Cirrus uncinus. Started out looking like radiating lines of Cirrus, but this look is due to perpspective:
In case you missed them…these stunning skies
Category: Definitions
Cis fib and Cis spis lead to nice sunset; big trough, big wind ahead
Cirrus fibratus and Cirrus spissatus, of course. Here they are from yesterday.
The weather ahead
Troughulent weather is ahead as you can plainly see here from the NOAA spaghetti factory:
Here’s what it looks like on a regular 500 millybar map (IPS MeteoStar):
No rain in it for us, but if you missed having wind yesterday the 21st, well this situation will make up for it. Likely to be gusts over 40 mph in these here parts when it actually peaks out in about a week. In the meantime, a West Coast trough ahead of this violent jet streamer from the Pacific will keep the air moving long before this unusual event slams into Cal.
The End for now.
Pretty castellanus
Along with Altocumulus “floccus1” as well, many with ice virga. Some clumps got so enthusiastic that they went into sizes that we really can’t name, too large to be Altocumulus elements, and too small to be what we normally would call Cumulus or Cumulonimbus. Here are some more examples of yesterday’s clouds:
Taking a bite out of drought in the Plains States
Here the Drought Monitor for May 7th. Looks pretty bad in the central and southern Plains States and the central and southern Rockies. 
But here’s what’s happened according to WSI’s radar-derived rain totals over the 7 days ending since this map. Makes you fell that bit better for our drought-stricken brothers even if we didn’t get anything. And it looks like rains will continue off and on in droughty Plains areas now for another two weeks. Excellent. Nothing in sight here, sadly.
The End (still putting life together after moving; posts will be a bit sparse).
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1“Floccus” has a ragged or lofted base, one higher than the other ones around.
Dawdling low to bring scattered showers for a couple of days in 10-13 days
We’re not into streamlined titles here.
In the meantime, before taking a hopeful look way ahead; wind and dust. Today begins the well-forecast model trough and low event from more than 10 days ago for the 17th, except its happening on the 15th and 16th. It means afternoon dust and wind, wind and dust, followed by unusually cool air on the 17th. No rain likely in this one, though, like the last dust event; just some scattered Cumulus on late on the 16th and 17th.
The weather way ahead: After the dust, idle speculations of distant rain
There’s a tiny low now east of Hawaiian Islands, that, models say, will dawdle around out there for awhile, but also be drifting eastward eventually, not being picked by the jet stream and Nike swooshed to the northeast as most such lows would be. Just continues along at low latitudes until reaching us late on Thursday, April 25th. Here it is in the NOAA spaghetti plots. It would be astonishing if this itty-bitty low gets here, but, here’s the hopeful sequence in “spaghetti.” This is only brought up because its the first model rain that has shown up for southern AZ in a long, LONG time.
In case you don’t still don’t believe me, here’s a colorful model loop showing that this is supposed to happen to that low east of Hawaii. Further support can be seen in some green pixelation over Arizona from IPS MeteoStar’s rendering of our WRF-GFS model, our best, for the amounts of rain in the 12 h ending on the morning of the 26th.
I hope you’re happy now.
The End.
PS: Pretty happy myself, after learning through a bz website that this blog has value! How much? TWENTY-FIVE US dollars! Thanks tremendously to both readers!
Less splotchy; more filling
The clouds yesterday were supposed to be “splotchy”, big clearings between interesting middle clouds like Altocumulus with long virga strands. Instead there was a vast coverage of Altostratus opacus “dullus” with long streaks of virga, with a few drops reaching the ground here and there but not here. There was some mammatus-t clouds, too. Also, the end of the clouds didn’t get here until after nightfall, not in the afternoon as anticipated from this keyboard.
The result was a much cooler day than expected, too. On TV, they were talkin’ low 80s for yesterday, a reasonable expectation given “splotchy clouds”, but in Catalinaland, it only reached 73 F under the heavy overcast. Very pleasant for being out-of-doors.
Oh, well. Maybe I’ll try building model airplanes and talk about those instead. Or make up historical anecdotes that aren’t true, mixing characters up from different eras and see if anybody notices. Now that would be fun! (Naw. Too silly.)
Here’s your day, beginning just before sunrise when some fabulous, fine-grained Cirrocumulus clouds came over top:
If you want, you can go to this loop from the U of WA Huskies Weather Department here and see how the little splotchy cloud thing with that passing upper trough became a big fat thing as it came by. Also in this retrospective, you should examine the U of AZ Weather Department time lapse film. You’ll be amazed at all the stuff going on in a day that looked pretty dull all in all. Also, at the end (after 5 PM AST) you’ll seen the winds aloft change completely in direction as the backside of the trough, the clearing side, approached. I saw stuff I didn’t know was happening. You’ll also see how the mammatus pouches, if I may, open up into fibrous virga. Thank you, U of AZ Weather Department, for posting these great instruction films!
Not expecting clouds for most of today, but will likely see a couple of Cirrus streaming in from the NW late.
The weather ahead
Still no precip in sight, unless you consider lithometeors a form of precip, dust accumulations, that is, such as we had a few days ago. Half inch (of dust) I predicted wasn’t that bad (hahahah). Dust accumulations expected now on the afternoon of the 16th, and again on during the afternoons of the 25th and 26th of April.
C-M alive, local, and… finished with the dust report, now back to the studio.
The End.
Pillar of the sun
At sunset yesterday, this rarely seen optical display called a “sun pillar”:
Waited for a cute bird or bat to fly above or through the pillar, making it a more popular, valuable photo; instead a helicopter came by. But it “works” as shown below. You’ll have to look hard, but its there.
Some of yesterday’s other interesting cloud formations:
Today’s clouds
Weak wave/trough passing to the south of us has some great middle and high clouds in it, splotchy ones that are sometimes incredibly spectacular, clouds like Altocumulus castellanus/floccus with virga. Just looked outside now and some of those are to the southwest of us at 5:35 AM. You can see how complex the cloud coverage is at IPS MeteoStar’s sat-radar loop here. They’ll be gone later today so enjoy them while they’re here.
The Weather Ahead
There are many troughs foretold for the Southwest and Great Basin area over the next two weeks. That the good news; it also goes with long term climo patterns that troughs like to nest in the Great Basin. But none extrude far enough southward, that is, the jet stream racing around the trough bottoms does not reach us, to bring precip to southern Arizona. Occasionally precip hits northern Arizona over this two week period, which is good, of course, for them and water supplies. In fact, its not even likely that we’ll see a cloud below 10,000 feet above ground level here if this pattern holds. And with troughs and low pressure centers nearby to the north, periods of windiness and dust will occur as they go by.
Fortunately, I guess, there’s little confidence indicated in these forecasts beyond about 11 days, NOAA spaghetti says, and so there are surprises that can pop up yet.
The End.
Tracy day; OK sunset, too
BTW, finally got a “submission” in late yesterday about our neat storm after what was deemed a power outage of some type affecting the hosting service yesterday. After re-reading it, perhaps I had too much time to think about it… Oh, well, onward.
First, from yesterday, a day with occasional sprinkles, dessert:
The remarkable thing about yesterday, and you might have thought it was fog, was the amount of dust in the air after the rain and after the winds calmed down from those 50-60 mph blasts from yesterday. Well, it was plenty windy in the deserts behind the rainy frontal band and that dust-laden air moved in right after the front went by. At first glance, and since it had rained, I thought it might be fog! But a quick check of my senses and the relative humidity, which needs to be near 100%, showed that it was only around 60%, the measurement that demonstrated it could not POSSIBLY be fog. There you have it. Problem solving for you by C-M.
Here’s an example of that dust:
With cloud tops yesterday only having to reach to 11,000 feet above sea level to surpass the magical -10 C (14 F) temperature level, hardly much above Ms. Lemmon, ice and virga from these clouds was virtually guaranteed. And, if you were watching, there was plenty, including from those clouds we couldn’t really see so well due to dust, ones that produced those several morning and early afternoon sprinkles (“its not drizzle”, a continuing theme here. Only a meteorological ignoramus would call a fall of isolated drops, “drizzle” (or snow and rain mixed together “sleet”). Perhaps I am too strong here, but it is important to get it right since REAL drizzle and sleet (raindrops that freeze on their way down through a shallow cold layer) tell you important things about the clouds and layering of the air overhead. Here are some of yesterday’s clouds as the dust thinned (both due to mixing upward into a greater depth, and due to clearer air moving in):
By mid-afternoon, most of the deeper clouds with substantial virga were gone. You can see what happened in the mid-afternoon here in the U of AZ time lapse movie (as well as the thinning of the dust haze we had yesterday) here.
The weather ahead
No rain has popped now in the mods for some time regarding the passage of a trough on the 17th, just some wind with it, though not anywhere like what we just had. In the drought relief department, it was another great day yesterday for portions of KS and NE as shown in the WSI Intellicast radar-derived precip map:
The End
“Great Unexpectations” (0.38 inches fell when almost none was expected)
Of course, the title refers to Dickens’ little known sequel (and frankly, a lightly regarded one) to his popular, “Great Expectations”. Dickens fully expected that by rushing out another novel similar to “Expectations” that a financial success similar to the one that “Expectations” had garnered for him would be easily acheived.
However, like most sequels, his effort was weak and appeared to be thrown together to merely take advantage of a gullible public. However, and much later, his sequel came to be regarded as a semi-clever, though lightly disguised, slam on the early English weather forecasting system, which was, of course in those days, was map-less, model-less, and mainly consisted of limericks and folk sayings:
“Birds flying low; beware the Low1.”
Forecasts were quite bad in those days in which Dickens lived, naturally, ships went down regularly due to unforecast storms, and Dickens wanted to dramatize this to his readers in his sequel; the various twists and turns in the plot of that sequel now thought represent ever changing, unreliable forecasts. He had hoped, with his satirical sequel, to provoke advances in weather forecasting, which he did. Isaac Newton, joined by Leibnitz, took wind of the Dickens sequel, and together they invented calculus, a tool which which allowed the calculation of the movement of air using the laws of fluid dynamics.
—-End of historical antedote2——————————
A surprising overnight rain
Well, even C-M and associated models like the Beowulf Cluster as of the 5 AM AST run on the 8th, did NOT see 0.38 inches from “Joe Cold Front”, who was supposed to pass by as a dry front, not a wet one. Still, it was fantastic surprise, one that could have only been made better by having forecasted it from this keyboard; going against the models big time. And THEN to hear Joe’s rains pounding on the roof as he went by between 10 PM and midnight. Oh, my, euphoria. BTW, the temperature dropped from 60 F to 43 F, too. Whatafront! Thank YOU, Joe.
You can see some rainfall totals from the Pima County ALERT gages (April 8th-9th rainfall). We “northenders” pretty much got the bulk of it, with Pig Spring, 1.1 miles northeast of Charoleau Gap leading the way with great 0.71 inches. Ms. Lemmon was not reporting at this time because it fell as snow. So look for a frosty Lemmon this morning. BTW, Sutherland Heights picked up 0.42 inches, and had “pre-rain” gusts to 58 mph! Whatastorm!
Continuing now at 7:21 AM after a “godaddy.com”/Wordpress meltdown an hour ago.
BTW, all the haze out there is dust under the clouds, not fog. Its pretty unusual to see something like this, especially after a good rain, so you’ll want to document it with photos and a little paragraph or two about it, and how it makes you feel. There was so much dust raised behind Joe throughout AZ and Cal that its rainband could only do away with that dust within it. This overcast situation should gradually breakup as the day goes on into more cumuliform clouds, ones with large breaks between them, the dust probably hanging on most of the day. With the -10 C level, the usual ice-forming level here at just around 11,000 feet above sea level. So it should be easy for the taller Cu to reach that and spit out some isolated precip later in the day.
Signs that the forecasts were going bad in a major way was when lines of clouds and some with precip formed in southwest Arizona late yesterday afternoon. Here’s a nice map of that development, one in which caused the tiny brain of C-M to think that it might rain, probably you, too, and anyone else that looked.
Some scenes from yesterday’s dust, from the beginning. Save these for posterity:
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Feeling good about rain here, feeling good about rain there
Not only can we exult over a surprise rain of some substance, but look what has been happening in the droughty central Plains States. Below, from WSI Intellicast’s 24 h radar-derived rainfall amounts for the US (april 8th, then April 9th at 5 AM AST. Especially take stock of the amounts over the past two days in those worst drought areas of Kansas and Nebraska. So great! And this is only the beginning of a huge rain/snow event in those drought areas!
The End
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1Hygroscopic insects adsorb water molecules and are weighed down in conditions of excess humidity, the kind that often precedes a storm. Birds then fly lower, too, to grab lower flying insects, or so the saying goes. (I am quite pleased by the kind of information I provide for you almost everyday.)
2To facts
Exciting day ahead for you; lithometeors on display
First, let’s look in on the NWS, Tucson, and see how excited they are. Wow, they just don’t get more excited than this! I am so happy for them. Happy for me and you, too, as we are about to experience a “storm.” ‘Bout time we had some weather to experience, though it will mostly consist of “lithometeors”, dust and grit.
Its been awful dull for awhile here, and, with the weather not doing much, our thoughts now days tend toward those of sequestration. Maybe weatherfolk shouldn’t be paid when the weather is just kind of dull and lifeless, with only a few CIrrus clouds to brighten (or dull, as the case may be) our lives. Just give them the day off, fight off some debt. Let the computers talk to us about the weather, using a Stephen Hawking voice computer-generated voice, or one like the one at Basha’s, or other major supermarket auto checkout stations, ones that tell you in that nice female voice, “Thank you for shopping at Basha’s! Now get the Hell out.” Well, maybe a “move along now” would be in a more western motif.
Heck, in LA, weather forecasters could be “sequestered” for six months and no one would notice! (Actually, sometimes there are important surf reports from time to time in southern California.) ((Just kidding, guys…hahahahaha, sort of)). (BTW, C-M practiced “self-sequestration” in Seattle during his forecast days there.)1
I think the NWS is actually heading in that direction, BTW. Kinda sad really.
Let’s look at the wind here in Catalina at 4:25 AM on a day with all kinds of wind warnings:
driveway weather station says average wind speed ZERO, from 233 degrees (from the southwest, if there can be a “from” when its calm. Shouldn’t it be “from” all directions?)
This is great, because “calm” will be a long forgotten memory with all the blowing and dusting ahead before “Joe Cold Front” barges in at (let’s see what the superlocal U of AZ mod sez: 7-9 PM local; be ready. Also, this prediction from the Beowulf Cluster at the U of AZ Weather Department2 likely to be just an hour or two fast, so plug that in, too. It seems to be a model thing.) Certainly by midnight, you’ll know “Joe” is here, and the wind will be calming down as it switches to the northwest for awhile. Also, the barometer will be “pumping mercury”, pushing it upward so-to-speak, as that colder, denser air piles on top of us. Hope you can get up in the morning.
5:13 AM update: average wind speed still zero…. but from 244 degrees now.
Clouds?
Well, we should have some Cumulus and Stratocumulus off to the northwest to northeast during the day, then they push into our area over night behind “Joe.” Definitely those clouds will be around tomorrow morning, probably with some virga, it will be that cold aloft and getting colder up there during the day.
Some patches of Cirrus likely during the day today, too, along with an occasional patch of Altocumulus. And with horrific winds aloft today, some lenticulars are likely to be visible to the north as well, and maybe also downwind of the Catalinas in the afternoon.
Sometimes on days like this with marginal moisture aloft and extreme winds, you get fantastically fine granulations/ patterns in briefly forming patches of Cirrocumulus lenticulars as well. Will have camera ready. Now these possibilites are what are exciting me today.
The End. Enjoy the wind and dust. Hope all the shingles are still on your roof tomorrow. Hmmph, now that I read this line, it could be saying in a Hallmark card about aging, about brains and hair. (Probably is already out there, I suppose.)
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1A long aside… Some of you who lived in Seattle during the late 1980s and early 1990s may remember that C-M was a volunteer early morning weather forecaster on weekends for a number of years on KUOW-FM in Seattle, an NPR affiliate. But guess what? C-M didn’t come in to do his clock time forecasts for the day if the weather was nice. Rather (not Dan Rather), C-M only came in on weekends when it was cloudy and threatening, rain on the way, etc., which is most weekends in Seattle (hahahaha, just kidding). In summer I was gone quite a bit; “self-sequestered.” It was great being off on a sunny day!)
With this MO in mind, when it was announced on KUOW that C-M was coming on in a few minutes with a forecast, you could imagine the collective groan of the KUOW audience; something bad was probably going to happen in the weather that day. I was never replaced, that is, another volunteer guy or gal that would come in on his/her weekend early in the morning to detail the expected events of those precious weekend days in Seattle. Feeling sad again.
2It would be nice if you sent them a few $$$ someday. I just did, as I do also for my Washington Huskies Weather Department, and even Colo State U.! (And the latter wanted to sue me once! True–a story for another day; the entire edifice of CSU pitted against our own itty-bitty Catalina C-M.
Catalina to be “wind capital” of North America tomorrow afternoon
There’s the “artichoke capital of the world” in Castroville, CA, but here in Catalina we’ll the “wind capital” of all of North America tomorrow afternoon. Its great to be the “capital” of something, anything! Thought you would like to know about the wind, maybe glue on your baseball cap in preparation for extreme winds tomorrow, especially later in the day just before “Joe Cold Front” arrives with his blustery blasts from the west and northwest tomorrow evening and overnight.
No rain in “Joe”, but during the following couple of days as the unusually cold air for April makes itself at home here, we’ll probably see some Cu with ice (tops colder than -10 C, to continue a refrain here), and that could mean enough virga for a sprinkle at the ground here. Likely some measurable snow on Ms. Lemmon during that time.
Here’s what happens as rendered by IPS MeteoStar, these cool looking wind maps for tomorrow. Not much to begin day at dawn, then “pow” by mid-late morning:, then wind reaching a crescendo (a great word, you can feel it) during the mid and late afternoon. Gusts likely to better 50 mph in brief puffs here in Catalinaland.
Today’s clouds
Passing Cirrus
The End.