Review and Enhancement of Chapter 7 of AMS Monograph 58 on 2ndary ice

“Secondary Ice Production:  Current State of the Science and Future Recommendations”

by P. R. Field,a,b
R. P. Lawson,c P. R. A. Brown,a G. Lloyd,d C. Westbrook,e D. Moiseev,f
A. Miltenberger,b A. Nenes,g A. Blyth,b T. Choularton,d P. Connolly,d J. Buehl,h J. Crossier,d
Z. Cui,b C. Dearden,d P. DeMott,i A. Flossman,j A. Heymsfield,k Y. Huang,b H. Kalesse,h
Z. A. Kanji,l A. Korolev,m A. Kirchgaessner,n S. Lasher-Trapp,o T. Leisner, G. McFarquhar,o V. Phillips, p
J. Stith,q and A. Sullivan. l

Note to reader: the many superscripts refer to the institutions that the 29 authors belong to. They are not reported in this review.

The entire unadulterated article with its many illustrious co-authors can be found here:

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/amsm/58/1/amsmonographs-d-16-0014.1.xml

REVIEWER COMMENT on my submission:

“Reviewer #1: I believe the comments made by Art Rangno up through his section 3 should be included as an Appendix to the Monograph as he adds a number of points and references not included in the original monograph that may be of interest to future monograph readers.  I felt that the authors of the monograph adequately responded to the comments made by Art through his section 3.  However, the monograph authors have completely ignored as far as I can tell Rangno’s more specific comments in section 4 of his review.  I would like to see the Monograph authors address these more specific comments in the main body of the Monograph text and would like a response to each comment as in a normal journal paper response to reviewers comments.”
———-
There were no other reviewers. (AR)

Reviewed by (Mr.) Arthur L. Rangno[1]
Retiree, Staff Research Scientist III,
Cloud and Aerosol Group, Atmos. Sci. Dept.,
University of Washington, Seattle.
Currently: Catalina, Arizona 85739

The many authors’ polite response to my novella-sized review is found below. They were very nice considering I was not in a good mood when I reviewed their chapter. Since some of the senior authors of Chapter 7 are friends, I am placing their response before the review and “enhancement” of Chapter 7, American Meteorological Society Monograph 58, that I submitted here:

 

There are two minor editions additions to my review that have been added concerning a research flight by the Cloud and Aerosol Group that adds more information to the problem of “secondary ice” and a further reference to drop freezing experiments by Duncan Blanchard (1957).

About the journal “Reply” to the
“Review and Enhancement” by the 29 authors of Chapter 7

Monograph Editor, G. McFarquhar, had this to say to me and the 29 co-authors of that chapter about my submission:

All:

First, I would like to give some information on the comment/reply process from my perspective as Chief Editor of the AMS Monographs.  It is true that there has never been a comment/reply published on an AMS Monograph article before.“  

Editor McFarquhar went on to mention the “strange” organization of my “review and enhancement.”  (Hah. Hardly surprising).

So, I inadvertently broke some ground in submitting a “review of a review.”  Why I was overlooked as a reviewer of this chapter is still perplexing. The most gratifying thing about this submission was that one of the 29 co-authors of Chapter 7 wrote and said, “I knew it was you who did the heavy lifting for Peter Hobbs.”  Indeed, and was the case for the other outstanding researchers that passed through his group.  But perhaps because it was in doubt that I could contribute, as a mere staff member in Peter’s group, was the reason why I was not asked to review Chapter 7 before it was published.   I coulda helped.

I have attached the current “status quo” situation, if interested in the topic of secondary ice formation in clouds. You will see in my review that the original Chapter 7 had some amusing errors, such as the Beaufort Sea apparently being in the Washington coastal waters.  I think the illustrious co-authors of Chapter 7 were in a hurry…. Also, in a grotesque error, the co-authors referred to me as, “Dr. Rangno,” while my real name is Mr. Art:

=====================================================

Some background on why I decided to review Chapter 7

I discovered the 2017 American Meteorological Society Monograph Number 58 and its Chapter 7 in early 2018.  I had worked on the problem of secondary ice in clouds discussed in this volume for more than 20 years with Professor Peter V. Hobbs, Director of the Cloud and Aerosol Research Group.  I know and consider a number of the senior authors friends.  

Our published work while sampling clouds in different venues and over many years repeatedly concluded that the leading theory to explain “secondary ice” in clouds, came up short.  That mechanism, discovered in careful lab experiments by Hallett and Mossop (1974: Mossop and Hallett 1984),  showed that when graupel (represented by a rod in a cloud chamber) intercepted larger (>23 um diameter) supercooled cloud droplets, some ice splinters were cast off.  However, it was limited to in-cloud conditions when the temperature was between -2.5° and -8°C.  The peak splinter production occurs at a temperature of -4.5°C.  From that peak, the rate of splinter production drops off quickly.

There is no doubt that this process occurs in clouds.  But, is that all there is?

The problem that we encountered was that high ice particle concentrations developed too rapidly in clouds with tops >-10°C to be explained by the Hallett-Mossop riming-splintering mechanism alone,  as it was described in the original lab experiments  and those that followed  (e.g., Mossop 1985).  

We also found high ice particle concentrations in clouds in which the components of this leading theory were not met, or barely so (Rangno and Hobbs 1994).  The discrepancies that we encountered, and those in other publications that reported discrepancies but were not cited in the Chapter 7,  will also be a theme.  It will also give me a chance to present an overview of our extensive findings, especially those that were not cited (Rangno and Hobbs 1991; 1994), and where there were drawbacks in our earlier work on this subject (i.e., Hobbs and Rangno 1985).

Abstract and organization of:

“Review and Enhancement of Chapter 7, AMS Monograph 58

Sections 1-3 below was reviewed and commented by the authors of Chapter 7, but I had not seen those comments as of 19 March 2021. They were not relayed to me by the journal Editor, which is normally done so that errors and misunderstandings in papers can be taken care of behind the scenes before publication. That’s a pretty normal practice, but it hadn’t happened by that date, so read Sections 1-3 with caution since revisions are likely and the authors’ criticisms except as they appeared above.

You can easily skip to the line-by-line critique resembling a “normal” manuscript review that comprise Sections 4 and 5 via “jump” links.

————————————————————————————–The review of Chapter 7 consists of several elements: 1) an introduction section, 2) a review of the Hallett-Mossop process and why it cannot explain, of itself, high ice particle concentrations in Cumulus clouds with slightly supercooled tops; 3) relevant literature that went uncited in Chapter 7 that might have altered, and in some cases, enhanced some of the authors’ conclusions; 4) selected quotes from Chapter 7 followed by my commentary, similar to a formal manuscript review; 5) lesser, picayunish corrections , some involving citation etiquette, all of which should have been caught before Chapter 7 went to press.

Field et al. (2017, hereafter, F2017) have done a remarkable job of summarizing a vast amount of work on the continuing enigma of the origin of ice-in-clouds.  Not surprisingly, considering the abundance of publications in various journals relevant to this mystery, some publications were overlooked that might have helped the reader, and altered some of the conclusions wrought in F2017.  This review is meant to “fill in” those blanks; to be an enhancement of Chapter 7 rather than a series of criticisms.   It is restricted to the cloud microphysical portions of Chapter 7 concerned with ice multiplication in Cumulus clouds, the writer’s specialty.

1. Introduction

The “embarrassment of citation riches” to much of our prior University of Washington work[2], is much appreciated.  Nevertheless, since it is not possible to be cited too many times, only too few, we dredge up even more of our work relevant to the question of secondary ice that went uncited.  The comments contained in this review will range from picayunish errors in F2017 (left until the end) to more significant commentary concerning the workings of the H-M process at the beginning of this review.  This is followed by quotes in F2017 followed by my comments, a style mimicking that of a pre-publication review.

We start with a summary of the Hallett-Mossop riming-splintering process (Hallett and Mossop 1974; Mossop and Hallett 1974, hereafter “H-M”) and why the H-M process cannot, of itself, account for the “rapid” development of ice in clouds that F2017 mentions in their abstract.  In reading Field et al. it was felt that this distinction between clouds that produce ice rapidly and the inability of the H-M process alone to do that in slightly supercooled Cumulus clouds, beginning with primary ice nuclei (IN) was not made clear.

Relevant literature that was not cited or possibly not known about by F2017 is indicated by an “u” after the citation in this review, for “uncited.”   The relevant citations are found at the end of this piece.  (Jump/anchor links will be added when I remember how to do them.)                        ‘

  1. Review of the Hallett-Mossop riming-splintering process

The rapid development of precipitation in Cumulus clouds transitioning to Cumulonimbus clouds, has been noted for many decades via radar (e.g., Battan 1953; Saunders 1965, Zeng et al. 2001) and by aircraft (e.g., Koenig 1963).   A process that can explain such rapid transitions in clouds whose tops reach much above the freezing level must act very quickly (<10min) to enhance concentrations of ice particles in such clouds.  The H-M process is one that is usually cited in conjunction with this rapid formation of ice.  However, of itself, even when the broad droplet spectra is satisfied in a Cumulus turret with a top at -8°C with only primary ice nuclei (IN) as ice initiators, such a cloud can never attain the 10s to 100s of ice particles per liter associated with “ice multiplication”, those in modest Cumulonimbus clouds.   

Why can’t the H-M process alone produce significant ice in Cumulus clouds when its criteria are satisfied? 

The lifetime of Cumulus turrets is too short, <20 min (e.g., Workman and Reynolds 1949u, Braham 1964u, Saunders 1965u). Its too short for several cycles of splinters to develop, those having to reach fast-falling graupel sizes to be significant splinter producers, starting with ice particles from the very few primary ice nuclei (IN) at -8°C.  Even the H-M droplet spectra itself is doomed within a few minutes in the lives of ordinary Cumulus turrets as they fall back and evaporate[3].  Mason’s (1996) calculations, using reasonable assumptions, required 1 h for ice particle concentrations to reach 100 l-1after starting from primary IN, which Mossop noted was untenable for a Cumulus turret.   Chisnell and Latham (1976) understood this: “Firstly there are some reported multiplication rates, 10 in 8 min (Mossop et al. 1970), 500 in 5 ~ min (Koenig 1973-sic), which are inexplicable in terms of a ‘riming only’ model, but which are consistent with a model containing rain drops.”

Absent larger (>30 µm diameter)  droplets and/or precipitation-sized drops (>100 µm diameter), tens of minutes to an hour or more is required to raise ice particle concentrations from from primary IN concentrations to 100 l-1(e.g., Chisnell and Latham 1976, “Model A”, Mossop 1985a,u, Mason 1996), times that are not tenable considering the short lifetimes of Cumulus turrets.

Moreover, air translates through Cumulus clouds analogous to lenticular clouds though at a far slower pace (e.g., Malkus 1952u, Asplinden et al 1978u).  Thus, while a Cumulus cloud can appear to exist for tens of minutes, its individual turrets cannot.   Any splinters that might be formed by a round of very sparse graupel due to primary IN, should an ice crystal have time to become a graupel particle, will go out the side or evaporate as the top declines and evaporates toward the downwind side as illustrated in Byers (1965u, Figure 7.3).  One of the lessons learned in the HIPLEX seeding experiments when dry ice, dropped like graupel into supercooled Cumulus turrets, was that it produced ice crystals that drifted out the side of decaying cloud portions (Cooper and Lawson 1984u).

Mossop (1985a,u) himself had trouble explaining the rapidity of ice development in his own Cumulus clouds in the Australian Pacific.  Using his measured concentrations of frozen drizzle drops as an accelerator of ice formation, Mossop calculated that it would take about 47 minutes to go from initial ice concentrations due to primary IN (0.01 per liter) at -10°C to 100 ice particles per liter. Mossop knew that this amount of time was untenable for a Cumulus turret.  He then reasoned that IN must be about 10 times higher at -10°C to explain that discrepancy, or about 0.1 per liter, to bring the glaciation time he observed down to about 20 minutes (calculating that the concentrations of ice particles increased 10 fold each 10 min beginning with 0.1 IN per liter active at -10°C).   The concentration of IN surmised by Mossop (1985a, u) is now close to that in updated concentrations of IN by DeMott et al. 2010 of about 0.3 per liter active at -10°C[4]

However, IN need to be about 10-100 times higher than Mossop’s estimate of 0.1 per liter to bring down the time of glaciation to that observed in clouds like his own Australian clouds, namely, ones containing copious droplets >30 um diameter and some precipitation-sized drops.  This was demonstrated by Crawford et al. 2012’s case of 100 times the DeMott et al. primary IN with a model cloud top at -10°C, a case study that best mimicked the near-spontaneous glaciation of real clouds having modestly supercooled tops and containing drops >30 µm diameter (often with drizzle or raindrops). 

In sum, if the droplet spectra does not broaden considerably farther so that droplets larger than 30-40 µm in diameter are in plentiful concentrations (past the Hocking and Jonas 1971; Jonas 1972) thresholds for collisions with coalescence to begin,  there will be no “rapid” glaciation in slightly to modestly supercooled clouds that only meet the H-M droplet spectra criteria.  

  1. Discussion of ice multiplication in literature that went uncited by F2017

Our follow up studies of ice development in Cumulus and small Cumulonimbus clouds after HR85 and HR90 went uncited in F2017. Those were Rangno and Hobbs 1991u and 1994u, hereafter RH91u and RH94u.  We offer a brief summary of our findings before moving on to other relevant uncited findings.  We believe that these uncited papers, en toto, cast additional light the nature of the problem posed by ice multiplication.Discussion of RH91u with some background on HR85

In our prior study of ice-in-clouds, HR85, only a 6 s time resolution was available for data during most of the sampling period  (1978-1984). Therefore, we sampled rather wide cloud complexes to get meaningful statistics.   In addition, our 2-DC probe was only operated sporadically, not continuously in cloud.  

In RH91u data resolution was 1 s or less, and there was continuous 2-DC coverage of cloud penetrations.   Moreover, we carried a vertically-pointable (up or down), mm-wavelength radar, perhaps the first cloud research aircraft to do so. 

We often sampled much smaller clouds than in HR85 and we found that maritime, short-lived (<1 km wide) “chimney” Cumulus clouds whose tops fell back into warmer air and evaporated, did not produce much detectableice even if they reached close to -10°C.  This was true even as their wider, nearby brethren with the same cloud top temperature produced “anvils of ice”, replicating the findings in HR85 (see RH91u, Figure 1). The low ice concentrations found in chimney Cumulus clouds could also have been due to not being able to sample very small ice crystals, those below about 100 µm in maximum dimension.  It forced us to reconsider the role of evaporation that we posited was important in the production of ice in HR85.

The finding in RH91u that wider clouds had considerably more ice corroborated Mossop et al.’s 1970 and Schemenauer and Isaac’s (1984u) earlier findings that cloud width had a profound effect on the development of ice in clouds.  These findings implicitly address the importance of the duration of cloud and precipitation-sized drops, if any of the latter, at lower temperatures. 

Of note  is that the maritime Cumulus clouds in Washington State coastal waters during onshore flow are virtually identical to those studied by Mossop and his colleagues in the Australian Pacific in terms of cloud base temperatures, droplet concentrations, ice particle concentrations and in the minimum cloud top temperatures at which most sampling took place  (e.g., Mossop et al 1968u, Mossop and Ono 1969u).   Our studies were, thus, an attempt at replicating the findings of Mossop and his colleagues without going to Australia.  

In RH91u, we found again, as noted in F2017, that Mossop’s (1985a, u) report that ice concentrations required 20 min to rise from 0.1 per liter to 100 per liter, was still too great an amount of time to account for the rapidity of the glaciation that we observed in our Washington clouds.  Lawson et al. (2015) have arrived at a similar conclusion recently though in a different way.

 In RH91u we also compared the explosive formation of ice in our maritime Cumulus to our prior dry ice cloud seeding experiments (Hobbs 1981u) and again in RH94u. The imagery is remarkably similar as a demonstration of the rapidity, the virtually spontaneous formation of ice[5].  We thought that an important comparison.

We also investigated the ocean’s influence on ice formation by sampling small to medium Cumulus clouds that developed out of clear air in an extremely cold[6], offshore flowing air mass over the Washington State coastal waters. Cloud bases were -18°C and cloud tops of the deepest Cumulus, -26°C.   The sea surface was roiled by estimated 25-40 kt winds with widespread whitecaps. Mixing from the sea surface, about 13°C, to cloud bases was extreme, as marked by the heavy turbulence on that flight and vomting.  We sampled those cumuliform clouds as they deepened downwind as far as 100 km offshore that day. 

That day stood out in our studies.  We measured the lowest ice particle concentrations in all our sampling of cumuliform clouds with top temperatures -24°C to -26°C by measuring maximum concentration of only 7 l-1in clouds up to about 1 km in depth.  This day forced us to conclude that the coastal waters of Washington State, anyway, were not a source of high temperature ice nuclei, counter to some more recent work (DeMott et al. 2016).  However, we did not measure concentrations of ice particles that were < 100 µm in maximum dimension.

The droplet spectra in those offshore flowing clouds was narrow, as would be expected with such low base temperatures, and again the idea that droplet sizes control ice formation was once again realized by these low concentrations of ice.

In sum, from our attempts at replicating Mossop’s results in clouds identical to his over many years, we found several departures in ice formation from the operation of the H-M process as it was being described.  These discrepancies are somewhat different than those quoted for our research in F2017, hence we reprise them here: 

The focus of RH94u was to remove the effects of the H-M process by studying ice development continental and semi-continental clouds found mostly east of the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, clouds that did not meet the H-M criteria. We believed that this was an important next step.  The clouds we sampled almost always had base temperatures of 0°C or lower.  Droplet concentrations were semi-continental to “continental” ranging from 300 cm-3to 1500 cm-3, many times higher than droplet concentrations in the Washington coastal waters in onshore flow that averaged but ~50 cm-3.    Thus, the droplet spectra in the eastern Washington and other cold clouds we sampled were considerably narrower than in our coastal clouds, and due to those cold bases, contained few if any drops meeting the large droplet size (>23 µm) in the H-M temperature zone.  We again carried our vertically-pointable, mm-radar to help elucidate cloud structures below or above the aircraft.

Our findings for the eastern Washington State clouds, simply explained, were that the higher the cloud base temperature, the greater the ice at in a Cumulus cloud, holding cloud top temperature constant. Thus, a cloud with a base of -15°C and a top of -20°C had far lessice than a cloud with a base of 0°C and a top at -20°C with no contribution from H-M.  This finding spoke to, as we believed then and continue to believe, the largest droplet sizes of the spectra as being a critical parameter in the production of ice.   We continued to find that a measure of the broadness of the FSSP-100-measured droplet spectrum (our “threshold diameter”, or large end “tail” of the droplet spectrum, e.g., HR85) in newly risen turrets lacking much ice (<1 l-1) continued to be strongly predictive of later maximum ice particle concentrations.

We also found that for very cold based clouds (<-8°C) that Fletcher’s (1962u) summary ice nucleus curve predicted ice concentrations associated with a range of cloud top temperatures extremely well (r=0.89).  This probably indicated that we had little contribution from probe shattering artifacts after accounting for them (see RH91u).   The crystal types in those clouds were almost all delicate stellar and dendritic forms where shattering artifacts would be expected to be rampant[9]

Too, ice formation in the eastern Washington State clouds, as it was in our maritime clouds, was extremely rapid, explosive, in turrets with larger droplets (>~25 µm in diameter) as they reached their peak heights with no contribution from H-M.  As with our maritime clouds, the scenario of a few much larger particles (graupel) appeared to be coincident with wholesale formation of high ice concentrations. 

This did not happen, however, in very cold-based (<-8°C), shallow clouds with small (~<20 µm diameter) droplets and tops down to -27°C where ice appeared to form from a “trickle” process likely due to ambient IN concentrations rather than aided by other factors.  

  • The formation of ice was far more rapid in clouds with tops between -5°C and -12°C than could be accounted for by H-M, requiring <10 min, as judged from the small size of the ice particles in high concentrations, ones that had not yet had time to begin forming aggregates; moreover, they were usually coincident with relatively high LWC that had not had time to be depleted (e.g., HR90, RH91u). Newly risen turrets full of LWC could be seen to transition to an icy, fraying, soft, cotton-candy appearance in less than 10 min.   What cloud observer hasn’t seen this behavior?
  • Our maritime clouds had very low concentrations of small (<13 µm diameter) droplets once appreciably above cloud base and into the H-M temperature zone. Low concentrations of small droplets were once thought to be an impediment to riming and splintering (e.g., Mossop 1978u; Hallett et al. 1980u), though later studies deemed them to have only a “secondary role” (Mossop 1985b).
  • Measured graupel concentrations, despite our “optimizations” (using high concentrations over a few meters rather than turret-averaged) to try to make H-M work in RH91u were still not high enough to account for the high concentrations of ice particles that developed so quickly.
  • Our fast-glaciating, modest Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds with tops between -5°C >-12°C did not contain mm-sized raindrops, thought to be critical for rapid glaciation as asserted by F2017. However, copious large droplets (>30 µm diameter) and drizzle-sized drops up to about 500 µm diameter were always found, though the latter in relatively low concentrations[7],[8].  Drop sizes between 30 µm and 60 µm diameter, deemed an important player in ice multiplication by Ono (1972u), were always copious.

 

  • Discussion of Rangno and Hobbs (1994u)

Too, our evaluation of the H-M process could not explain the ice multiplication that occurred in those few eastern Washington clouds that did meet the H-M criteria.  In our calculations we used a “relaxed” FSSP-100 spectra (as lately invoked by Crawford et al. 2012) that resulted in more >23 µm diameter droplets than were actually observed in our calculations to no avail in an attempt to “break” our conclusions (as good scientists do).                 

Two very short but illuminating papers were published in 1998 that discussed two viewpoints concerning the H-M process.  Blyth and Latham (1998u) “Commented” on the University of Washington findings2as completely explicable due to the H-M process, counter to the conclusions stated in our papers in which we felt that H-M might be playing a lesser role.   We defended our findings in our reply (Hobbs and Rangno 1998u)[10]

Following Mossop’s (1978) nomogram for ice development and ice multiplication boundaries given cloud base temperatures[11], we evaluated the onset of ice based on cloud depth and temperature of the onset of ice in Cumulus clouds using cloud base temperatures for continental clouds in Rangno and Hobbs (1988u), updated with many more data points from various locations around the world in Rangno and Hobbs 1995u (Figure 12). These data, for non-severe convection, point to a critical role of droplet sizes as proxied by cloud depth for the onset of ice in clouds (as Ludlam 1952) first noted), and, thus when ice multiplication can be expected.

  • Other uncited findings that impact F2017

Perhaps the most remarkable instance of “secondary” ice formation was left out of the field studies described by F2017:  that of Stith et al 2004u in clean tropical updrafts.  Stith et al. reported tens of thousands per liter of spherical ice particles in tropical updrafts that led to nearly complete glaciation by -12°C and total glaciation by -17°C.   As Stith et al.  pointed out, and was obvious, there is no mechanism presently known that can explain those observations.  The remarkable findings of Stith et al. should have been “front and center” in F2017. (Or, it should have been called out as bogus in a footnote.)

Another finding, one that resembles the findings of Stith et al. 2004u, and is also inexplicable by H-M, is that of Paluch and Breed (1984u).   High ice particle concentrations (100 l-1) formed in a Cumulus cloud updraft at a moderate supercooling.

Other examples of H-M “exceptionalism” that went uncited in F2017: Cooper and Saunders 1980u, Cooper and Vali 1981u, Gayet and Soulage 1982u, Waldvogel et al 1987u.

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  1. A tedious line-by-line critique of F2017, analogous to a pre-publication manuscript review, one that should have taken place before publication.

P7.1:  F2017, their introduction:  “Airborne observations of ice crystal concentrations are often found to exceed the concentration of ice nucleating particles (INPs) by many orders of magnitude (see, e.g., Mossop 1985; Hobbs and Rangno 1985; Beard 1992; Pruppacher and Klett 1997; Hobbs and Rangno 1998; Cantrell and Heymsfield 2005; DeMott et al. 2016). In the 1970s (Mossop et al. 1970; Hallett and Mossop 1974) the discrepancy between expected ice particle concentrations formedthrough primary ice nucleation and observed ice particle concentration motivated the search for mechanisms thatcould amplify primary nucleation pathways.”

Comment:  While it was gratifying to have our work cited in the Introduction of F2017, the observations of unexpectedly high ice particle concentrations at slight supercoolings (>-10°C), goes no farther back than Mossop et al. 1970. One wishes some the earlier workers who reported ice at unexpectedly high cloud top temperatures would have been cited in this first grouping[12], such as Coons and Gunn 1951u; Ludlam 1955u; Murgatroyd and Garrod 1960u; Borovikov et al. 1961u; Koenig 1963; Hobbs 1969u; Auer et al 1969u.

P 7.2, Section 2, F2017:  “The consensus is that H-M occurs within a temperature range of approximately -3°C to -8°C, in the presence of liquid cloud droplets smaller than ~13µm and liquid drops larger than ~25µm in diameter that can freeze when they are collected by large ice particles (rimed aggregates, graupel, or large frozen drops).”

Comment:  It is now believed that the small droplets play a far less important role than once envisioned.  Goldsmith et al. (1976), later confirmed by Mossop (1978) appeared to find strong evidence that droplets <13µm diameter played a critical role in ice multiplication.  In fact, it was thought for a time that very low concentrations of those small drops would lead to clouds absent in ice multiplication in clean locations (e.g., Hallett et al. 1980u).   However, Mossop 1985a, u himself, in later laboratory experiments determined that small drops played a much-reduced role in H-M.   Cloud studies in pristine environments where ice multiplication was rampant (RH91u in the Washington State coastal waters in onshore flow, HR98 in the Arctic, Rangno and Hobbs (2005) in the Marshall Islands, and Connolly et al. (2006a) in England, would seem to have confirmed the minor role of droplets <13 µm diameter in riming and splintering in clean conditions.

Section 2, p7.3-7.4:  The F2017 Table 1 and the discussion of laboratory and field observations of secondary ice particles.

Comment:  While Section 2 was remarkably thorough, some important findings were not cited, or listed in Table 7.1 of the many studies of secondary ice particles.  Ono (1971u, 1972u) should have been included in Table 7-1 and in the accompanying F2017 discussions; he appears to have preceded Hallett and Mossop (1974) concerning the importance of larger cloud droplets coincident with graupel in ice multiplication[13].  Two elucidating quotes from Ono: 

Ono (1971u), his abstract:

“(Ice crystal) sizes, concentrations and microphysical conditions of occurrence support the hypothesis that they were formed when ice fragments were thrown off from water drops freezing after accreting on ice crystals.”

Ono (1972u):

“However, from our present observations, it has been found that in the clouds where moderately large drops of 30 to 60 µm in diameter and graupel-like rimed ice particles occurred simultaneously, we have a high concentration of secondary ice crystals. The presence of drops with some hundreds of microns in diameter is not a crucial factor for crystal multiplication.”

Moreover, Ono’s (1972u) findings above would appear to square better with our own findings (e.g., HR90, RH91u) for maritime clouds in the Washington coastal waters concerning high ice particle concentrations since our cumuliform clouds in onshore flow always had plenty of supercooled droplets >30 µm diameter in their middle and upper portions, sizes that Ono implicated in ice multiplication.  Also, our Washington maritime clouds have virtually no mm-sized drops as F2017 erroneously conclude are necessary for the “rapid” ice formation.

At the top of p 7.4: “…and observations are compromised by the potential of ice to break on contact with the aircraft or instruments (e.g., Field et al. 2006).”

Comment:  A single reference to Field et al (2006) regarding probe-related ice artifacts could lead the reader to believe that shattering on probe tips was a very recently discovered problem.   Shattering on probe tips has been a well-known problem and was obvious in the imagery as soon as 2D probes began to be used in the late 1970s.   Those of us in airborne research have been addressing this problem for more than 30 years to minimize the contribution of artifacts to ice particle concentrations (e.g., Harris-Hobbs and Cooper 1987). 

Many of reports of ice multiplication have originated at ground sites (e.g., Hobbs 1969u, Auer 1969u, Burrows and Robertson 1969u, Ono 1971u, 1972u, Vardiman 1978).  Citing these reports and emphasizing that they were ground sites would have made it clear to the reader that airborne artifacts have not reduced this enigma very much.

In fact, in view of the complexity of aircraft measurements of ice particles, MORE ground observations are critical, particularly at sites where the H-M process should be frequently active in clouds at the ground as in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State (e.g., Paradise Ranger Station).  Such ground measurements are vitally needed as well in the Middle East at sites where there has been a dearth of ice-in-cloud measurements[14].  Some authors now claiming that even modern outfitted research cannot derive accurate concentrations of ice particles (i.e., Freud et al. 2015).   Hence, the need for more ground work if, in fact, the assertion in Freud et al. 2015 is true..

Section 2, last paragraph on p7.4: “Splinter production following the freezing of a large millimeter size droplet that subsequently shatters (droplet shattering; e.g., Mason and Maybank 1960..”

Comment:   The authors in citing Mason and Maybank (1960) several times are apparently unaware that Mason and Maybank’s results were compromised by CO2, as discovered by Dye and Hobbs 1966u.  CO2is a gas that promoted the shattering of drops that Mason and Maybank observed. Later, however, Hobbs and Alkesweeny 1968u, did find that a fewsplinters were shed by drops that rotated in free fall as they froze, far fewer than reported by Mason and Maybank.  Hobbs and Alkesweeny’s work should have been cited along with that of Brownscombe and Thorndike (1968).                                                                                                                                            

P7.2, Section 2, laboratory evidence for secondary ice formation:

Comment:  The role of water supersaturation in ice formation was ignored as a possible source of secondary ice.  Gagin and Nozyce 1984u reported the appearance of ice crystals in the environment of freezing mm-sized drops in lab experiments.  They attributed the formation of the new ice crystals to a pulse of high supersaturation with respect to water as the freezing drop warmed to 0°C in their chamber.  This could be an important secondary ice-forming mechanism, similar in effect to that used by Chisnell and Latham (1976), who incorporated splinters derived from freezing drops.   This process might explain the simultaneous appearance of ice splinters that appear so quickly, side-by-side, with frozen precipitation-sized drops.

P7.4, Section 3.  In situ observations of SIP and the discussion of the role of IN.

Comment:  The work of Rosinski (1991u) goes uncited.  Rosinski did a lot of work on maritime IN, ones that he claimed were active at slightly supercooled temperatures in concentrations of tens per liter.  His work should have been mentioned, even if it’s only to state that his measurements are not generally accepted.  However, if he was even partially correct, his findings would go a long way to explaining the rapidity of ice development in maritime clouds.

P7.5, “In addition, the measurements may be affected by the possibility that ice particles generated by the passage of the aircraft through the cloud (Woodley et al. 2003) from previous cloud passes could have mixed into the measured samples.” 

Comment:  The authors only cite Woodley et al. (2003) regarding aircraft-produced ice due to the passage of an aircraft.  This unexpected phenomenon was first reported 20 years prior to Woodley et al.  by Rangno and Hobbs (1983u, 1984u)[15].  Scientific etiquette requires that those who went first be cited.  Not citing benchmark papers that roiled the airborne research community due to the temperatures at which ice was produced (>-10°C) is remarkable. John Hallett (2008) termed this finding, “an embarrassment to the airborne research community.”

Too, not being cited when you should be inflicts material damage since one’s impact in one’s field, likelihood of promotions, awards, etc, is measured by citation metrics.

P7.6 “Lawson et al. (2015) suggest that the rapid glaciation in these strong updraft cores (~10ms-1) occurs at temperatures too cold and a rate too fast to be attributable to the H-M process.

Comment:  Citing the report of Stith et al. (2004u) would have been perfect here, as would have been Paluch and Breed (1984u).

P7.7, discussion of Heymsfield and Willis (2014):  “Heymsfield and Willis (2014)found that SIP evidenced by observations of needles–columns throughout the range -3°C to -14°C was observed predominantly where the vertical velocities were in the range from -1 to +1 ms-1.   The LWCs in the regions where SIP are observed are dominantly below 0.10 gm-3.  Median LWCs in these regions were only about 0.03 gm-3 with no obvious dependence on the temperature.”

Comment:  The Heymsfield and Willis (2014) finding is not only counter to most of the Washington experience but also that of other workers (e.g., Mossop et al. 1968u, Figure 4[16]; Mossop et al. (1972u. Figure 2; Mossop 1985u, Figure 1), Paluch and Breed 1984u; Lawson et al 2015’s “first ice”).  Why?   The initiation and observation of small ice particles in high concentrations usually occurs in the higher (short-lived) LWC zones (>0.5 g m-3).   These contrary findings are not mentioned by F2017, ones that would have presented a different picture of the origin of the high concentrations of ice.  Perhaps Heymsfield and Willis (2014) encountered their high ice particles in cloud “death throes”; evaporating anvil shelving, rather having encountered them close to where they formed? 

P7.7, discussion of Taylor et al. (2016):  “Taylor et al. (2016)analyzed aircraft measurements in maritime cumulus with colder (11°C) cloud-base temperatures that formed over the southwest peninsula of the United Kingdom. They found that almost all of the initial ice particles were frozen drizzle drops [;(0.5–1) mm], whereas vapor-grown ice crystals were dominant in the later stages. Their observations indicate that the freezing of drizzle–raindrops is an important process that dominates the formation of large ice in the intermediate stages of cloud development. In the more mature stage of cloud development the study found high concentrations of small ice within the H-M temperature range.”

Comment:  Virtually identical findings to Taylor et al.’s was reported for even cooler based clouds a quarter of a century earlier by RH91u which should have been cited along with Taylor et al.’s.

P7.7, 2nd: “It has been speculated that graupel does not need to play the rimer role. In situ observations from frontal cloud systems suggest that riming snowflakes may be able to mediate the SIP (Crosier et al. 2011; Hogan et al. 2002.).

Comment:  The 2002 and 2011 references to non-graupel ice particles shedding splinters seem out of place since this was considered so many years prior to these references.  For example, riming by other than graupel particles was part of the “potential” H-M scheme of Harris-Hobbs and Cooper in 1987, in Mason 1998, and by Mossop 1985b.

We should cite those who tread the ground before we did.

P7.8. last three lines:   “Finally, it should be noted that conditions where cloud tops are -12ºC and drizzle-sized supercooled droplets are present do not always result in the production of large numbers of ice crystals. Bernstein et al. (2007) and Rasmussen et al. (1995)identified these conditions as long-lived clouds and hazardous for aircraft.” 

Some elaboration on the interesting and important findings of Bernstein et al. (2007) and Rasmussen et al. (1995):

The University of Washington aircraft observed drizzle drops aloft in orographic clouds in the Oregon Cascade Mountains during IMPROVE 2 (Stoelinga et al. 2003); we had not observed them in the more aerosol-impacted clouds of the Washington Cascades in many years of sampling them, though we did not fly in the kind of strong synoptic situations encountered in IMPROVE 2. 

However, those Oregon drizzle drops that we encountered in IMPROVE 2, as usually happens, didn’t make it to the ground as liquid drops.   IMPROVE 2 had ground measurements in support of airborne work; no freezing rain or drizzle events were reported, a finding compatible with long term records in the Sierras, and Cascades with precipitation at below freezing temperatures under westerly flow situations and when the temperature decreases with height (unpublished data).   There is a duration-below-freezing-temperature factor, as well as the temperature itself, that together control the freezing of precipitation-sized drops.  The deeper the sub-freezing layer at temperatures below about -4°C, the more likely drops will freeze on the way down becoming sleet/ice pellets.

Supercooled layered cloud tops, sometimes colder than -30°C, are common and persistent, and they have been known about since 1957 (Cunningham 1957u, Hall 1957u; this situation is shown in Byers 1965u), and were described later by HR85, HR98, and explained by Rauber and Tokay 1991u. Supercooled tops, usually ones having a broad droplet spectrum if they are shedding ice (RH85), persist because the ice that forms within them falls out, as do precipitation-sized drops, if any, and those drops freeze on the way down.  Altocumulus clouds sporting virga is a common example of this phenomenon.  In this “upside down” storm situation, ice particle concentrations have been observed to increase downward (e.g., HR85; Rasmussen et al. 1995) likely due to the breakup of fragile crystals.  This phenomenon can mislead researchers solely using satellite data to infer the phase of entire cloud systems below those tops.

p7.15, Section 6, discussion and conclusions section, second bulleted item:  “The onset of the rapid glaciation of convective clouds is observed to occur shortly after millimeter-size drops freeze.”

Comment:  If Ono’s 1972u findings are correct the glaciation process is also triggered by drops smaller than even drizzle drops (0.2 to 0.5 mm diameter).  In our cool-based, modest-sized Washington State maritime clouds (bases rarely >6°C) with mm-sized drops were rarely encountered; nevertheless, ice formation was usually rapid and prolific. 

P7.15, Section 6, 2ndparagraph, last sentence: “It has been suggested by, for example, Koenig (1963)and Lawson et al. (2015)that supercooled raindrops play an important role in the initiation of the glaciation process and there is evidence that this can occur at temperatures greater than -10°C.”

Comment:  The phrasing that “there is evidence”, which was likely unintentional, makes it sound like the appearance of ice in clouds with tops >-10°C is a rare phenomenon which the authors know is hardly rare!  It happens globally over the oceans in clean conditions, and in continental convective clouds with warm bases.

  1. Minor comments and corrections

P7.6 “Figure 7-6shows aircraft observations taken within a few hundred meters of cloud top by repeatedly penetrating a rapidly growing convective plume”    

Comment:  Can the authors rule out aircraft production of ice?

P7.7: “They found that almost all of the initial ice particles were frozen drizzle drops ~ (0.5–1) mm], whereas vapor-grown ice crystals were dominant in the later stages.”

Comment: Drizzle drops are defined by the AMS and WMO as close togetherdrops between 0.2 mm and 0.5 mm diameter.  They virtually float in the air. The 0.5 to 1 mm diameter drops that F2017 refer to are raindrops, not drizzle ones.

P7.2, Section 2, Laboratory Studies:

Comment:  Amid citations of laboratory experiments that “have produced secondary ice”, we point out that Choularton et al (1980) only produced protuberances and spicules, not actual ice particles.  Later, F2017 again cite Choularton et al. a bit incorrectly by suggesting the drop sizes for spicule production he studied was “>~25 µm”.  Choularton et al. reported the main increase in protuberances was for droplets >20 µm diameter.

P 7.4, Section 3, In Situ Cloud Studies, first paragraph, 2ndline:  “Ice particles are often observed in abundance in convective clouds that are colder than 0°C but with cloud-top temperatures warmer than about -12°C…”

Comment:   Slightly more accurately: “… clouds whose tops have ascended past -4°C but have not been colder than about -12°C…”

P7.5, Section 3, last paragraph:   “Hobbs and Rangno (1985, 1990, 1998), in a series of aircraft investigations of maritime cumulus off the coast of Washington…” 

Comment:  F2017 indicates that HR98 concerned Washington State coastal clouds.  It concerned Arctic stratiform clouds.  This seems like a remarkable error for 29 authors to make.  Moreover, in HR98 we discussed ice multiplication in pristine, slightly supercooled Arctic Stratus clouds with extremely low (<20 cm-3) droplet concentrations.  We found little correlation between droplets <13µm diameter droplets and small (<300 diameter) ice particles as some have reported (Harris-Hobbs and Cooper 1987) in support of their importance in riming and splintering process.  Yet ice was plentiful (10s per liter) regardless of the concentrations of those small droplets in boundary-layer Stratocumulus clouds with tops of just -4° to -6° C.

P7.5, Section 3, the discussion of Harris-Hobbs and Cooper 1987:  “Harris-Hobbs and Cooper (1987)used airborne observations from cumulus clouds in three different geographic regions to estimate secondary ice production rates.” 

Comment:  The California clouds that HHC87 examined were not Cumulus but were long stretches of orographic stratiform, banded cloud systems rather than Cumulus clouds.

Editorial note concerning the popular phrasing, “warm or “cold” temperatures in numerous places.

A quote from Peter Hobbs on this common error; “A cup of coffee can be warm or cold, but not a temperature.”  A temperature is a number and can have no physical state itself, but rather refers to the state of a tangible object.

Acknowledgements:  This review is dedicated to the memory of Peter V. Hobbs, Director of the Cloud and Aerosol Research Group, Atmospheric Sciences Department, University of Washington, Seattle.  He allowed me to become the most I could be in my field.  This is also dedicated to our “can do” pilots;  the many members of our flight crews; and our software engineers, whose dedication to their jobs over the years in the adverse conditions that we often flew in, made our findings possible.

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____________, Rushkin, R. E., and J. K. Heffernan, 1968:  Glaciation of a cumulus at -4° C.  J. Atmos. Sci., 25, 889-899. doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(1968)025%3C0889:GOACAA%3E2.0.CO;2

Murgatroyd, R. J., and M. P. Garrod, 1960:  Observations of precipitation elements in cumulus clouds.  Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 86,167-175.  doi-org/10.1002/qj.49708636805

Ono, A., 1971:  Some aspects of the natural glaciation process in relatively warm maritime clouds.  Memorial Volume of the late Prof. Syono.  A special issue of the J. Meteor. Soc. Japan, 49, 845-858.  No doi.

_______, 1972: Evidence on the nature of ice crystal multiplication processes in natural cloud. J. Res. Atmos., 6, 399-408.  No doi.

Paluch, I. M., and D. W. Breed, 1984: A continental storm with a steady state adiabatic updraft and high concentrations of small ice particles: 6 July 1976 case study.J. Atmos. Sci., 41, 1008-1024.  doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(1984)041%3C1008:ACSWAS%3E2.0.CO;2

Pruppacher, H. R., and J. D. Klett, 1997: Microphysics of Clouds and Precipitation. 2nd ed. Kluwer Academic, 954 pp.

Rangno, A. L., 2008: Fragmentation of Freezing Drops in Shallow Maritime Frontal Clouds.  J. Atmos. Sci. 65, 1455-1466.  doi.org/10.1175/2007JAS2295.1 

___________, and P. V. Hobbs, 1983: Production of ice particles in clouds due to aircraft penetrations. J. Climate Appl. Meteor.,22, 214-232. doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1983)022%3C0214:POIPIC%3E2.0.CO;2

___________, and __________, 1984: Further observations of the production of ice particles in clouds due to aircraft penetrations. J. Climate Appl. Meteor., 23, 985-987. doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1984)023%3C0985:FOOTPO%3E2.0.CO;2

___________, and __________, 1988: Criteria for the development of significant concentrations of ice particles in cumulus clouds.  Atmos. Res., 22, 1-13. No doi.

___________, and __________, 1991: Ice particle concentrations in small, maritime polar cumuliform clouds. Quart J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc., 118, 105-126. doi-org/10.1002/qj.49711749710

___________, and __________, 1994:  Ice particle concentrations and precipitation development in small continental cumuliform clouds. Quart. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc.,120, 573-601. doi-org/10.1002/qj.49712051705

___________, and __________, 1995:  A new look at the Israeli cloud seeding experiments.  J. Appl. Meteor., 34, 1169-1193.doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1995)034%3C1169:ANLATI%3E2.0.CO;2

___________, and __________, 2001: Ice particles in stratiform clouds in the Arctic and possible mechanisms for the production of high ice concentrations. J. Geophys. Res., 106, 15 065–15 075.   doi:10.1029/2000JD900286.

___________, and __________, 2005: Microstructures and precipitation development in cumulus and small cumulonimbus clouds over the warm pool of the tropical Pacific Ocean.Quart. J. Roy. Meteor.Soc., 131, 639–673.   doi:10.1256/qj.04.13.

Rasmussen, R. M., B. C. Bernstein, M. Murakami, G. Stossmeister, J. Reisner, and B. Stankov, 1995: The 1990 Valentine’s Day Arctic outbreak. Part I: Mesoscale structure and evolution of a Colorado Front Range shallow upslope cloud. J. Appl. Meteor., 34, 1481–1511.    doi:10.1175/1520-0450-34.7.1481.

Rauber, R. M. and Tokay, A.1991: An explanation for the existence of supercooled liquid water at the top of cold clouds. J. Atmos. Sci., 48, 1005-1023. doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(1991)048%3C1005:AEFTEO%3E2.0.CO;2

Rosinski, J., 1991: Latent ice-forming nuclei in the Pacific Northwest. Atmos. Res., 26, 509-523. doi-org/10.1016/0169-8095(91)90041-T

Saunders, P. M., 1965: Some characteristics of tropical marine showers. J. Atmos. Sci., 22, 167-173.        doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(1965)022%3C0167:SCOTMS%3E2.0.CO;2

Schemenauer, R. S., and G. A. Isaac, 1984:  The importance of cloud top lifetime in the description of natural cloud characteristics.  J. Climate Appl. Meteor., 23,267-279. doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1984)023%3C0267:TIOCTL%3E2.0.CO;2

Scorer, R. S., and F. H. Ludlum, 1953: Bubble theory of penetrative convection. Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 79, 94-103.  doi-org/10.1002/qj.49707933908

Stoelinga, M. A., and co-authors, 2003:  Improvement of Microphysical Parameterization through Observational Verification Experiment.  Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 1807-1825.

doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-84-12-1807

Taylor, J. W., and Coauthors, 2016: Observations of cloud microphysics and ice formation during COPE. Atmos. Chem. Phys.,16, 799–826, doi:10.5194/acp-16-799-2016.

Vardiman, L., 1978: The generation of secondary ice particles in clouds by crystal-crystal collisions. J. Atmos. Sci.,35, 2168-2180.

doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1978)035,2168:TGOSIP.2.0.CO;2.

Waldvogel, A., L. Klein, D. J. Musil, and P. L. Smith, 1987:  Characteristics of Radar-Identified Big Drop Zones in Swiss Hailstorms. J. Clim and Appl. Meteor., 26, 861-877.

doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1987)026%3C0861:CORIBD%3E2.0.CO;2

Woodley, W, L. G. Gordon, T. J. Henderson, B. Vonnegut, D. Rosenfeld, and A. Detwiler: Aircraft-produced ice particles (APIPs), 2003: additional results and further insights. J .Appl. Meteor., 42, 640–651.   doi:10.1175/1520-0450(2003)042,0640:AIPAAR.2.0.CO;2.

Workman, E. J., and S. E. Reynolds, 1949: Time of rise and fall of cumulus cloud tops. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 30, 359-360.  No doi.

Zeng, Z., S. E. Yuter, R. A. Houze, Jr., and D. Kingsmill, 2001: Microphysics of the rapid development of heavy convective precipitation.  Mon. Wea. Rev., 129, 1882-1904. doi.org/10.1175/1520-0493(2001)129%3C1882:MOTRDO%3E2.0.CO;2

======================================================

FOOTNOTES

[1]Retiree, Cloud and Aerosol Research Group, Atmos. Sci. Dept., University of Washington, Seattle.

[2]Hobbs and Rangno 1985, 1990, and 1998, hereafter HR85, HR90, and HR98, and Rangno and Hobbs 2001 and 2005, hereafter RH2001 and RH2005.

[3]Exceptions might be those situations where fresh turrets rise up through remains of turrets in calm or nearly calm situations.

[4]It is interesting to note that aufm Kampe and Weickmann (1951) produced virtually the same ice nuclei activity graph as found in DeMott et al. 2010. Blanchard (1957) froze freely suspended giant drops at -5° to -8°C using out door air, as did aufm Kampe and Weickmann.

[5]We also found it difficult to arrive at that moment of “explosive” ice development with our aircraft.

[6]The Quillayute, WA, rawinsonde 500 mb temperature was -45°C the morning of our flight!

[7]We note that in the cloud studied by Mossop (1985u) a drop of 1.5 mm diameter was encountered.

[8]If Ono (1972u) was correct about the importance of drops between 30 µm and 60 µm diameter, then we may have been barking up the wrong “ice tree” by concentrating on drizzle and raindrop sizes.

[9]While tedious, we inspected all our 2-D imagery in our Cumulus studies for artifact problems; we didn’t just crunch numbers without looking at every 2-D strip!

[10]This colloquy also emphasized an extremely important point in science; we should speak out on findings that we question instead of remaining on the sidelines.  We admired Blyth and Latham for questioning our work. After all, we could be wrong!

[11]Isaac and Schemenauer (1979), however, criticized Mossop’s 1978 nomogram; Mossop (1979) responded politely with more supportive data.

[12]It has been said that references to ground breaking early work is disappearing in publications due to the presence of younger authors.

[13]Ono worked with Mossop (e.g., Mossop and Ono 1969u), perhaps there was some “cross-pollination” of ideas…

[14]Sites to consider might be at Mt. Hermon, Israel, or at ski resorts in Lebanon. In-cloud situations with snow and graupel precipitation would be common at these sites.

[15]Our first two submitted manuscripts, ones that preceded RH83u, were rejected. The editor wrote, concerning the 2ndmanuscript, “The reviewers are still unconvinced by these controversial claims”, B. Silverman, Ed., personal correspondence.

[16]Mossop et al. 1968u also found columnar ice particles in dissipating, anvil-like regions as well as in high LWC zones.

Thunderblasts after midnight awaken sleeping Catalinans with 50 mph winds, graupel, and R++; latest storm total now 1.38 inches!

In case you don’t believe me that over an inch fell, this digital record from Sutherland Heights with writing on it:

20170120-21 rain day
Your last 24 h of rain in the Sutherland Heights, Catalina, Arizona, USA. Total resets at midnight.

Probably a little more to come, too.  Got some blow damage, I’m sure.  Will be looking for roof shingles around the yard today.

12:45 AM. Your radar and IR satellite imagery for our blast last night from IPS MeteoStar
12:45 AM. Your radar and IR satellite imagery for our blast last night from IPS MeteoStar .  That tiny red region near Catalina represents hail and/or extremely heavy rain.

And, as everyone knows from their favorite TEEVEE weatherperson, “New Storm to Pound SE Arizonans!”  Begins Monday night, Tuesday AM.  May have snow in it as it ends.

Your know, its no fun telling people what they already know, so lets look ahead beyond the normal forecast period of great accuracy, beyond not seven days, not eight, but beyond TEN days!

First, we set the stage with a ten day look ahead (from last evening) in a NOAA spaghetti factory plot:

Valid for 5 PM, Monday, January 30th. If you've not seen this, you'll be screaming "warm in the West, and damn Cold in the East." Its a common pattern often associated with some of the driest years in the West when it recurs over and over again during a winter.
Valid for 5 PM, Monday, January 30th. If you’ve not seen this, you’ll be screaming “warm in the West, and damn Cold in the East.” Its a common pattern often associated with some of the driest years in the West when it recurs over and over again during a winter.

This plot indicates that the pattern of a towering, storm-blocking ridge is certain along the West Coast by ten days–will be developing for a day or three before this,  That ridge represents an extrusion of warm air aloft over the entire West Coast extending all the way into Alaska.  The couple of red lines in and south of AZ are due to the change of a minor, likely dry, cutoff low in our area about this time (plus or minus a day).

In other words, this plot suggests a warmer, dry period develops over AZ, and storms are shunted from the Pacific Ocean, located west of the West Coast, all the way to Anchorage and vicinity,  They will  be welcoming a warm up in weather up thataway at some point in this pattern.

Is that it, then, for the AZ winter precip?  It could happen.  Just one more storm after the current one fades away today?

Hint:  Sometimes anticyclone ridges like the one in the plot above get too big for their britches, and fall away, or, break off like a balloon from a tether, and a warm blob of air aloft sits at higher latitudes, often floating off to the northwest.

The exciting ramification of this latter scenario is that in the “soft underbelly” of the “blocking anticyclone” (as in American football), the jet stream throws something of a screen pass, goes underneath the belly of the blocking high,  and races in toward the West Coast at lower latitudes.  Having done so, such a break through pattern (“Break on through to the Other Side”) results in heavy rains in Cal and the Southwest.

Izzat what’s going to happen?

Let us look farther ahead, unprofessionally, really,  and see if there is evidence in spaghetti for such a development and you already know that there must be because it would explain why I am writing so much here.  Below, the EXCITING spaghetti plot strongly indicating break through flow breaking on through to the other side, i.e., the West Coast,  from the lower latitudes of the Pacific:

Valid on Thursday, February 2, at 5 PM AST. Flow from the lower latitudes of the Pac will, in fact, break on through to the other side, as told in song by the Doors1.
Valid on Thursday, February 2, at 5 PM AST. Flow from the lower latitudes of the Pac will, in fact, break on through to the other side, as told in song by the Doors1.  Who knows what they were talking about but here we’re talking about a jet stream….

Well, we’ll see in a coupla weeks if CMP knows what he is talking about..  I think this is going to happen, resembles what’s happening now, and weather patterns like to repeat, more so within the same winter.  However, how much precip comes with this pattern will be determined by how much flow breaks on through to the other side….

Yesterday’s clouds

Let us begin our look at yesterday’s clouds by looking back three days ago before the Big Storm.  We had a nice sunrise.   Here it is in case you missed it:

DSC_1680
7:21 AM. Altostratus sunrise. Virga is highlighted showing the precipitating nature of Altostratus. Amount of virga can vary.

DSC_1686
7:31 AM. Same kind of view, different colors.

DSC_1689
7:40 AM. Highlight on the Tortolitas. This is why you carry your camera at all times.

9:04 AM. Pretty much solid gray after that nice sunrise for the rest of the day with cloud bases lowering and raising. Early on, cloud bases were well above 10,000 feet; i. e;, above Mt. Lemmo, and would be called, "Altostratus opacus." The virga is very muted, and there are embedded droplet clouds as well as a droplet cloud layer (Altocumulus) encroaching on the right. Estimated ceiling here: 12,000 overcast." (Pronounced, "one-two thousand overcast" if you want to make your friends think that maybe you were a pilot at some time in your life.)
9:04 AM. Pretty much solid gray after that nice sunrise for the rest of the day with cloud bases lowering and raising. Early on, cloud bases were well above 10,000 feet; i. e;, above Mt. Lemmo, and would be called, “Altostratus opacus.” The virga is very muted, and there are embedded droplet clouds as well as a droplet cloud layer (Altocumulus) encroaching on the right. Estimated ceiling here: 12,000 overcast.” (Pronounced, “one-two thousand overcast” if you want to make your friends think that maybe you were a pilot at some time in your life.)

12:58 PM.
12:58 PM. Clouds began to appear on Samaniego Ridge as the moist air above us lowered steadily.  However, due to lowering cloud tops, the ice in the higher overcast layer was gone. Here there are two layers above the scruff of Stratus fractus (I would call it) on the ridge.  The lower one looks like its a Stratocumulus, and the higher one a solid layer of “Altocumulus opacus.”  Its already rained some, and we were in between storm bands.

2:48 PM. Looked like the Altocumulus opacus (stratiformis, if you want to be exactly correct) was breaking up just enough for a sun break. But no, kept filling in as it headed this way from the southwest.
2:48 PM. Looked like the Altocumulus opacus (stratiformis, if you want to be exactly correct) was breaking up just enough for a sun break. But no; it kept filling in as it headed this way from the southwest.  No ice, or virga evident, so tops are pretty warm, probably warmer than -10° C (23° F) would be a good guess. Hah!  Just now looked at the TUS sounding and tops were indicated to be at -11° C, still very marginal for ice (absent drizzle drops in clouds, which causes ice to form at much higher temperatures, but you already knew that.)

4:24 PM. Small openings allowed a few highlights to show up on the Catalinas underneath that Altocumulus opacus layer.
4:24 PM. Small openings allowed a few highlights to show up on the Catalinas underneath that Altocumulus opacus layer.  And  clouds were still topping Ms. Mt. Lemmon, indicating a good flow of low level moisture was still in progress.

Moving forward to only two days ago, the day preceding the nighttime blast:  a cold, windy day with low overcast skies all day, shallow, drizzle-producing clouds, something we don’t see a lot of here in Arizona.

8:08 AM, January 20th, 2017, btw. "Gray skies, nothin' but gray skies, from now on", by Irving B.
8:08 AM, January 20th, 2017, btw. “Gray skies, nothin’ but gray skies, from now on”, by Irving B.  Stratus fractus underlies an overcast of Stratocumulus.  Some light rain is falling toward Romero Pass on the right.

8:10 AM. A really special shot. Stratus with drizzle is a very difficult photographic capture. I can feel how enthralled you are with this view toward Oro Valley. You know, I do this for YOU.
8:10 AM. A really special shot. Stratus with drizzle, shown here,  is a very difficult photographic capture. I can feel how enthralled you are with this scene toward Oro Valley. You know, I do this for YOU.  Look how uniform the gray is!  It just takes your breath away!

9:44 AM. Before long, drier air down low moved in, eradicating our beautiful Stratus layer, leaving only holdouts (Stratus fractus) along the Catalina foothills below the heavy layer of Stratocumulus.
9:44 AM. Before long, drier air down low moved in, eradicating our beautiful Stratus layer, leaving only holdouts (Stratus fractus) along the Catalina foothills below the heavy layer of Stratocumulus.

10:20 AM. The wind had now shown up, and these ragged, shredded shallow Stratocumulus shedding drizzle or very light rain showers stormed across the Catalina Mountains. This was quite remarkable sight, since such shallow clouds as these are more often seen in clean maritime locations like Hawaii. Scenes like this suggest that the cloud droplet concentrations were very low, and that there were larger than normal cloud condensation nuclei on which the drops could form, getting a head start in the sizes needed to produce collisions with coalescene (larger than 30 microns in diameter (about one third to one half a human hair in diameter, for perspective.)
10:20 AM. The wind had now shown up, and these ragged, shredded shallow Stratocumulus shedding drizzle or very light rain showers stormed across the Catalina Mountains. This was quite remarkable sight, since such shallow clouds as these are more often seen in clean maritime locations like Hawaii. Scenes like this suggest that the cloud droplet concentrations were very low, and that there were larger than normal cloud condensation nuclei on which the drops could form, getting a head start in the sizes needed to produce collisions with coalescene (larger than 30 microns in diameter (about one third to one half a human hair in diameter, for perspective.)

 

3:12 PM. Lower, drier air moved in, eradicating the Stratocumulus and revealing the rarely seen Nimbostratus precip-producing layer. This layer, considered a mid-level cloud, is usually obscured by, you guessed it, Stratocumulus clouds.
3:12 PM. Lower, drier air moved in, eradicating the Stratocumulus and revealing the rarely seen Nimbostratus precip-producing layer. This layer, considered a mid-level cloud, is usually obscured by, you guessed it, Stratocumulus clouds.

By the end of the day, the clouds had lowered again, and we were about to have a very interesting night!

5:01 PM.
5:01 PM.

The End

———————-
1Remember how great we hippie relics thought that first Doors album was? Later, the Doors, and that era were to be made fun of by 80s punk and humor group,  The Dead Milkman in “Bitchin’ Comaro.” (Its worth a listen.)

 

 

Drencher! 1.07 inches drenches Catalina/Sutherland Heights

What a nice steady rain with honest-to-goodness drizzle mixed in over the past two days.   We’ve now had 4.24 inches in the past 30 days!

And yesterday, you saw the rarely captured on film,  drizzly Stratus clouds, essentially something akin to wallpaper in the sky, but with misty visibility below its base.  I hope you got a  lot of photos of it;  occurrences like that in Airizona1  its like finding a clean-shaven Lincoln penny.

And, of course, you knew that with misty, drizzly rain, clouds were shallow, no matter how dark they looked!  Here’s the afternoon TUS sounding (from IPS MeteoStar) confirming that assertion2:

Tops are indicated by this sounding to be around 12,000 feet above sea level and at about -10°Ç.
Tops are indicated by this sounding to be around 12,000 feet above sea level and at about -10°Ç.

The drizzle likely fell from shallower parts of this cloud, while the accumulating rains, ones that “tip the bucket”, were likely associated with clouds all the way to that -10° C, where lots of ice would have formed.  Drizzle occurrences and lots of ice in clouds at surprisingly high temperatures such as those tops we had yesterday are common,  mutually inclusive observation in airborne studies of clouds then the tops go much below -4° C.  But, its an unusual occurrence in AZ since we rarely have shallow clouds like yesterday’s with droplets in them large enough to form drizzle.

So, drizzle and  what we call, “ice multiplication” occurring in our clouds yesterday made it a rare day, indeed for Arizonans to enjoy even if the mid-40s temperature all day was “less than optimum.”

Next up, more substantial rain after a couple of pretty nice, but maybe not thermally optimum days.  Below, the latest output from the U of AZ supercomputing weather calculator showing the cumulative precipitation over the whole SW during the next week, starting from last evening.  Quite fun to see the totals build up in that link above:

Cumulative precip ending by 5 AM AST January 23rd. Our precip is pretty much over by late on the 21st.
Cumulative precip ending by 5 AM AST January 23rd. Our precip is pretty much over by late on the 21st.

Being from southern Cal, what I find interesting is that another 10-15 inches of precip is forecast by this model’s output in the northern mountains of Cal, on top of the 20-30 inches they’ve already had JUST THIS MONTH!

Some cloud highlights

11:59 AM. This is just an astounding scene. You can hardly have a more spectacular, photogenic photo of Stratus! I get goose-bumps looking at it!
11:59 AM, yesterday.   This is just an astounding scene. You can hardly have a more spectacular, photogenic photo of Stratus! I get goose-bumps looking at this scene!  The view, if you can’t tell,  is toward Saddlebrooke.  The dismality of yesterday’s skies is also well captured.

It pretty hard to top a photo like this one, so maybe I will just quit here.  Wait to see what interesting clouds today brings for us.  They’ll be shallow again as an inversion clamps down on the tops even a little more so than yesterday’s afternoon sounding shows, and the Stratocumulus and Cumulus clouds will be thinner, higher bases, lower tops, marginal for ice formation.  So, not expecting to see ice in clouds today, but, then I wasn’t expecting so much rain, either from this little system that went through….

OK, one more:

2:14 PM.  Horse and drizzle.
2:14 PM. Horse and drizzle.

The End

—————————
1Misspelled on purpose to emphasize the quality of the air we have  in Arizona, at least yesterday.   Chamber of Commerce, are you listening?   “Airizona,” as our new State name, would work great to attract people from smog-laden regions. I’m sure!   Hmmm, or maybe just a good, new athletic shoe would do it,  “Nike Airizona”…  Nike, are you listening?
2One of the great moments in a life, as we all know from time to time,  is in confirming an assertion, which also might be accompanied by gloating.

Sutherland Heights storm total now 0.71 inches as of 7 AM; soil turning green as moss look alike growth reminding one of Seattle spurts from bare ground!

First, in blogging for dollars, this:

3:55 PM. Rainbow fragment and solar home. Yesterday's visual highlight. Yours for $1995.95. If you call now, we'll throw in a exact same photo FREE!
3:55 PM. Rainbow fragment and solar home, an extraordinary combination.. It was yesterday’s visual highlight. Yours for $1995.95. And, if you order now, we’ll throw in a second,  exact copy of this extraordinary, magical scene FREE!

Here’s a nice one from the day before as the clouds rolled in, starting with Cirrus and Altocumulus, lowering to Stratocumulus later in the afternoon.

5:04 PM, 30 Dec.
5:04 PM, 30 Dec.  Sun break amid Stratocumulus.  Stratus fractus topping mountains.

Yesterday’s clouds; an extraordinary day with a little drizzle amid light showers

Hope you noticed the true drizzle that occurred yesterday, namely, fine (larger than 200 microns, smaller than 500 microns in diameter), close TOGETHER (critical to the definition of “drizzle”) drops that nearly float in the air. They may make the least impression, or none, when landing in a puddle.

When you see drizzle, you have the opportunity of chatting up your neighbor by educating them informally to what drizzle really is (many, maybe most,  TEEVEE weatherfolk do NOT know what “drizzle” is, btw), and 2) by telling your neighbor, if he/she is still listening to you, that the droplets in the clouds overhead must be larger than 30 microns in diameter, or better yet, “larger than the Hocking-Jonas diameter of 38 microns, at which point collisions with coalescence begins to occur” and  “drizzle is not produced by ice crystals in the clouds overhead; they’re not enough of them to produce ‘fine, close together drops.'” Your neighbor has likely left the building at this point, but, oh, well, you tried.

Here, in Arizona, shallow clouds, such as we had yesterday, hardly ever can produce the broad droplet spectrum in which clouds have droplets larger than 30 microns in diameter.  Its because this far inland from the ocean, where the air is very clean,  the air has picked up natural and anthro aerosol particles that can function as “cloud condensation nuclei” (CCN).   As a result of ingesting dirt and stuff, clouds have too many droplets here as a rule for the droplets in them to grow to larger sizes.   They’re all mostly less than 20-25 microns, sizes in which even if they collide, they can’t coalesce.

In “pristine” areas, if you go to one, such as on a cruise out in  the oceans, droplet concentrations in clouds are much lower, and even a little water that might be condensed in a shallow cloud can produce a broad spectrum, one that extends to droplet larger than 30 microns.

So even little or shallow layer clouds can precip over the oceans, produce drizzle or light rain showers (in which the larger drops are bigger than 500 microns in diameter).  Of course, here we recall that the (whom some consider “villainous”) geoengineers want to stop drizzle out over the oceans so that clouds have longer lifetimes, are darker on the bottom, and reflect more sunlight back into space.

Those guys can be lumped into the same ilk as those who want to change the color of the sky from blue to whitish or yellowish by adding gigantic amounts of tiny particles in the stratosphere, again for the purpose of cooling the planet!  Unbelievable.  Please ask before doing this!!!

A Pinatubo sampler for what “geoengineering” would do to our skies,  say, sunsets in particular.  I took this photo from the University of Washington’s research aircraft in 1992 off the Washington coast in onshore flow.  But we saw these same sunsets, sunrises, yellowed by the Pinatubo eruption of June 1991 everywhere we went, including in the Azores in June 1992.

AB469_mf9193_1517_ontop Sc_Pinatubo above

OK, pretty boring, whiney, really, so inserting picture of a nice horse here to make people feel better if you’ve been depressed about what our scientists have been pondering to do about global warming other than controlling emissions:

8:57 AM. Zeus. Led cloistered life for 13 years; likes to bolt now that he's getting out.
8:57 AM. Zeus. Led cloistered life for 13 years; likes to bolt,  now that he’s getting out on the trails.

7:40 AM, yesterday, Dec. 31st.
7:40 AM, yesterday, Dec. 31st.  The low hanging Stratocumulus clouds, about 1500 feet above Catalina, and the mountains had a bit of an orange tinge.  It was probably due to sunrise color on a separate much higher layer.

Later….drizzling Stratocumulus, same view:

10:30 AM. Stratocumulus praecipitatio, if you want to go "deep" into cloud naming. "Stratiformis", too, covers a lot of the sky.
10:30 AM. Stratocumulus praecipitatio, if you want to go “deep” into cloud naming. “Stratiformis”, too, covers a lot of the sky. Note misty-like view, lack of shafting.

12:48 PM. More Stratocu P., an example of those clouds in the distance that kept dropping little and light rain showers on Catalina.
12:48 PM. More Stratocu P., an example of those clouds in the distance that kept dropping little and light rain showers on Catalina.

1:01 PM. Highlighting amid the RW-- , (weather text for "very light rain showers").
1:01 PM. Highlighting amid the RW– , (weather text for “very light rain showers”).  Stratcu P., with maybe Stratus fractus or Cumulus fractus below.  The shadowed,  dark shred clouds  in the mddle would be Stratus fractus IMO.

3:55 PM. Zooming in on that pretty rainbow. You know, this is a cloud heaven here. I hope you all appreciate it!
3:55 PM. Zooming in on that pretty rainbow. You know, this is a cloud heaven here. I hope you all appreciate it!  Maybe that’s why I get upset over “geoengineering” and changing the sky anywhere.

3:57 PM. Between showers, but new ones erupted upwind. This one have a shaft, implying a higher cloud top than the prior, non-shafting clouds that brought us semi-steady RW--.
3:57 PM. Between showers, but new ones erupted upwind. This one have a shaft, implying a higher cloud top than the prior, non-shafting clouds that brought us semi-steady RW–.

The second extraordinary thing about yesterday was that the top temperatures of these clouds was around -10° C (14° F), temperatures that ice does not form act as a rule in Arizona.  To get ice at temperatures that high, you also need larger cloud droplets, and they have to occur in the -2.5° C to -8° C range.  In this range, it was discovered that falling ice crystals, mostly faster falling ones like “graupel” (aka, soft hail) when colliding with larger drops, ice splinters are produced.  The cloud droplets must be larger than 23 microns in diameter in THAT particular temperature zone, something that would occur more often in our warm,  summer clouds, but would rarely be expected in our winter ones.

Why?

Again,  it goes back to clouds in inland regions ingesting lots of natural and anthro aerosols that cut down on droplet sizes in clouds (by raising droplet concentrations in them).  Our recent rains have helped cut down on that process on ingesting dirt, for sure, and was a likely player yesterday.  Furthermore, our winter clouds are moisture challenged relative to the summer ones with their tropical origins and high cloud base temperatures, a second reason not to expect larger droplets in our winter clouds.

Here  is the TUS sounding with some writing on it for yesterday afternoon from IPS MeteoStar.  (Satellite imagery was also  indicating warmer than usual tops for precipitating clouds yesterday.):

The TUS balloon sounding ("rawinsonde" in techno speak) launched at about 3:30 PM yesterday afternoon. Balloon rises at about 1,000 feet a minute, FYI. Typically they pop up around 100,000-120,000 feet! Instruments are parachuted down. Sometimes they are found and returned to the NWS and re-used! How great is that?
The TUS balloon sounding (“rawinsonde” in techno speak) launched at about 3:30 PM yesterday afternoon. Balloon rises at about 1,000 feet a minute, FYI. Typically they pop up around 100,000-120,000 feet! Instrument package is parachuted down so it doesn’t conk somebody on the head. Sometimes they are found and returned to the NWS and re-used! How great is that?

Here’s the punchline:  If clouds are drizzling, then they are ripe, if the tops get to lower temperatures than about -4° C for what we’ve termed “ice multiplication” or “ice enhancement”.  A very few natural ice nuclei at temperatures between -4° and -10° C, say, starts the process, those forming “soft hail” which then leads to ice splinters.  This is the leading theory of this anomaly of ice in clouds at temperatures only a little below freezing, if you think 23° to 14° F fits that definition.

There are exceptions where this process did not explain the ice that formed at such high temperatures, so standby for further elucidation about how in the HECK ice forms in clouds at some point in the future.

As usual, no time to proof, so good luck in comprehending what’s been written.

The weather just ahead:

The second main rainband is just about here at 9:25 AM.  Cloud tops will be deeper and colder than in the prior rains, raising the possibility of some thunder today, and maybe another third of an inch of rain.  Watch for an windshift line cloud (“arcus” cloud) might well be seen today.  That’s always dramatic and exciting here in Catalina cloud heaven.

The End at last!

And a happy, weatherful year to all!

Hawaii comes to Arizona from Mexico; 5.91 inches at Dan Saddle! 6.43 inches on Mt. Graham!

Former Hurricane ‘Newt’ brought some real humidity, low clouds with unusually warm bases (around 15-20 ° C) to Tucson and Catalina yesterday as its remnant center passed just about over us.

Old Newt was “dragging” here as a tropical storm, aloft it was pretty strong still,  brought near hurricane force winds on isolated, high, mountain tops.  Mt. Hopkins reached 59 kts from the ESE before the “eye” passed nearby  and the winds turned to the west.  And in the Rincon Mountains   a gigantic 6.39 inches was logged, and a site on Mt. Graham reported 6.43 inches.  (Thanks to Mark Albright for these reports.)

While Sutherland Heights received only 0.29 inches in that all day rain, there were eye-popping totals in the Catalinas.    Take a look at some of these, Dan Saddle near Oracle Ridge,  nearing 6 inches in 24 h!  Below, 24 h totals ending at 2 AM this morning, which pretty much covers Newt:

0.28 Golder Ranch Horseshoe Bend Rd in Saddlebrooke
0.59 Oracle Ranger Stati approximately 0.5 mi SW of Oracle
0.24 Dodge Tank Edwin Rd 1.3 mi E of Lago Del Oro Parkway
0.35 Cherry Spring approximately 1.5 mi W of Charouleau Gap
0.79 Pig Spring approximately 1.1 mi NE of Charouleau Gap
0.47 Cargodera Canyon NE corner of Catalina State Park
0.31 CDO @ Rancho Solano Cañada Del Oro Wash NE of Saddlebrooke
0.39 CDO @ Golder Rd Cañada Del Oro Wash at Golder Ranch Rd
4.13 Oracle Ridge Oracle Ridge, approximately 1.5 mi N of Rice Peak
4.25 Mt. Lemmon Mount Lemmon
1.61 CDO @ Coronado Camp Cañada Del Oro Wash 0.3 mi S of Coronado Camp
2.17 Samaniego Peak Samaniego Peak on Samaniego Ridge
5.91 Dan Saddle Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge
3.54 White Tail Catalina Hwy 0.8 mi W of Palisade Ranger Station
3.66 Green Mountain Green Mountain
1.77 Marshall Gulch Sabino Creek 0.6 mi SSE of Marshall Gulch

Your cloud day yesterday; we don’t talk about today.  That’s for tomorrow.

The day began with one of the great examples of Nimbostratus, that technically a middle -level cloud greeted us at daybreak in what was one of the great examples of the phantom cloud, the true precipitator, usually hidden from view by lower clouds such as Stratocumulus.  But, yesterday morning, there it was,  “Ns” naked as could be.  I know many of you have been looking for a good shot of Nimbostratus to add to your cloud collection for a long time and I could feel the joy out there when I saw it myself.   I only took a couple of shots myself, wish now I had taken more of an extraordinary scene.

6:49 AM. Nimbostratus! Note how high the bottom is, a bottom marked mostly by falling precip, usually snow because steady light rain is so relatively transparent.
6:49 AM. Nimbostratus! Note how high the bottom is, a bottom marked mostly by falling precip, usually snow because steady light rain is so relatively transparent.

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6:52 AM. Looking NNW toward parts of Saddlebrook/Eagle Crest developments. Notice the nice, relatively uniform, blurry gray, the “blurry” look due to falling rain, the perceived bottom, at the melting level, snow is melting into rain. In winter, therefore, the “bottom” or base of Ns, absent lower clouds, appears lower to us because the snow level is lower.

Then, as the light rain here moistened the air hour after hour, low clouds, such as Stratocumulus and Stratus fractus began to form along the mountains, producing some interesting “tracers” of the chaotic air movement over there by the Catalinas under nearly calm conditions.  Newt disappointed in his wind accompaniment.

1:41 PM. Stratus fractus clouds lined Samaniego Ridge, Stratocumulus or weak Cumulus topped it, with a higher layer of Stratocumulus above that.
1:41 PM. Stratus fractus clouds lined Samaniego Ridge, Stratocumulus or weak Cumulus topped it, with a higher layer of Stratocumulus above that,  That highest layer was once the much deeper Nimbostratus, but now has lost its deep part, so its no longer “Ns” since its not precipitating.

1:42 PM. The deep stratocast has departed, the remaining clouds in the foreground are Stratocumulus. The darkening bases on the horizon southwest of Pusch Ridge are where Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds filled with rain are piling up, likely due to the light winds coming together down there, maybe in the low center that was once "Newt."
1:42 PM. The deep stratocast has departed, the remaining clouds in the foreground are Stratocumulus. The darkening bases on the horizon southwest of Pusch Ridge are where Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds filled with rain are piling up, likely due to the light winds coming together down there, maybe in the low center that was once “Newt.”

 

Later in the day, as the highest, coldest cloud tops associated with those beautiful Nimbostatus clouds moved off to the NE, and our cloudscape became a mix of deeper Stratocumulus with Cumulus and isolated Cumulonimbus cells,  they produced true drizzle and misty, visibility-reducing “warm rain”, that rare type of rain that falls here from clouds lacking in ice, began to be observed producing Hawaiian looking rain on our mountains, delicate shafts of rain whose small drops slanted away from the base.

2:32 PM. Misty drizzle and very light rain! When did this transition happen?
2:32 PM. Misty drizzle and very light rain! When did this transition happen?

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2:32 PM. Hard to tell the difference here in a photo between the pure, naked Ns, and this lower drizzle,misty rain producing cloud likely topping out well below the freezing level. I’ve seen these transitions before, but I missed this one, where a Stratocumulus deck starts to look a little fuzzy on the bottom as the drizzle, very light rain starts to come out (due to tops rising, drops at the top getting larger, at some point crossing over the “Hocking” droplet threshold of larger than about 38 microns in diameter, where they begin sticking together when they hit). Here, the transition from non-precipitating Stratocu to I-don’t know what has already taken place during between the photos at 1:41 and 1:42 PM. Should drizzly, relatively shallow clouds like these now be termed, Nimbostratus? Or Stratocumulus praecipitatio,to emphasis the shallowness? A question definitely for the cloud philosophers to haggle about. No member of the cloud maven club would be punished for calling this scene one showing “Nimbostratus.” However, the drizzle and very light misty rain should have told you it was from a far different cloud structure than that associated with true Nimbostratus, always a deep cloud with ice in it, often topping out at Cirrus levels.

Here, you might well erupt with, “This doesn’t look like Hawaii, but Ocean Shores, Washington, or some other coastal location along the West Coast on a spring day having Stratocumulus with drizzle!”

You would be correct in that eruption.

Below, an example of drizzle drops on your car’s windshield:

3:50 PM. The tiniest drops you can make out on the window are drizzle drops.
3:50 PM. The tiniest drops you can make out on the window are drizzle drops.  I focused on them and you’ll have to click on it to get the full size to be able to see them.  I was so excited to see some more of them!

Later, it was to look little more “Hawaiian”, but if you’ve been to Hilo, you know its mostly cloudy all day.

 

“Warm rain” or rain due to the colllision-coalescence process, is also mainly associated with “clean” conditions, ones low in aerosol particles that can act as cloud condensation nuclei.  The fewer the “CCN” the fewer are the droplets in clouds, and the larger the individual cloud droplets are when saturation and cloud formation occur.    So, by yesterday afternoon, certainly, it was doggone clean here, no doubt aided by washout in that light rain we had.

 

 

Particularly heavy rain with low visibility fell just south of Catalina yesterday afternoon around Ina and Oracle just after 4 pm.  However, that rain did not have those HUGE drops that we see from unloading, deep, Cumulonimbus clouds making this observer think as heavy as it was, it may have been due to a Cumulonimbus topping out at less than 20,000 feet, where the temperature would have been too warm for ice.  The 500 mb temperature yesterday was a tropical-like -3.7° C on the TUS sounding, almost unheard of with a rain situation here.  This, another sign of tropical Newt, since tropical storms/hurricanes have warm cores.

lacking in those huge drops we see in our thunderstorms, this rain likely formed from the “warm rain” process except maybe in the very heaviest rain areas.  It was a special day.

You probably noticed how quiet it was; no thunder around, for one thing, indicating the updrafts in the clouds were not very strong, and that was another indicator that the clouds may not have contained ice.  Without ice, hail and graupel, soft hail, you don’t have lightning.

The lack of lighting, the all day off and on rain, such as you might experience at Hilo, Hawaii, on the windward side, made it seem like you were in Hilo, Hawaii, or one of the other wet spots on the windward side of the Island.

3:27 PM. Another, to me remarkable misty scene reminiscent of oceanic and coastal Stratocumulus with drizzle and light rain
3:27 PM. Another, to me remarkable misty scene reminiscent of oceanic and coastal Stratocumulus with drizzle and light rain

3:52 PM. In the meantime a much deeper cell had developed to the SW of us, down around Ina and Oracle, where an inch and a half of rain fell. Look how the bottom is so close to the ground, like at a temperature near 20° C, about as warm as a cloud base can be here! And the warmer the base, the more water is going up into that cloud! Very exciting scene! Well, they all are to people of cloud maven persuasion.
3:52 PM. In the meantime a much deeper cell had developed to the SW of us, down around Ina and Oracle, where an inch and a half of rain fell. Look how the bottom is so close to the ground, like at a temperature near 20° C, about as warm as a cloud base can be here! And the warmer the base, the more water is going up into that cloud! Very exciting scene! Well, they all are to people of cloud maven persuasion.

4:24 PM. Into the bursting cloud. Still, drops were not HUGE, as you would expect, but extremely numerous, rain rate over an inch an hour in the heaviest parts. Was taken I around Oracle and McGee, and of course, not while driving. That would be crazy. Only looks like it.
4:24 PM. Into the bursting cloud. Still, drops were not HUGE, as you would expect, but extremely numerous, rain rate over an inch an hour in the heaviest parts. Was taken I around Oracle and McGee, and of course, not while driving. That would be crazy. Only looks like it.

6:32 PM. One of the more Hawaiian looking scenes, fine trails of rain dragging along the Catalina Mountains. The slope of the rain coming out absent much wind down low tells you the drops are small, probably near drizzle sizes. And the "shaft" if you will, is diffuse, indicating the small drops are spreading out due to the little turbulence there was making it fuzzy around the edges.
6:32 PM. One of the more Hawaiian looking scenes, fine trails of rain dragging along the Catalina Mountains. The slope of the rain coming out absent much wind down low tells you the drops are small, probably near drizzle sizes. And the “shaft” if you will, is diffuse, indicating the small drops are spreading out due to the little turbulence there was making it fuzzy around the edges.  Maybe, anyway.

Quitting here.

========================

The perfect rain

The “perfect storm”?  Well, maybe the perfect rain, and it kept giving fro several hours yesterday after our best model said it should end yesterday before 11 AM.  And what a nice rain!  1.18 inches total here in Sutherland Heights, as measured by a CoCoRahs plastic 4 inch gauge.  (You might consider getting one, btw, or one from the U of A’s rainlog.org)

Went down to the CDO and Sutherland Washes to see what was up after seeing the gargantuan 4.96 inch total on Ms. Lemmon, and the 3.62 inches at the Samaniego Peak gauge.  Below is the resul for the Sutherland, both were the same, nary a drop in them:

8:15 AM.  Looking upstream in the Sutherland Wash at the back gate of Catalina State Park.  Stratocumulus clouds provide a dank cloudscape.
8:15 AM. Looking upstream in the Sutherland Wash at the back gate of Catalina State Park.  I could hardly believe that there was no flow with so much rain having fallen in Catalinas!  But it was good in a sense; all that rain mostly soaked in.

 

6:37 AM.  A photo of drizzle falling from Stratus/Stratocumulus clouds.  Hope you got out and jumped around in our rare drizzle occurrence.   Big hat, no bicycle works in drizzle, too,  keeping it off your glasses.
6:37 AM. A photo of drizzle falling from Stratocumulus clouds. Hope you got out and jumped around in our rare drizzle occurrence. Big hat, no bicycle,  works in drizzle, too, the tiny drops won’t get on your glasses. Note how uniform the fuzziness is toward Catalina/Oro Valley, only gradually thickens to the left.  Took about 2 h to get a hundredth when this was going on.

 

7:23 AM.  Drizzle drops as seen by your car's windshield after about 1 sec at 1 mph.  Note how close together they are.  The tiny drops and how close together they are is what differentiates true drizzle from the phony labeling we sometimes get from our TEEVEEs by semi-pro meteorologists.  Sorry to bang on them again, but REALLY, folks, they should know better.
7:23 AM. Drizzle drops as seen by your car’s windshield after about 1 sec at 1 mph. Note how close together they are. The tiny drops and how close together they are is what differentiates true drizzle from the phony labeling of spares large drops as “drizzle” we sometimes get from our TEEVEEs by semi-pro meteorologists. Sorry to bang on them again, but REALLY, folks, they should know better.  Sure, I’m a drizzle-head, but it really does matter since its a whole different process that produces drizzle compared to sparse large drops.  Sorry, too, for another mini-harangue on this, but REALLY folks, we should know the difference!  Feeling better now, got that out.

 

8:02 AM.  Heading down to the Sutherland Wash with temperatures and dewpoints in the mid-60s, there really was a feel for being on the wet side of the Hawaiian Islands, maybe above Hilo, HI, at 3,000 feet elevation.
8:02 AM. Heading down to the Sutherland Wash on Golder Ranch Drive with temperatures and dewpoints in the mid-60s, there really was a feel for being on the wet side of the Hawaiian Islands, maybe above Hilo, HI, at 3,000 feet elevation, except for the dead grasses.

10:20 AM.  One of the many dramatic scenes yestserday, this one looking toward the Charouleau Gap NE of Catalina.
10:20 AM. One of the many dramatic scenes yestserday, this one looking toward the Charouleau Gap NE of Catalina.

10:19 AM.  While it was nice to see all the water glinting off the rocks on the side of Samaniego Ridge, a deeply troubling aspect was the amount of aerosol that had moved in suddenly it seemed, evident in the crespuscular rays.  How could it be this dirty so soon?  Seems like a weather oxymoron after such a long period of rain.  Also, one wondered if this aerosol loading would stop the warm rain process by providing too many, and smaller droplets in our clouds.
10:19 AM. While it was nice to see all the water glinting off the rocks on the side of Samaniego Ridge, a deeply troubling aspect was the amount of aerosol that had moved in suddenly it seemed, evident in the crespuscular rays. How could it be this dirty so soon? Seems like a weather oxymoron after such a long period of rain. Also, one wondered if this aerosol loading would stop the warm rain process by providing too many, and smaller droplets in our clouds.  Fortunately, that did not happen, and what appeared to be warm rain events, or ice formation at relatively high temperatures in our clouds, also requiring extra large cloud droplets,  for the most part, continued intermittently into mid-afternoon.

 

10:32 AM.  Close up of aerosols and sun glints on wet rocks.
10:32 AM. Close up of aerosols and sun glints on wet rocks.

 

12:23 PM.  Glimpse of ice-forming top.  Types of crystals visible here? Needles and hollow sheaths because the top temperature was likely equal to or warmer than -10 C (14 F) and cooler than -4 C, and that is the temperature range that those crystals form under when there is water saturation, as there is in the Cumulus turret before it glaciates.
12:23 PM. Glimpse of ice-forming top (smooth region above crinkly top). Types of crystals visible here?
Needles and hollow sheaths because the top temperature was likely equal to or warmer than -10 C (14 F) and cooler than -4 C, and that is the temperature range that those crystals form under when there is water saturation, as there is in a Cumulus turret before it glaciates.  OK, a lot of hand waving, but that’s what I think and I am here mainly to tell you what to think, too.

 

5:36 PM. Day ended quietly with a little, but pretty scruff of orographic Stratocumulus, maybe castellanus, on Sam Ridge.
5:36 PM. The day ended quietly with a little, but pretty scruff of orographic Stratocumulus castellanus on Sam Ridge, the clouds mashed down by the subsiding air at the rear of our little trough that went by yesterday afternoon.

 

The weather WAY ahead, too far ahead to even speculate about:

NOAA spaghetti plots still suggesting a pretty good chance of rain here around the 23-25th of this month.  Nothing before then.

 

The End, after some improper speculation.

Hawai’i in Arizona

Yesterday, in the wake of TD Odile, it was about as Hawaiian a day in Arizona as you are ever likely to see. First, the high dewpoints, ones that replicate those in HI, mid and upper 60s (69-70 F in HNL right now), cloud base temperatures of around 60 F, and with misty, even drizzly warm rain around at times. The only thing we didn’t see was a rainbow, so common in HI they named a sports team after them.

If you thought the clouds looked especially soft-looking yesterday, I thought they were, too.  That soft look that also characterizes clouds in Hawaii and other pristine oceanic areas arises from low droplet concentrations (50-100 per cc),  characteristic of Hawaiian clouds.1   Both low updraft speeds at cloud base, and clean air result in low droplet concentrations in clouds.

The result of these factors?

The droplets in the clouds are larger than they would be forming in air with more aerosols (having “cloud condensation nuclei”, or CCN) and stronger updrafts at cloud base.  Yesterday, you could have remarked to your neighbors late yesterday morning,  as the rain and true drizzle began to fall from that Stratocumulus deck out to the SW-W, that the droplets in those clouds, “….must’ve exceeded Hocking’s threshold” of around 38 microns diameter.  Lab experiments have demonstrated that when droplets get to be that large, which isn’t that large at all, really, that they often stick together to form a larger droplet, which in turns, falls faster and bumps into more droplets, and collects them until the original droplet is the size of a drizzle (200-500 microns in diameter) or raindrop (greater than 500 microns in diameter) and can fall out the bottom of the cloud.2

DSC_0136

6:10 AM. Light drizzle or rain due to collisions with coalescence rather than due to the ice process falls from yesterday morning’s Stratocumulus deck (fuzzy, misty stuff in the center and right; eyeball assessment).  Quite exciting to eyeball.

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9:46 AM. So clean and pure looking, these clouds during a brief clearing yesterday morning. These might well have been seen off the coast of Hawai’i.

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10:23 AM. One of the Hawaiian like ambiance of yesterday was both the low clouds, the humid air, and the green texture on the mountains highlighted by the occasional ray of sunlight. Fantastic scenes!

 

DSC_0196

11:31 AM. Being a cloud maven, I wasn’t too surprised to see drizzly rain start to fall from our Hawaiian like Stratocumulus clouds, but I was excited!

 

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11:41 AM. Stratocumulus clouds mass upwind of the Catalinas. Hoping for a few drops at least.

 

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12:07 PM. An especially tropical looking scene I thought, with the very low cloud bases, the humid air; the warm rain process likely the cause of the rain on Samaniego Ridge.

 

6:08 PM.  As the day closed, this fabulous scene on Samaniego Ridge.
6:08 PM. As the day closed, this fabulous scene on Samaniego Ridge.  Clouds might be labeled Stratocumulus castellanus.

 

DSC_0283

6:25 PM. As the air warmed in the clearings to the southwest and west of us, King Cumulonimbus arose. Expect some today around us.

Mods still coming up with cold snap at the end of the month, even with rain as the cold front goes by.  How nice would that be to finish off September?  Still have a couple of days of King Cumulonimbus around as tropical air continues to hang out in SE Arizona.  Hope trough now along Cal coast can generate a whopper here before that tropical air leaves us.  Am expecting one, anyway, in one of the next two days, probably our last chances for summer-style rain.

Speaking of Odile….

the thought that inches of rain might fall in Tucson, something we all heard about two eveings ago WAS warranted by the gigantic amounts that occurred as Odile slimed its way across extreme southeast AZ.  In modeling terms, the error in its track was pretty slight, but the predicted amounts that we COULD have gotten were pretty darn accurate.  I did not see these amounts until after writing to you yesterday.  Note those several four inch plus values around Bisbee, and the one in the lee of the Chiricahuas.  That one 4.45 inches over there suggests to me that the Chiricahuas like got 4-6 inches.  Check’em out:

24 h rainfall ending at 7 AM AST yesterday for SE AZ (courtesy of the U of AZ rainlog.org site).
24 h rainfall ending at 7 AM AST yesterday for SE AZ (courtesy of the U of AZ rainlog.org site).

The End

————————
1Except those affected by Kilauea’s “VOG” which have much higher concentrations, and look a little “dirty.”

2A thousand microns is a millimeter, in case you’ve forgotten, and that’s only about 0.04 inches in diameter.  Most raindrops are in the 1000 to 3000 micron diameter range, though the largest, measured in Brazil, the Marshall and Hawaiian Islands, can be about a centimeter in diameter.

Rain doesn’t show, but sunset does

Yesterday was equal to the most potent cloud day that cloud maven person has seen since moving to Catalina in 2008; from clear skies to thunder before 10 AM!  Fortunately, in spite of all the incredible cloud scenes around, fine, tall clouds so early in the day, CMP was able to control himself and only take 190 photos yesterday, and will share only a 100 of the best with you.

Kind of lost interest, though, when the sky went gray in Altostratus opacus cumulonimbogenitus  after about 3 PM. Didn’t get any rain here, either, which was a disappointment.

Oh, well, “Today is another day”, to paraphrase Scarlet O.  And another chance for an isolated TSTM to land on us.

Saw some of the most intense rainshafts that you can see here, likely producing 1.5 to 3 inches over there on the Tort Mountains around 2 PM and thereafter yesterday.  Thunder was continuous from it for awhile.

But, in poor little Catalina, not even a drop.  Even though Altostratus opacus cumulonimbogenitus (copied and pasted that linguistic monstrosity to keep things moving) did not rain here, there were a few drops that got to the ground from it around James Kreig Park where CMP taking batting practice for some reason with a friend.  The balls were winning.

In spite of the boring cloud scene in mid-late afternoon in Altostratus opacus cumulonimbogenitus, the skies were open far to the west and allowed a sunset display that was pretty much unequaled in CMPs experience anywhere.  So, though it didn’t rain here, we got a nice light show.  Hope you saw it.  Go to the end to skip a lot of excess verbage and less interesting photos.

The end of the day, BTW, was ruined when a TEEVEE meteorologist came on during a local news program told his viewers that “drizzle” was falling somewhere in the area.  My faced turned red, I clinched my fist, and pounded the dining room table, veins standing out.  This is exactly why I don’t watch TEEVEE.  Under my watch, he’d have been fired before he got off his next sentence off.

But that’s me, CMP, a person who cares deeply about educational standards.  As a public service, once again I begin this blog with a photo of what’s not “drizzle”, its that important.  Remember that guy (actually, a world famous prof) I told you about that asked me to leave his office and never come back right after CMP told him that it had been drizzling outside?  Q. E. D.  (The occurrence of drizzle meant that all of that professor’s peer-reviewed body of work in clouds was in error.  OK. enough past interesting personal history…  Well, maybe this; told him there was a lot more ice in his clouds than he was reporting before the drizzle comment.  You could see why that prof might be “concerned.”

Evidence of a "sprinkle", or as we would officially call it, RW--, a "very light rainshower", July 30th, 2010.
Evidence of a “sprinkle”, or as we would officially call it, RW–, a “very light rainshower”, July 30th, 2010.  “Its not drizzle, dammmitall!”, as we say around here. Thanks to JG for this photo.

Drizzle, of course, is fine, CLOSE TOGETHER drops smaller than 500 microns in diameter (0.02 inches!) that almost float in the air.  You can get really wet biking in drizzle, and forget about a baseball cap keeping those drops off your glasses. They can barely fall out of a cloud; you have to be real close to the base to even experience them and that’s why drizzle is commonly experienced falling from very low-based clouds along coast lines.

You can tell how much that erroneous report of “drizzle” falling in Tucson affected me in how I am starting this blog with an educational soliloquy instead of jumping into cloud photos.

By now, you’d probably like to skip to the chase, and going to the U of AZ time lapse is a good way to do that.  Unfortunately, as the storm hit the campus, the power went out for a couple of hours and you miss a good part of it and end of skipping from the middle of the storm to, let’s hear it, “Altostratus opacus cumulonimbogenitus.”  Its great when you can say big terms like that;  it’ll make you sound more educated than you probably are!

OK, after LONG diversionary material, a sampling of yesterday’s fabulous clouds, so many will post them as thumbnails so’s I can cram in more, and, that glorious sunset, too:

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7:34 AM. Cu already starting!

8:27 AM.  I've already taken a hundred photos!  I am beside myself on how these clouds are growing so early in the morning!
8:27 AM. I’ve already taken a hundred photos! I am beside myself on how these clouds are growing so early in the morning!

7:34 AM.  Cu already!
8:49 AM. Go, baby, go, make some ice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9:30 AM.  Unbelievable, this tower piling up like that over the low Tortolita Mountains, especially since CMP was clueless about an early start to convection like this!
9:30 AM. Unbelievable, this tower piling up like that over the low Tortolita Mountains, especially since CMP was clueless about an early start to convection like this!

9:32 AM.  Cu congestus are converting to Cumulonimbus capillatus, the ice machine is on!  See writing on photo.
9:32 AM. Cu congestus are converting to Cumulonimbus capillatus, the ice machine is on! See writing on photo.

9:46 AM.  Sprouts!  That background turret is far higher, has reached maybe 30 kft, compared to the one in the prior photo.  Thunder on the mountain beginning!  Unbelievable.  What a day this is turning out to be.
9:46 AM. Sprouts! That background turret is far higher, has reached maybe 30 kft, compared to the one in the prior photo. Thunder on the mountain beginning! Unbelievable. What a day this is turning out to be.

10:25 AM.  Oh, so pretty.  Note ice anvil, but little rain has fallen out yet.  Watch out below, its a comin'!
10:25 AM. Oh, so pretty. Note ice anvil, but little rain has fallen out yet. Watch out below, its a comin’!

10:33 AM.  Rain on mountains getting closer to Catalina...
10:33 AM. Rain on mountains getting closer to Catalina…

10:39 AM.  Load has dropped!
10:39 AM. Load has dropped, though mainly from the turret on the left shown in that 10:25 AM shot.

1:17 PM. Storms to the left of me, storms to the right, stuck in the middle again.
1:17 PM. Storms to the left of me, storms to the right, stuck in the middle again.

1:46 PM.  Storms to the left of me, storms to the right, stuck in the middle again.  This is a pretty clever shot where it looks like I'm driving and on my way to James Kreig Park and just kind of holding the camera any which way.
1:46 PM. Storms to the left of me, storms to the right, stuck in the middle again. This is a pretty clever shot where it looks like I’m driving and on my way to James Kreig Park and just kind of holding the camera any which way.  This storm is toward the Tucson Mountains.

1:59 PM.  AFter arriving at James Kreig Park, I see this massive storm over the Torts.  Storms on the left of me, storms on the right, stuck in the middle again!  Thunder was continuous at this point.
1:59 PM. After arriving at James Kreig Park, I see this massive storm over the Torts. Storms on the left of me, storms on the right, stuck in the middle again! Thunder was continuous at this point.

5:13 PM.  After a couple of hours of BP, and a few sprinkles, or RW--, the s
5:13 PM. After a couple of hours of BP, and a few sprinkles, or RW–, the sky went dull as the convective roots died and left all this heavy, ice debris cloud (Altostratus opacus cumulonimbogenitus, of course, technophiles). Thought the interesting part of the day was over. Clueless again!  See below.

6:56 PM.  Self portrait.
6:56 PM. Self portrait in interesting lighting.  Kind of goes along with a tendency of megalomania sometimes seen here.

6:58 PM.   Not a self-portrait, but rather a celebration of lighting.
6:58 PM. Not a self-portrait, but rather a celebration of lighting.

7:03 PM.  Words aren't enough.
7:03 PM. Words aren’t enough.

7:08 PM.
7:08 PM.

7:10 PM.  Landscape view.
7:10 PM. Landscape view.

7:11 PM.
7:11 PM.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The End.

1.77 inches in Catalina and counting

….as of 6 AM.

And we might even end up with TWO inches total for this storm!  Amazing!  I couldn’t imagine it, even as a precipophile with a known bias,  that more than 1.5 inches would fall from this situation (10% chance of more than that I wrote), with a best guess of only about an inch.

Even the mods grossly underestimated the amount of rain that would fall during the day yesterday, and THAT was the huge surprise in this situation, with several inches falling in the Cat Mountains in the first 18 hours.  It appeared in the models that the major rains would occur overnight and this morning, rather than during the day yesterday.

Three to five inches of rain have fallen in the Catalina Mountains since the storm began about 36 hours ago.  Is the CDO flowing?  Sutherland Wash?  Streamflow reports for the CDO don’t show anything at this hour, surprisingly.

Here are the latest totals for just 24 h from Pima County.  

We’re now in the main cloud and rain band wrapping around the upper low near San Diego and more showers, maybe a roll of thunder, will continue through this evening.  This band was supposed to be the major rain producer, in the mods, but likely won’t now, though won’t be as great a rain producer as yesterday. Probably a tenth to half an inch likely during the day as the band continues over us for another few hours.  And here is your U of AZ mod rain forecast, hour by hour.

While not forecast in this U of AZ mod run, sometimes secondary bands develop separate from, and behind the main one we’re now in, and I think there is a pretty good chance of that happening today.  Often, there’s a nice sunbreak as the main band departs and before the second separate one comes through, so watch out for that possible surprise in case you think the storm is over.

Pity the poor Oregon Donald DuckTM football team, playing in “Eugene weather” against the Cats today in Tucson, Arizona.   Imagine what they expected the weather to be here even a week or two ago!   And those poor Tour de Tucson bicyclers, too, peddling around flooded streets!

Upper low passes overhead later in the day tomorrow, which means a day with the coldest air will be over us then, and with that, we’ll have some great looking  Cumulus and small Cumulonimbus clouds, scattered showers, maybe enough depth for some graupel and lightning before the weather dries out again for a few days.

Sometimes in these situations like we have today,  dramatic line of showers/thundershowers with a fronting arcus cloud can develop to the west  and southwest and roll across Marana and Oro Valley in the afternoon.  Will be looking for something exciting like that today.

Coming up, another forecasting conundrum….

While the US model has a trough passing over Cal as November closes, while the GEM Canada has the SAME trough offshore of Baja at the same time, a huge dispersion in model results we don’t see very often when they start with the SAME global data and its only five or six days away!

Recall the USA model was in error for the current storm early on, showing it to come inland and be rather dry when the Canadians came up first with a monster using that same global data.  So, leaning toward the Canadian model this time around;  that the incoming low at the end of the month has a good potential to produce more rain here by having a more offshore and southerly trajectory before arriving.

Below, the Canadian solution, and below that, the USA one, FYI as an example about what weather forecasters have to deal with sometimes:

Valid at 5 PM AST, November 28th.  Low of interest (LOI) off Baja Cal.  In USA GFS mod, its over Fresno, Cal at this same time!  Can't be two places at the same time.  Believe this depiction will be closer to the truth.
Valid at 5 PM AST, November 28th. Low of interest (LOI) off Baja Cal. In USA GFS mod, its over Fresno, Cal at this same time! Can’t be two places at the same time. Believe this depiction will be closer to the truth.

Valid for the same time as the map above.  Quite a difference, huh?
Valid for the same time as the map above. Quite a difference, huh?

Yesterday’s clouds

11:43 AM.  Characteristic cloud shot for November 22nd, 2013.
11:43 AM. Characteristic cloud shot for November 22nd, 2013.

And with the massive amounts of rain and puddling, the desert quickly responded.
And with the massive amounts of rain and puddling, the desert quickly responded in unexpected venues.  Here on Equestrian Trail Road, prickly pear cacti emerge from a road puddle.

 

Yesterday, too, after the light to moderate rain in the morning, was a rare episode of Arizona drizzle.  I am sure the best of the CMJs noted this.  And what does it tell you?  The clouds overhead are exceptionally “clean”, droplet concentrations are LOW, likely less than 150 per cubic centimeter, or 150,000 per liter, which we consider low, though it probably sounds high to normal people.

The aerosols on which cloud droplets form on, called “cloud condensation nuclei”, or CCN, got pretty much wiped out by rain, as you would guess yesterday, and so air involved in cloud formation hasn’t got a lot of CCN available.  Normally in inland areas, clouds with 300, 000 to a million droplets per liter are common.

When droplets are few, the water that condenses in the cloud is dispersed on fewer drops, and so each drop tends to be larger than in polluted clouds.  When they are larger, and  reach diameters of 30-40 microns (about half or so of a human hair) they can collide and stick together, form a much larger droplet that falls faster and collides with more and more droplets until it falls out of the cloud.  In this case, because its a thin Stratus cloud, the droplet only can grow to drizzle size, one by definition that is smaller than 500 microns in diameter (about five human hair widths.  They don’t or BARELY make a disturbance in a puddle.  So, when you saw those drizzle drops falling out, you KNEW that the largest droplets in that shallow Stratus cloud overhead had attained 30-40 microns in diameter.

Do you need to know this?  No.

12:33 PM.  Very exciting scene.  The rarely seen Stratus deck, AND a drizzle occurrence in progress!
12:33 PM. Very exciting scene. The rarely seen Stratus deck, AND a drizzle occurrence in progress!

The End.

Yesterday’s drizzle

Some rare drizzle precip1 fell yesterday.  Suggests clouds were pretty “clean”, that is,  didn’t have much aerosol loading and the concentrations of droplets in them was low (likely less than 100 cm-3) Also likely, in view of the recent strong winds, some of the aerosols in those clouds might have been large dust particles2 rather than those due to just “smog” and other tiny natural aerosols.  Large dust particles can not only influence the development of ice at higher temperatures than normal (above -10 C), but is also known to aid the formation of rain due to cloud drops bumping into each other and sticking together; collisions and coalescence because large dust particles can accelerate this process by forming large initial drops at the bottom of the cloud where drops first condense. Here, drops are nearly always too small to bump together and join up unless clouds are deep, like our summer ones,  and ice is going to form anyway.

So, yesterday, was a bit of a novelty.  Some photos and story telling:

SONY DSC
1:34 PM. Drizzling from Stratocumulus!

 

SONY DSC
1:35 PM. Drizzling here. Hope you noticed and wrote it down.  I remember how excited I was in 1986 when I was in Jerusalem and it drizzled!  I did not expect to see drizzle there, and I remember how I screamed out, “DRIZZLE?” after putting my hand out the window of the modest hotel I was in.  In those days, the cloud drops were reported to be too small by researchers there to form drizzle in them.  Yes, Mr. Cloud Maven person was the first person in the world to report in a journal article3 that it DRIZZLED in Israel! One of the great things about blogging is that you can write ALL of the things that you like to read about yourself, and this one is no exception.  I am really enjoying today, reliving past efforts and accomplishments since there don’t seem to be too many ahead….

The late Jack Russell, engineer, listening to Art tell another cloud investigation story.
The late Jack Russell, flight engineer, listening to Art tell another cloud investigation story.

 

2:43 PM.
2:43 PM.  Cumulus humilis field over Saddlebrooke.

3:06 PM.  Drizzle precip just a memory.  These clouds too shallow to rain.
3:06 PM. Drizzle precip just a memory. These clouds too shallow to rain via collisions, and too warm to form ice.

 

Looking ahead….

Mods paint dry weather for the next 15 days, and so yesterday’s disappointing “trace” (don’t recall here that Mr. Cloud Maven person had predicted at least 0.02 inches!) may be it for October.  Phooey.

———————-

1Drizzle: Fine (size range, 200-500 microns in diameter drops) close together, that nearly float in the air.  Very difficult to bicycle in drizzle even with a cap or big hat.   Fallspeeds, just a few mph.  Smaller sizes can’t make it out of the cloud, or evaporate within a few feet almost if they do.  Even true drizzle occurrences, you can’t be too far below the base of the clouds or those tiny drops won’t make it down to you.

2What is a “large” dust particle in a cloud?  Oh, 1-10 microns in diameter, real rocks compared with the other stuff normally in them.  So’s you get a drop that’s already pretty large as soon as condensation takes places.  And, if the updrafts are weak at the bottom, then only them big ones might be activated, keeping the whole cloud’s droplet concentrations low!  Happens even in places in the middle of huge land masses where in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, we saw this happen on a dusty, moist day in shallow Stratocumulus clouds.  They developed some drizzle drops. I was with the National Center for Atmos. Research on a field project then.

31988:  Rain from Clouds with Tops Warmer than -10 C in Israel (Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc.)