset shots. Hope you got one.
Most of us can easily understand the reasoning behind the bounty of media stories and pronouncements by some scientists/White House ones even, describing how global warming has led to such severe winters over the past few years on various continents. It makes perfect sense that as it gets warmer, winters will be colder, more severe in some regions, while other areas, like the SW this year get a global warming face plant.
Furthermore, extreme regional temperature extremes like the ones we have seen in the US this winter have NEVER happened before since 1976-77, and, oh yeah, 1962-63…oops, I guess 1983 had a bad winter back East, too. OK, maybe “NEVER” is too strong… Tree rings have some bad stuff in them, too, before the historical records begin. Lets just say that the “NEVER” above refers to the last 12 months maybe.
Well, as I posted last time, Mike et al (his friends) posted a letter to the uppity journal, Science, saying that attributing these kinds of extremes to global warming was based on evidence that was “not compelling” (i. e, in normal speak, BS, or likely BS1.)
But that’s not the way the Press is treating these claims.
Mike is kind of a complainer, well, actually, I never actually heard him complain about anything, professionally or otherwise whilst at the University of Washington, but anyway, continuing, he sent to our weather e-mail list at that institution kind of a complaint. He observed that his comment in Science questioning the evidence presented in support of the claim that global warming is causing the severe winter in the East, was not getting much play in the Press while the proponents of a not-a-compelling-theory were getting a lot.
Here’s what Mike sent out to us, FYI:
“Here’s a new posting on Andy Revkin’s dot. earth following up on our letter that appeared in Science last Friday. The clarification at the end of our posting is in response to statements in postings of Jennifer Francis and Charles Greene on dot.earth, alleging that we had misrepresented the Francis and Vavrus article in our Science letter.
There’s an article about Jennifer Francis’ work on the NPR blog 2/16. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/16/277911739/warming-arctic-may-be-causing-jet-stream-to-lose-its-way
She appeared on CBS yesterday and her work was featured on the BBC News web site http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26023166
In contrast, the press has shown very little interest in our Science letter. In a quick look on Google just now I found only one blog (besides Cliff’s and Judy Curry’s) that refers to it. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/16/Record-Cold-February-Sending-Global-Warming-Conspiracists-into-Deep-Freeze
Kevin Trenberth and Jennifer Francis were interviewed yesterday on Chris Mooney’s program, which will be aired this Friday.
The link leads to Wikipedia and other links there; Mike has gotten NUMEROUS awards for his work; none of those are from oil companies, at least that I know of.)
I emphasized “Mike’s” observation (not his real first name, BTW) about one-sided media coverage by using a larger and red font because, you see, Mike came down in yesterday’s rain.
By that I mean, he is an idealist, one that sincerely believes that the Press will cover a story evenly and will give both sides a fair hearing in the debate about global warming/climate change. Mike, BTW, is FULLY on board the global warming band wagon, as are his pals; they just wanted to point out that some claims are not well supported and are going too far; that’s all.
But we streetwise folk remember the words of Seattle’s Queensryche, 1989:
Balanced media coverage on climate? Telling the public in large fonts about the “puzzling hiatus” in global warming over the past 15 years or so, as it was termed in Science recently?
Not gonna happen in these polarized days of the shifting polar vortex, as the latter has always done from time to time.
Let’s look ahead in weather to see if any other extreme weather news sits before us in the models. Then imagine how it might be covered by the media.
Below, from our best model, and from late yesterday’s global data, something awesome has shown up and its been showing up for a few model runs of late, giving it enhanced credibility:
A GIGANTIC and terribly severe mass of cold air is foretold to extrude into most of the US from the Arctic in about 8-10 days. NOAA spaghetti plots VERY supportive of this very bad cold wave). Below, the awesome and annotated in excitment sea level map from NOAA WRF-GFS based on the global data crunch at 5 PM AST yesterday:
Valid at 5 PM AST, February 28th, only nine days away! Arizona still toasty. Word deliberately misspelled here to see if you’re paying attention, one of the many innovations here at cloud-maven.
So, how will another astounding round of cold air be treated by the media, and certain incautious scientists? Let us imagine newspaper headlines on March 1st, 2014:
“Globally-warmed polar vortex squeezed out of Arctic again onto International Falls, MN!
“Numerous low temperature records set yet again against the backdrop of a warming world!”
Later in the stories we might read:
“Demographic experts warn that If the earth warms anymore, and winters continue to be more and more severe in the US, illegal migration will be INTO Mexico, not out of it.”
Or…..
“Citrus growers to move crops to southern Mexico and central America to escape the warmer world of more severe winters.”
———————–End of imagination module—————
What in the cards for Catalina weather in early March?
Still looks pretty good, better than 50-50 IMO, for measurable rain here in Catalina during the first week in March. See below:
Valid at 5 PM AST March 1st. Green areas denote regions where the model thinks it has rained during the prior 12 h. Really bad cold wave in progress in eastern half of US. Will Lake Superior ice over?
The End.
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1Shouldn’t be taken as fact, just an assertion at this time, a hypothesis waiting for confirmation.
2From the concept album about drug mind control, “Operation: Mindcrime”, released in 1989 when the writer was quite the lefty. But then I heard that NPR interview with David Horowitz and Peter Collier, former editors of the rad lib Ramparts Mag in the 1960s and 70s and how they had come around over about a ten year period to be able to vote for Ronnie Reagan and I went, “Huh?” “How is that possible?” It would be like Bob Dylan singing songs about being “saved” in the Christian sense. Not even imaginable.
A few top climate scientists have banded together and commented in prestigious Science magazine concerning the recent attribution of this winter’s weather extremes to global warming1 from places on high. In fact, such attributions can’t be done with any reliability. Reading between the lines, and knowing how hard it is to criticize a former student’s work, much less a presidential adviser whom they helped elect (:}), I would have to conclude that they were pretty upset and felt a strong need to get the word out.
Will a few incautious scientists and politicos continue to make those kinds of as yet, ill-founded claims as addressed by Wallace et al? Is there cactus in Arizona?
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Cold and precip suggested here at the beginning of March two weeks from now. Some climatology supports something real happening then since early March is also the the time that the highest chance of rain (over the past 130 years or so) in southern California occurs. Rain there usually means rain here in a day.
So, maybe, MAYBE, this storm will be real and not fantasy as so many are in model predictions two weeks away.
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In memoriam, Zuma: 2000-Feb 15, 2014
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1In recent years, in a subtle sleight of hand, the oft heard phrase of earlier years,”global warming” is now being replaced by the phrase, “climate change” because it stopped warming so many years ago, 15 or so, whilst CO2 concentrations continued to climb. Scientists and the media became increasingly uncomfortable, it appears, talking about warming when it isn’t.
However, “climate change” is something we can ALL agree on since the earth’s climate is always changing, such as hereabouts in the SW US, oscillating from dry and wet periods, sometimes very long ones in duration. Ask any tree ring.
What’s next for earth?
No one really knows for sure, but you would likely tilt if you had to make a guess toward a resumption of warming with an El Nino on deck for later in the year. The planet warms when El Ninos happen. And if CO2 is having its way, the warming likely will not subside afterwards. Interesting times ahead!
We got a El Nino in the works, to be colloquial there for a second. Will take a bite out of drought, and the California coastline due to big storms and waves next winter when it happens. See old graphic below. Supposed to develop during the next few months, and then be full blowed by fall, to continue a western dialect. Pretty exciting, thinking about an El Nino. This word, BTW, from Nate1, or rather, indirectly, from his El Nino expert forecasting buddies.
Summer rain’s not so much affected by an El Nino, but it could mean a better chance of a rogue tropical storm affecting us in the fall because they’re stronger/longer as they sometimes push northward at that time of the year, and then our chances to get substantial rains during the winter season are pretty good , particularly late winter, Jan through May. Obviously, pretty desperate, talkin’ about next fall and winter here in summer’s February.
1997-98 version, which was really a huge one!
Just ahead, a cold one (or two)
Check these out, spaghetti people:
Valid 5 PM Feb 20th. Guaranteed in the cold trough bowl this day. Get jackets ready.Valid Feb 26th at 5 PM AST. Pretty strong signal that we’re still in at least a cool trough. Rain, “iffy” in these situations but can’t be counted out.
Only a couple of drops here overnight. Measured around Reddington Pass and in the other Catalina Foothills, the well-to-do one, but that’s not good enough for a post. Hell, the Altocumulus/Altostratus clouds weren’t even that interesting yesterday, but if you do want to see them again, go here.
Nothing in the way of rain in sight now for another two weeks. Ugh.
Also, I am against “geoengineering” where you mess with low clouds like Stratocumulus via aerosols to make them brighter on the top, thus, darker on the bottom, to reflect more of the sun’s light back into space. Thought you would like to know that. Lotta money about to head into crackpot (IMO) preliminary study schemes like that now days. Haven’t we made a big enough mess without making more of a mess with some ludicrous attempt to change clouds over vast regions of the earth, as would be necessary to have the “desired” effect of cooling it?
Total precipitation predicted for Catalina (0.01 to 0.10 inches) ending at 5 AM tomorrow morning. Some to the north fell yesterday afternoon, but it wasn’t that much. Sure, its yesterday’s model crunch based on data that’s almost 24 h old, but its got some rain in it, and glimpsing the incoming cloud mass, now located in western AZ and southern Cal, this looks a little reasonable to even a little low now. thinking now that it will be more than 0.10 inches; might get 0.11 inches here in Catalina. Have dip stick (rain gauge one) ready. A new set of computations is not yet ready, but by the time you crawl out of bed and while I’ve been working, the link above will have new information that might be a little different than what I am looking at here at 4:10 AM AST. But I have to move on now!
So, look for lots of middle clouds (Altocumulus/Altostratus) again today, but likely bases lowering during the day and looking pretty threatening by evening. Check this sounding sequence from the BC and how the dewpoint and temperature lines come together at lower heights during the day today. So lots of clouds to write about in your weather diary today, pretty much like yesterday1.
No rain and lots of warming ahead after this.
Yesterday’s clouds
Perhaps first, before moving on to something as ephemeral as clouds, we should start with something contemplative; an aphorism written by a man who compared humans and their lives to the activities of arachnids. Pretty effective I thought.
Chief Seattle, too, by his very namesake, reminds us of the recent big Superbowl victory, after which 700,000 Chief Seattleites gathered in the streets yesterday to see the parade of players and other festivities, weaving their own distinctive strands of life.
Sanctuary Cove Park, Marana, maybe. Then again, it might be in Tucson. Nobody really knows where these towns start and end.
Day started with an overcast of Altostratus with mammatus/testicularis (which I showed yesterday) that devolved into an Altocumulus overcast most of the rest of the day, example below:
12:45 PM. Altocumulus opacus. No virga evident.
2:52 PM. Thin wisp of vIrga and light snow top Mt. Lemmon (center peak). Hope you logged it. I did and I was about 15 friggin’ miles away. But don’t feel bad. I sometimes miss things myself. You just have to bear down, as we say around here, and be fanatical about it. That’s the strand I want you to weave in this life.3:46 PM. Altocumulus lenticulars form under an Altocumulus perlucidus layer. View from Sanctuary Cove Park, very nice little loop walk there.
4:14 PM. More isolated examples of Altocumulus lenticularis near the Tucson Mountains.
Seen in Sanctuary Cover Park, inappropriately blooming wildflowers. This MIGHT be a purple “brown-plumed wire lettuce”, best match I could find in Wildflowers of Arizona by Rick and Nora Bowers. Message sent: global warming hitting hard in AZ this winter so far.
On the other hand, to be fair to the earth, global warming’s on the run in the Great Lakes area. Check this “find” out, courtesy of that big troublemaker and former WA State Climatologist, Mark Albright who enjoys finding discrepancies in fashionable postulations, causing people to think, maybe explain things they weren’t expecting:
The green line is the median ice coverage for the Great Lakes. Good grief, has it been cold around there or what? I guess it all evens out, and for some folks, that’s a problem these days.
The End.
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1I did notice that the big clearing didn’t get here yesterday as early as was thought, that clearing between yesterday’s trough and clouds those in this incoming one today and thought I would hide the discussion of that forecasting error in a footnote. But, maybe the whole point of life is learning from your mistakes, taking them head on. Then at the end, when you’ve finally think you’ve got it all right, you die. Doesn’t seem right.
7:46 AM. Stratocumulus lenticularis castellanus (has spires), an oxymoronic cloud. You would call this Stratocumulus because its low enough to top Ms. Mt. Lemmon. While some turrets can be seen, others are causing shadows. Have never really seen something quite like this and I look a LOT.10:35 AM. Stratocumulus lenticularis on the Catalinas. The moist air is resisting like mad being lifted over the Catalinas. Oddly, once condensation occurs a bit of heat is released and on the left you see that it was enough heat to allow a Cumulus turret to rise out of the smooth cloud. This is pretty darn rare site, seeing such smoothness AND Cumulus rising out of the same deck.3:46 PM. Cumulus humilis, no ice, except in those Cirrus clouds on the right.5:28 PM. Sun dog, or mock sun, also “parhelia” in natural Cirrus and in a contrail. The parhelia is likely brighter in the contrail since the simple hexagonal (six-sided) plate-like ice crystals that cause parhelias are smaller and more numerous in the early stages of a contrail.
6:09 PM. Cirrus spissatus.
Today’s clouds
Much like two days ago. Higher based Stratocumulus/Altocumulus with patches of heavy virga and sprinkles around.
Back edge of the cloud mass times in around 2-4 PM. Might be a little early for a great sunset, but just in case, have camera ready.
Looking farther ahead….
Still mainly dry through the next two weeks, though close call on the 7th, a situation that appears much like today, That close rain call NOW appears in both the Canadian and US WRF-GFS models (yesterday they were vastly different). So, with that, a chance of a few hundredths here after nightfall on the 6th into the morning of the 7th.
Spaghetti, in a dismal series of plots, also shows little hope for rain here through the 20th. So, even with mistakes in the initial analyses, deliberate ones to see how different the forecast maps turn out, we still can’t exit our drought! Oh, me. Poor wildflowers.
The End (did you see the giant mammatus/testicularis to the north this morning? If not, here it is:
Note redundancy in title. A “meteor” is already going down, so you don’t need the word “down.” Hahaha.
They were small drops, some were as small as drizzle-sized (500 microns in diameter or smaller) and too far apart to be called an occurrence of “drizzle”, but they fell throughout Catalina allowing Catalinans to register a trace of rain yesterday, a trace that was not predicted by the best model we have around these parts just hours before the “rain” occurred. It’s not clear what the benefit of a trace of precipitation is, but we are sure some ants and other insects were made quite happy yesterday as a virga from a higher level snowstorm spit out a few drops.
Drops that reach the ground in these kinds of situations are due to melted aggregates or clusters of single snow crystals locked together that most people would call “snowflakes.” Single crystals can never make to the ground on a day like yesterday. And, “yep”, that “fog” you saw drooping down on the Catalinas from time to time yesterday afternoon was due to light snow.
No Catalina, Arizona, rain in US mod forecasts through the next 15 days (!–just horrible) as the US models continue to evaporate rain chances on the 6th-8th. A few days ago the system going by then was supposed to bring a substantial rain to most of Arizona. Now its just a dry trough passage in the model, like at watering trough1 with a hole in the bottom. Phooey.
Oddly, the Canadian model, which first calculated a bust for rain here on the 6th-8th when the US model had lots, now has MORE rain in it near us here in Catalina on the 6th-7th than the lugubrious US model. The US model has NO RAIN whatsoever in the WHOLE State of Arizona ending on the morning of the 7th! How odd is that?
Below is the salubrious Canadian depiction for Arizona rain by the morning of the 7th, a rain that could be good for health of all of us and our desert:
Valid at 5 AM February 7th. The upper level trigger for clouds and rain, a trough, is already past us and in western New Mexico, but the Canadians believe that widespread rain will have occurred in Arizona as it went by during the prior 12 h ! See lower right hand panel green and blue areas; use microscope.
Its interesting how you still can remember with fondness those people who affected your life so much, even if for a short time.
Below, after an important aside, your cloud day picture jumble, one that began with a brief, but memorable sunrise “bloom”, and one that also ended with great sunset color on the Catalinas.
7:23 AM. Sunrise over the Catalinas.3:14 PM. Dog and virga.9:43 AM. A brief clearing of a couple of hours duration led to pretty scenes of Altocumulus floccus trailing virga. 8:21 AM. Altocumulus floccus/castellanus trailing long trails of snow virga trails.
5:57 PM. Color on the Catalinas.4:03 PM. Snow on the Lemmon.
The End.
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1Images of watering troughs, in case you’re from out-of-state and a city person and unfamiliar with western culteral expressions and don’t know what a watering trough is.
I’m talking about your clouds and weather day yesterday, and definitely NOT about someone whom I shall call, “Sharon1“, that happened to me 33 years ago and whose birthday was yesterday, Ground Hog Day, a day commemorated by a 1993 movie about a weatherman. Seemed “right”, too, to be a weatherman with a girlfriend whose birthday was on Ground Hog Day. I loved her so much! Was definitely in the first stage of the psychologist’s lab standard, the Passionate Love Scale2 ; euphoric when things were going right, and also a stage characterized by delusional and obsessive thinking. (Haven’t we all been there at some point?) Had a great sense of humor and playfulness about her, too. As it turned out, though, I wasn’t good enough for her. (I really wasn’t; she was a med student and all that; very brainy, so there was quite a mental contrast.)
Oh, yeah, NOW for the clouds yesterday on a cool day which is what I was talking about to being with; high only 55 F here in the “Heights”:
6:06 PM. Altostratus, of course, with slight virga consisting of very light snow. Too thick to be Cirrus. 3:18 PM. Altocumulus perlucidus. What the temperature? In the middle of the photo there’s an ice canal–hoped you logged it in your weather diary. That ice canal was caused by an aircraft passing through a cloud that’s well below freezing. The exact reason for the sudden freezing of drops in that cloud is still being investigated. However, when you see this phenomenon, an ice canal or hole punch cloud, I want you to FIRST think of ME, because our paper on this phenomenon was rejected twice back in the early 1980s before being published, and second, when you see this happen, estimate that the droplet cloud was probably at -20 C (-4 F) or colder. Yes, THAT cold and still composed of droplets! Therefore it produces a buildup of ice on an aircraft when one flies through it, but then the aircraft changes that by converting to ice behind it! How strance is that?. (I deliberately misspelled “strange” to see if anyone has read this far.)
Annotated version. 3:19 PM. Frosty the Lemmon. Good sign of rime icing on those trees up there. You see how frosty they look? Likely because of supercooled cloud droplets hitting the trees and freezing during all the low clouds of the previous day. Very pretty. 2:19 PM. “Angel’s hair”, Cirrus fibratus. The delicateness of those striations are amazing when you think that they are traveling in air moving at around 80 mph up there around 30-odd thousand feet above us.
Below, the predicted total rain in Arizona as this great trough goes by. NIL in Catalina! The map below is a forecast of all the rain areas and their amounts expected by 2 PM AST tomorrow afternoon. Fortunately, it has been, as in basketball, “rejected.” Read details in caption.
Expect a trace to maybe a tenth. No drop will escape my attention!
The End. I hope you’re happy now since I have titillated you with a personal story in a cheap attempt to raise blog ratings. Haven’t broke into the top 10 million blogs yet. But maybe if min is more like “Entertainment Tonight”, I make that breakthrough.
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BTW, if you haven’t heard yet: “Seattle Celebrate (sic) SB Win!”, a title and article written by a possible drunken AP writer after the SB, if you’re interested.
————– 1Defintely NOT a picture of “Sharon”, but its how she MIGHT have looked had she been in my Seattle living room with her son, New Year’s Eve, 1981. And, of course, I found someone I loved just as much later…
2Don’t believe me that such a thing exists? Read the first column of SCI CLIPPINGS CAUDATE OVER HEELS IN LOVE 001, no less. Probably goes farther in its discussion of these kinds of things than we really want to know about and how they came to know them…be advised.
