Been dreaming about a white Lemmon for quite awhile, ever since the New Year’s Eve snowstorm here. Finally got one yesterday, as we saw. Here are a few extra Lemmons for you:
3:11 PM.3:42 PM.Finsihing off here with an orange Lemmon, if that’s possible, at 6:50 PM.
Yesterday’s clouds
(includes photo of a small, cute dog)
7:58 AM. Not one, but two layers of Stratocumulus.7:58 AM.7:59 AM. Interesting how the scattering of diffuse light through the clouds lights up our cherished cholla cacti.8:57 AM. Paper flowers still going…. They’re not used for making paper, btw.9:30 AM. Occasional sprinkles fell from these clouds. Likely was due to ice, but texture if the precip also suggests drizzle formation (or warm rain processes, wherein larger cloud droplets collide to form drops big enough to fall out.) I hope your cloud diary also reflected this ambiguity.3:42 PM. Later in the afternoon, small Cumulus provide the light and shadow show on the Catalinas, one of the best things about living here. No ice evident.
Looking closer, I hope you recorded the slight fall streaks (fallstreifen, ger.) in the scene above. It would have been quite an important observation for you to have acquired since these small clouds had not shown ice prior to this time. See below for the VERY delicate trails emanating from this Cumulus mediocris cloud; look between and above the orangish rock faces on the top of Sam Peak and a bit to the left:
6:48 PM. Fine snow trails fall between and above the two orange colored rock faces on the left side.The baloooooon sounding launched from the U of AZ at 3:30 PM yesterday. Where the lines pinch together was likely around cloud top, or about -10 C, close to the natural ice forming temperature we usually see here in AZ. More ice fell from layer clouds to the north at sunset, that were colder still.
The weather ahead, way out there
Next rain chance in about a week. Looks like May will start out hot, but “too hot not to cool down”, to quote Louis Prima and Keely Smith doing the Porter songbook, and pretty much that cool down before the month is hardly underway. I am sure lingering snowbirds, not wanting to have their feathers singed, will be glad to receive this news.
How can we say that with any acuity?
Check the spaghetti! Looky below at how troughy the flow is by about the 8th of May (red lines dipping toward the Equator along the West Coast). No extreme heat then, just normal warmth or below average “warmth.” This is a circulation pattern that persists, too. And with “troughy”, there’s always the chance of a rogue rain.
Valid on May 8th, 5 PM AST. No heat here. Some snowbirds have clearly left too early IMO.
The author has made two claims. Let us look at the evidence, the first of which was obtained yesterday morning in support of one of those. A hiker/walker, the author met, we will call him, “Bob”, though it seems doubtful that’s his real name since he had quite a strong northern European accent, said there was no running water in the Sutherland Wash, “only dampness.”
This proved to be an incorrect statement. I wonder how many other people I have corrected just now?
The wash has now been running without interruption for about six weeks. Below, two photos with dogs in them taken yesterday of the flowing Sutherland Wash at the Baby Jesus trail head, aka, “The Cottonwoods”:
8:42 AM. The Sutherland Wash in flow near the Baby Jesus trail head.8:42 AM. Dog ponders a drink from the FLOWING Sutherland Wash at the Baby Jesus trail head.
Q. E. D.
2) Can it rain again in March in the Sutherland Heights (epicenter of the above titular forecast)?
It could, but the assertion by the author is stronger than “could.” Let us again look at the evidence for such a claim.
There are several opportunities for rain here during the remainder of March.
1) the upper low that goes over tomorrow and Friday will produce scattered mountain showers in the area; a sure thing, but light ones.
2) then that SAME low, after nesting in the Tropics for a couple of days comes back over us with an even greater chance of rain next week since its had a chance to scoop up some tropical air (think Altocumulus castellanus, unstable clouds that can become little Cumulonimbus clouds).
3) In the longer term, “troughiness” (“cyclonicity”) is indicated to reside in our Great Southwest by spaghetti maps. Some individual model runs have even had big rains in the area in 12-15 days from now. Below, an example from IPS MeteoStar, which for some reason did not follow through on the “fee-for-service” they had been announcing was coming for about three months so’s that we would have to pay to look at their nice renderings of government model stuff1:
Boffo trough bops Arizona on…ooops, annotated version below to help you locate Arizona on this map.Forecast map valid on March 25th at 5 PM AST.
Another example of the wettest model run I could find, trillions and trillions of galloons of water released in storms in the SW:
Forecast map valid on Saturday, March 21st at 11 AM AST.
So, at LEAST three or four days in the remaining days of March with a chance of measurable rain, and THAT equals 100 % chance of rain falling within a 10 mile radius of the Sutherland Heights housing district between now and, and pushing the forecasting frontier even farther, say, the end of March! Going that far with such high confidence (100%) forecast is inappropriate for professional forecasting, but not here. So, this is a forecast for measurable rain on or VERY near us covering an amazing 19 days!
BTW, spaghetti thinks a trough of the magnitude above is goofy; see below. HOWEVER, there is a pretty strong tendency for cyclonic action here, just not as strong as the one above. The one above is likely goofy, an outlier model run….at this time. But, just like that New England win over the Seahawks in the last second when the Seahawks were about to run it in, but goofily passed the ball instead for an interception, outliers do occur.
Will keep an eye on this fun forecast from this keyboard, and get back to you from time to time IF it rains in the area. Otherwise, you will not hear from me again on this matter.
Below, some morning spaghetti for you.
Valid at 5 PM AST, March 26th. No sign of bluish lines, representing the heart of the jet stream penetrating the SW US as shown in that model run above. However, red lines, southern portion of jet stream, do dip southward over the SE and northern Mexico, indicating a good chance of lower latitude troughs here at the time of this map. Note that the blue and red lines suggest an “out of phase” jet stream pattern, highs in the far north, disturbances leaking into the SW US underneath them.
So hope for additional rain before the end of March is not dead, as it seems today, but has much life, in fact, to repeat, “100%” life.
Here it is. You may need an optical enhancement tool to see the radar echo speck nearest Catalina, and its not the one nearest the arrowhead below, but continue in that direction:
Satellite and radar imagery for midnight last night. Notice cloud blob and radar echoes over and near Catalina, Arizona. I really thought there’d be some drops here as this went over!
You can also check on all the rain that fell overnight in the region here, courtesy of Pima County ALERT rain gauges. BTW, they aren’t capable of reporting traces, so if you see bunches of zeroes, it doesn’t mean some drops didn’t fall somewhere in the network.
Non-verification of this rain can also be found via our fine TUS NWS “storm total” view, 10:30 PM to 4:30 AM this morning:
Regional radar-derived storm total from “rainy cloud blob.” Arrow almost reaches Catalina; didn’t want to cover up a pixel of rain, if there. THAT radar did not pick up the rain I feel must have fallen, so we have quite a conundrum. If you would like to see for yourself how much rain fell last night, go here. Will be looking for drop images in the dust as soon as it gets light, too!
In the meantime, all those rainy cloud blobs to our NW right now (first image) look like they will be able to just make it to Catalinaland after all.
In our last chapter, it looked like the strong cold front would move through tomorrow as just a dry cold one, but now the chances of having a little rain (a wet cold one) have been zooming up. The models have readjusted their thinking and now that critical ingredient, the core of the jet stream (at 500 mb) passing over us ahead of the trough core itself is being predicted.
And with that configuration as the front goes by Catalina, and believe me you’ll know by the 10-15 degree temperature drop, a tiny amount of rain might fall. Also, look for a pronounced lowering of cloud bases to the W-N of Catalina as it gets close, something in the way of an “arcus cloud”, marking the leading edge of the windshift to the N. Could be nice and dramatic looking tomorrow. Those cloud base lowerings are pretty common with fronts here.
How much rain?
Oh, possibilities range between 0 (a complete bust is still possible) to only about 0.25 inches, tops in the “best” of circumstances. But, this keyboard would like to see ANYTHING measurable; that would bring happiness.
There are some more rain blobs showing up in regular intervals in the days ahead for you to think about, as rendered by IPS MeteoStar. Arrows have been added to show you where you are, if you are in SE Arizona:
Valid tomorrow morning at 11 AM AST. Colored areas denote regions where the model has calculated precipitation during the preceding 6 h.
In the storm below, which is pretty much going to happen now, the range of amounts as seen from here, at least 0.15 inches, top, 0.50 inches, best guess, therefore, 0.33 inches (from averaging the two.)
Val at 11 PM, March 1st. Colored areas are those in which the model has calculated that precip has fallen during the prior 6 h.
There’s great uncertainly in whether this last storm will actually occur, so range of amounts are zero to 1 inch. :} See reasons for uncertainty below, besides being too far in advance or our models to be reliable anyway.
Valid Friday, March 5th, at 5 PM AST. Colored regions NOW denote areas of precipitation that have fallen during the prior TWELVE hours. (Mod resolution degrades after about 192 h, and so a coarser view of precip areas is used.)
While a significant storm on the 1st is virtually assured according to spaghetti, this last major event in the panel above is doubtful. See below, in another lesson on consuming weather spaghetti:
Ensemble spaghetti valid for the same time as the panel above, 5 PM AST Friday, March 5th. Not much support for a storm, low confidence is indicated by the LACK of bunching red and blue lines, unlike those off the East Coast, and over there east of Asia. So, while a great storm is predicted in last evening’s model run, prepare for sadness and disappointment as a hedge.
Yesterday’s fine clouds
7:10 AM. A couple of shafts of big virga. Likely a drop or two reached the ground. Could have been caused by aircraft penetrations, or, taller Altocumulus castellanus-like turrets that reached lower temperatures, produced more ice. They look suspiciously like an aircraft artifact due to their very small size.7:41 AM. Nice stack of lenticular pancakes in the lee of the Catalinas. You can see some great lenticular occurrences in the U of AZ Time Laps movie for yesterday. There are also a lot other fascinating things that go on in yesterday’s clouds, too.8:05 AM. Clearly natural virga approaches Catalina. Looked for a drop as it went over, but saw none.8:22 AM. Pancakes downstream from Ms. Mt. Lemmon.8:44 AM. Fairy dusters in bloom!9:07 AM. Doggies, Emma, and little Banjo, sample and inspect water STILL running in the Sutherland Wash!1:46 PM. After a brief sunny period, banks of Altocumulus invade the sky.2:46 PM. Altocumulus opacus clouds continue to fill in, darken.5:40 PM. Muliple layers of clouds stream ahead of sprinkle-producing cloud blob just upwind at this time. Note how the Altocumulus opacus clouds disappeared, leaving lenticular like formations, with a thin ice cloud (Cirrostratus) above.
The End, though I COULD go on and on and on, and then on some more. Its who I am….
Looking closer, I hope you recorded the slight fall streaks (fallstreifen, ger.) in the scene above. It would have been quite an important observation for you to have acquired since these small clouds had not shown ice prior to this time. See below for the VERY delicate trails emanating from this Cumulus mediocris cloud; look between and above the orangish rock faces on the top of Sam Peak and a bit to the left:
