“BN”, sometimes referred to in the media as the, “Godzilla Niño” of 15-16.
Before, one year ago, the drought status as presented by the National Drought Monitor folks there in Cornhuskerland, Lincoln, NE:
First, a legend, no, not a story, though we could write one, “The Legend of the Ghost Niño of 2015-16“, but rather a guide to the colorful drought intensities on the maps below:
One year ago
Western drought status as of April 7th, 2015.
Now let us look closely below–you’ll have to–to see what the Big Niño has done to ameliorate drought so far THIS water year (since Oct 1):
Western drought status as of April 5th, 2016!
Of course, the giant low centers spinning around in the central Pacific sent a stream of large waves over and over again that blasted the Cal coast. That was expected, and verified. But not much else did. Drought should have increased in the Pac NW–recall it was forecast to be drier and warmer due to Niño conditions. Instead, the Pac NW had record amounts of winter rain!
Cal, especially, central and southern were to be slammed. Southern Cal residents were advised to consider purchasing sandbags in one media story last fall. And, of course, we here in AZ are profoundly disappointed; conditions have only improved some in the north part of the State.
Well, of course, there’s not one dry meteorological eye in the house after a bust of this magnitude. And when our best models predicted giant West Coast storms that looked like the kind we were expecting due to the Niño, even though they were 10-15 days out, they seemed sure to happen. CMP, bloated with confirmation bias, was sucked in several times this past winter.
Sure, we knew that Niño correlations with weather are not 1.00, that is, perfect, still, the “signal”, the size of the Niño, was so huge we figured it had to come through with those mighty storms striking the lower West Coast as happened in 1982-83 and 1997-98. Those correlations, as strong as they were, of course, were limited in number since these large events are rare. Those correlations will, let us say in place of cuss words, “degrade.”
Oh, me, what will we say when the next Big Niño appears?
The weather ahead
You’re probably pretty excited about the wind and very cold air just ahead. CMP is. And, with the jet stream at 500 mb (18, 000 feet or so–5.5 km above sea level) eventually circumscribing us with its charateristic moist lower region of air, we should just enough moisture for some isolated very light showers, probably just in the Catalinas, during the period of low freezing levels that hits late Friday and continues through Sunday. Low freezing levels mean even moderate Cumulus clouds could form ice, leading to virga.
Amounts could, at the most, only be a few hundredths here, and most likely we will be missed; precip just limited to snow flurries on Ms. Mt. Lemmon and thereabouts. The U of AZ mod sees the cold blast arriving late Friday after dark.
On the other hand, Saturday and maybe Sunday as well, will be good days for you to practice your ice in clouds detection skills in smallish Cumulus clouds.
The weather way ahead
Still looking to see at least two more troughs and chances of rain during the last two weeks of the month. NOAA ensembles suggest so. Best chances, 23rd-25th, and again around the 28th or so.
Some cloud shots from our little 0.01 inch rain day on Tuesday:
6:02 AM, Tuesday. A summer-like scene, complete with thunder frames the post dawn hours.10:35 AM. After the morning excitement cleared off, a pretty Cumulus congestus erupted north of Saddlebrooke town. There’s a hawk in the photo.12:12 PM. That Cumulus congestus and its sisters, were able to reach the level of glaciation, and wind shear, send a plume of ice downstream toward the east, and rain below that overshooting turret.2:36 PM. Pretty much the perfect cloud for ice in cloud studies. As the air warmed aloft and capped the Cumulus clouds, this one just poked up high enough to form some ice. It would have been a great sample to determine the temperatures and cloud conditions at which ice onset in clouds on Tuesday.4:16 PM, Tuesday. Those shadow and sun highlights that make our mountains so darned pretty. I just never will be tired of these views!
6:25 AM. Altocumulus perlucidus. According to my cloud chart, informally known as “America’s Cloud Chart”, it could rain within 6 to 196 hours. Its quite useful.10:24 AM. Altocumulus opacus. Note the rumpled look of the sky. Indicates that the clouds are rather shallow and composed of droplets rather than a mix of ice crystals and droplets. However, if you strain your eyeballs and look to the horizon, you can see a smoothing and a little virga showing that the cloud tops are rising and they’ve gotten cold enough to produce ice. According to my cloud chart, when you see “Ac opacus” it could rain within 6 to 196 hours.1:44 PM. While the clouds are pretty much the same gray color as in the prior photo, they’re much thicker here and are “Altostratus opacus”. “opacus” because the sun’s position is not visible, though it wouldn’t be in this direction anyway, but to the right. The bottom of this is smooth due to widespread, light falling snow, though it not in a localized area enough to be called virga in this shot. The lack of bunched or heavy virga somewhere tells you that the cloud tops are pretty smooth, too, not a lot of variation in height. The base is really determined by the point that you descend out of this precip, in this case up around 10 kft above the ground over Catalina.4:12 PM. Altostratus opacus praecipitatio or Nimbostratus, either name will do. Recall the quirk in our cloud naming system that makes, “Nimbostratus” a middle-level cloud. The base of these clouds is the general level where the snow falling out has evaporated. Due to bulging tops, and stronger updrafts, a little of the precip was able to fall out because the snowflakes coming out the bottom had grown larger and were able to survive the dry air below cloud base.
Some rain fell about this time in Catalina. Not enough to darken the pavement completely at any time. The main thing to take away from that hour of very light rain is that it was not “drizzle” as even some errant meteorologists call such sprinkles.
You will be permanently banned from attending any future meetings of the cloud maven club if you refer to such rain as we had yesterday afternoon as “drizzle.” Drizzle is fine (200-500 micron in diameter drops that are very close together and practically float in the air. Because they fall so slowly, and are so small to begin with, you can’t have drizzle at the ground from clouds that are much more than a 1000 feet or so above the ground because as soon as they pop out the bottom, those drops start evaporating and fall slower and slower by the second, and in no time they can be gone even in moist conditions. That’ s why its somewhat hilarious and sad at the same time, when, in particular, military sites for some unknown reason, report ersatz “drizzle: (coded as L, or L-) in our hourly aviation reports from clouds that are based at 5000 feet or something CRAZY like that.
This band of Nimbostratus/Altostratus had a backside that approached as the sun went down, and as you know, that clearing let some sunlight enrich and dramatize the views of our beloved Catalina Mountains:
5:39 PM.5:41 PM.
Finally, dessert:
5:47 PM. Rainbow lands on the University of Arizona Wildcat’s Skycenter atop Ms. Mt. Sara Lemmon.5:48 PM.
The amazing rains ahead
Nothing that you don’t already know about, so no use me blabbing about it too much. But in case you haven’t seen it, The Return of Joe Low (after over-hydrating over the warm waters of the eastern Pacific), is expected over the next couple of days, with a little help from another disturbance, to bring colossal rains to eastern Arizona and especially New Mexico.
Below, from our friendly U of A Wildcat Weather Department a model run from yesterday’s 5 PM global data (the Wildcat’s downsize the US WRF-GFS model in this awesome depiction).
Check out the totals expected by the evening of October 23 rd. Stupendous. Usually these totals are a bit overdone, but even so…… Will take a nice bite out of drought.
Precipitation totals expected by 5 PM AST October 23rd. Looks something like a tie-dyed Tee.
Here they are. 6:32 PM yesterday, under an Atlocumulus opacus sky.
Thought maybe I would trick some moviephiles into sampling a cloudcentric blog, jack up my ratings through error. Well, “The Domes of Lemmon” COULD be a movie…maybe one about, Sara Lemmon, for whom the mountain is named for, maybe starring Madonna as the feisty young botanist. Well, maybe not “young”…
Notice, too, that I capitalized stuff in the title, which I usually don’t do because I don’t know any better. I think only connecting words like adjectives are capitalized in titles.
Lot of lighting yesterday, too. Some of it was pretty close to the house, within a few miles. Lightning, too; one strike within a couple hundred yards, probably on the power pole out there in State Trust Land.
Have had little time lately, some problems, too, loading photos in WP, so that’s why. Looks like the next best chance for rain is Friday into Saturday. But you already know that from all the TEEVEE weather you watch.
The End.
From three days ago. Marana/west Tucson got shafted pretty good. At least an inch fell in the core of this beauty. This was after it looked like it was going to be a quiet day west of the Catalinas.
When one first encounters this title with its unexpected play on words, we wonder what the author had in mind. Of course, most of us know that at Christmastime, we are often regaled by a Christmas tune called, “Frosty the Snowman1“. But here, we are surprised as we continue reading the title that instead of encountering the word, “snowman,” we encounter the word “Lemmon!” Hah!
What is meant here? What is author trying to tell us? Perhaps the word, “lemon”, has been misspelled. But if so, why would a “lemon” be frosty? Perhaps there was a cold spell in Florida and the author is harkening the reader to a long ago memory. Or, perhaps misspelling “lemon” was a literary device to emphasize that word in an eccentric way.
Yet, upon further investigation, we find that the issue is more complexed than first imagined. We find that there was an art teacher, nurse, and eventually, a self-educated botanist from New England, Sara Plummer Lemmon, who, with her husband and another worker, hiked to the top of the Catalina Mountains right here next to us, and while doing so, they logged the vegetation that was unique to the area. In their excitement when reaching the top, they named that highest peak after Mrs. Lemmon.
So, what does this piece of history add to our literary dilemma encapsulated in the title?
Perhaps Mrs. Lemmon did some work in the field of glaciology as well, hence, the word “frosty” as a possible hint of that work. Yet, upon investigation, we find no mention of work on ice crystals, hoar frost, nor glaciology not only in the work of Mrs. Lemmon, but neither in the work of any the team that mounted what is now known as Mt. Ms. Lemmon. We add that the note that the Lemmons, J. G. and Sara, were on their honeymoon at this time, historians tell us. Perhaps there is another avenue we can explore due to that latter element.
Could it be, too, that we are missing a characterization of Ms. Lemmon by our author? Perhaps she was shy, seen inadvertentlhy as “cold” by some, or was not particularly interested in the physical advances of her husband, J. G. The word “frosty” alert may be alerting us those possibilities.
Ultimately, we remain perplexed by this title; it forms an enigma that may never be confidently resolved.
But then good titles, and good books, are supposed to make us think, try to imagine what the author is telling us through his/her use of metaphor and other literary devices, and this title has done that.
We, of course, reject the most plausible, superficial explanation, that the author’s play on words was merely describing a local, snow and rimed-tree mountain named after Ms. Mt. Lemmon, as in the photo below. No, Occam’s Razor, the idea that the simplest explanation is usually the best one, will not do.
4:43 PM. Those trees are rimed, like the airframe of an aircraft that collects drops that freeze and cause icing. Here the wind blowing across the mountain top, and cloud droplets that were below freezing, hit the trees and froze over a period of many hours, creating this scene. Its not snow resting on the branches. That would’ve blowed off in the strong winds up there.
———End of Literary Criticism Parody Module———-
There was a rousing 0.24 inches of rain yesterday! Our storm total has topped out at 0.89 inches!
In other photos from yesterday:
9:42 AM. Altostratus translucidus again, with a few scattered Altocumulus cloud flakes, but this time with bulging Stratocumulus topping Samaniego Ridge, giving portent of a good Cumulus day if the As clouds will only depart and allow a LITTLE warmth. They did.
10:24 AM. Before long, cloud bases darkened here and there, indicating mounding tops above a general layer, and with the low freezing level of about 7,000 feet, the formation of ice and precip was not far behind.10:51 AM. Mountain obscuring showers were soon in progress due to both a little warming, but also because of a cloud energizing swirl in the upper atmosphere that passed over us at 1 PM AST. Did you notice that windshift aloft as that bend in the winds went by up there? You probably noticed that it was no dice, er, no ice, after 1 PM as the mash down of air that follows “troughs” did that very effectively after 1 PM.
10:52 AM. As the clouds (weak Cumulonimbus ones) broke, there was a fantastic rainbow for just a seconds to the north, landing on my neighbor’s house. It was even better before this, but was slow getting to the camera! Dang.
10:54 AM. “Pictures a poppin’ ” now as breaks in clouds allows those fabulous highlights of glinting rocks and scruffy Stratus fractus or Cumulus fractus clouds lining Sam Ridge, those highlight scenes that we love so much when the storm breaks. And these scenes change by the second, too!
11:00 AM.Also 11 AM. Out of control with camera now…..
11:12 AM. Meanwhile, back upwind… This line of modest Cumulonimbus clouds fronted by a weak shelf cloud roared in across Oro Valley to Catalina. What a great sight this was since now there was a chance of some more decent rains! Before long, the rains pounded down, puddles formed, and another 0.18 inches had been added to our already substantial total of 0.65 inches.
12:01 PM. But that wasn’t the end, was it? Before long, a heavy line of Cumulus and weak Cumulonimbus clouds formed again to the southwest and drenched Catalina with another round of rain, this time, only 0.06 inches. And with it came the End. This line of showers was spurred by that upper level wind shift that was going to occur over the next hour.
1:01 PM. Sometimes those clearing skies, the deep blue accentuating the smaller Cumulus clouds provide our most postcard scenes of the great life we have here in the desert.2:13 PM. While it was sad looking for ice in the afternoon clouds and finding none, the scenes themselves buoyed one. The instability was great enough that even brief pileus cap clouds were seen on top of our Cu.2:21 PM. Pileus cap cloud (right turret) tops honest-to-goodness December Cumulus congestus cloud. No ice nowhere.
2:28 PM. And if the sky and mountains splendor isn’t enough for you, then consider our blazing fall-winter vegetation as evidenced by a cottonwood tree in the Sutherland Wash,’ that yellow dot, lower center. We have it ALL now!2:48 PM. And, as the cloud tops are kept low, we get those fantastic, quilted, richly colored scenes on our Catalina Mountains we love so much. Here, looking toward Charouleau Gap and Samaniego Peak. I could show you so many more like this from just yesterday!
5:08 PM. Even our lowly regarded teddy bear chollas have luster on days like this, the weak winter sunlight being reflected off its razor-hook-like spines, ones that many of us know too well.
5:12 PM. And like so many of our days here in old Arizony, closed out with a great sunset.
Possibility raised in mods for giant southern Cal floods, maybe some flooding in AZ floods, too
Something in the spaghetti plots has been tantalizing as far as West Coast weather goes. They have been consistently showing a stream of flow from the tropics and sub-tropics, blasting into the West Coast. Recall that yesterday, that tropical flow was so strong and so far south, that at least one major gully washed was shown to pass across central and southern California on New Year’s Day, but weaken and shift to the north of southern AZ after that.
Well, my jaw dropped when this model run from yesterday at 11 AM AST came out, re-enforcing, even raising the bar on flooding, in central and southern California, and with those stronger storms, the possibility of flooding and major winter rains here in Arizona was raised. The severity of the pattern shown aloft is not one I have seen before, and for that reason alone, might be considered somewhat of an outlier prediction, one really not likely to occur.
Now, while there is some support in this model flooding “solution” in the spaghetti plots, the main reason I am going to present a series of what a disastrous Cal flood looks like is just FYI and how it develops. The closest analog to this situation was in January 1969 when a blocking high in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA), forced the major jet stream far south across the central and eastern Pacific on several occasions producing disastrous floods in southern California in particular, where one mountain station received more than 25 inches of rain in ONE DAY!
Also that blocking high in the GOA in Jan 1969 also forced unusually cold air into the Pac NW, where Seattle (SEA-TAC AP) accumulated 21 inches of snow over the month, still a record.
Here we go, in prog maps of our WRF-GFS rendered by IPS MeteoStar:
In the Beginning, the blocking high, shunting the jet stream to the south and to the north takes shape in the GOA. Note low far to the south between Hawaii and southern California. Get sand bags out now! This is for 11 PM AST, 28th of December.
24 h later:
Valid at 11 PM AST 29 December. Southern Cal flooding underway. Cold air pocket in Oregon has slipped southwestward helping to energize the lower band of jet stream winds by bringing cold air out over the ocean. The greater the temperature contrast between the north and the south, the greater the speed of the jet stream between the deep warm air to the south, and the deep cold air to the north. Note, too, high is getting farther out of the way in the Gulf of Alaska.
The situation continues to strengthen, and leads to this Coup de Gras, 11 PM AST January 1st. A system this strong barging into southern Cal is mind-boggling, and this panel is what brought this part of the blog, to show you what a devastating flood in that area would look like:
Valid at 11 PM, January 1st. In my opinion, I doubt the Rose Bowl game between the Oregon Ducks and Florida State would take place in Pasadena, CA, if this were to transpire.
Now for AZ. Here’s the prog for 12 h later, 11 AM AST January 2nd, Cactus Bowl Day in Tempe, AZ between the Washington Huskies and the Oklahoma A&M Aggies, to continue with sport’s notes here. Rain would be expected for that game should this pattern persist:
Valid at 11 AM AST, January 2nd. This is an unbelievably strong wave that has roared in from the lower latitudes of the Pacific. While it rushes through Arizona in a hurry, heavy rains, and some flooding are likely should things transpire like this.
Now for a gee-whiz, scary analog….one from WAY back in the winter of 1861-62 when the situation decribed above was likely very similar to what it was in that terrible flood; severe cold in progress in the Pac NW, as it would be in the upcoming situation; a tropical torrent raging in from the Pacific. This 1861-62 flood episode is still remembered. However, it went on for 30-40 days (!) with recurring episodes turning much of California’s central valley into a lake, Los Angeles area, too, where there was a report of 35 inches of rain in 30 days.
What’s ahead, really?
Well the models are going to fluctuate on the strength of this breakthrough flow “underneath” the blocking high in the Gulf of Alaska. But almost certainly one major rain event will break through as that this happens. Its kind of a fragile flow regime, so it usually doesn’t last long.
Whether it will be stupefyingly historic, or just another ordinary southern Cal gully washer, can’t be pinned down. But, if you lived down there, you’d want to be looking around and seeing what you could do to divert water, fix a roof, etc.
There would be strong, damaging winds with one of these “coming-in-underneath”, too, and, for surfers, giant waves!
Interesting times ahead! “Floodmagedon”, as we like to say these days?
No real weather here for awhile, except around Christmas when a mild cold snap, and a little chance of precip occurs as a cold front goes by.
The End, for awhile.
—————————–
1The most intellectually satisfying version of “Frosty the Snowman” was, of course, has been rendered by Bob Dylan.
Been looking around at quite a number of model runs (well 2, anyway) trying to find the best one for you. Here it is. Its yesterday’s WRF-GFS run that was based on 11 AM AST global data. Has some great rains for us here in Arizona. Those rains, and that incredible hurricane that saunters up the coast of Baja in about ten days, aren’t depicted as well in later model runs, so there’s not much point in showing them. If you want a great, OBJECTIVE forecasting, you know, go to Bob, or the NWS, or wait for Mike L’s detailed one from the U of AZ later this morning! You’re not going to find “objectivity” here when it comes to forecasting rain for a desert region1. Let’s look at two examples of weather excitement in that now-obsolete-run-but-doesn’t-mean-it won’t-happen-anyway-just-because-its-a little-older-run”1: 1) Lotta rain in Arizona (that’s a different near-hurricane over there in the SW corner of the map, one that in one model run from Canada, formerly went over Yuma! Sorry Yuma, and all of Arizona, both of which would have gotten, in that event, a bigger dent in the drought than shown below. Oh, well.
Valid on Thursday at 11 AM AST. Green pixels denote those areas where the model thinks rain has occurred during the prior 6 hours. Most of AZ covered in green pixies! Sweet.
2) Fascinating near-hurricane just off San Diego on the 29th of August, likely surviving so well due to the California Niño mentioned here lately. BTW, this particular hurricane is predicted to be exceptionally large and intense out there when it revs up in a few days, maybe a Category 4 at its peak, looking at some of the model runs. “Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learnin’ how….” The Beach Boys, 1962, sayin’ it like it was for us near-beach bums way back then when the summer hurricanes in the Mexican Pacific sent huge waves poleward on to our southern California beaches, as the one below will2.
Valid in ten days, Friday, August 29th at 11 AM AST. Near hurricane brings rain to San Diego. Colored regions now denote where the model thinks it has rained in the prior TWELVE hours (coarser resolution because its not going to be that accurate in the placement of highs and lows anyway, so why waste time over-calculating stuff?
Yesterday’s clouds
What an outstanding, if surprising day it was! After it appeared, in later model runs available late yesterday morning, that the late afternoon/evening bash from the high country wasn’t going to happen after all (producing local glumness), we had a remarkable in situ explosion of cloud tops. Those clouds just erupted from an innocuous, patchy group of Stratocumulus that invaded the sky around 5 PM. Still, even with the early turrets jutting up there, it didn’t seem possible, at 7 PM, there would be much more growth into showers, let alone, thunderstorms with frequent lightning lasting several hours that happened. Eventually rain even got into Sutherland Heights/Catalina, with 0.17 inches here, and 0.12 inches at the Golder Bridge, and that didn’t seem possible since the rain shafts were so locked onto the Catalinas, and east side for so long. Dan Saddle, about 5 mi S of Oracel, counting the mid-afternoon thunderstorms that locked in upthere, got a 2.68 inches over the past 24 h! That should have sent a little water down the CDO. BTW, a location in the Rincons is reporting 4.09 inches in the past 24!
5:50 AM. Day started with “colorful castellanus.” Hope you saw this.12:26 PM. After a late morning start, the Cumulus congestus tops were streaming away from the origin zone of Mt. Lemmon to over the north part of Saddlebrooke and the Charouleau Gap. No ice evident yet, but it was just about to show itself. BTW, the “51ers” have a nice baseball team in Vegas (of course), this brought to my attention by neighbors recently, showing that a degree of strangeness permeates American life, as also shown in these blogs.
12:44 PM. Ice virga now seen in the right hand side falling out as I passed the budding wildlife overpass now being constructed on Oracle Road. I guess scents and signage will be used to direct wildlife to the overpass.
1:49 PM. Took about an hour more of rain and development for the thunder to start from these locked in turrets that kept springing on The Lemmon.
4:54 PM. Long before this, it was “all over’, the rains no doubt up there had helped to put the fire out, so-to-speak, and with no anvils advancing toward us, there was even hardly any point to remain conscious. It is finished.6:54 PM, 2 h later. Shallow grouping of Stratocumulus provided a nice, if boring, backdrop to the setting sun’s light on Samaniego Ridge.7:04 PM. Only ten minutes later, and I’m out wondering around in the backyard looking for a nice sunset shot, when I see this shocking sight for the time of day, a protruding turret far above the other tops. Still, I pooh-poohed anything happening but a ragged collapse in the minutes ahead. It was too late in the day for heating or anything else to generate rain in situ from these lower clouds (now topping Mt. Lemmon). Nice pastel colors, though.
7:32 PM. Though “pinkie” in the prior photo did fade, new turrets kept bubbling upward, and in disbelief, this one reached up beyond the ice-forming temperature threshhold (is probably topping out between 25-30 kft, not huge) and a strong rain shaft emerged on the Catalinas. After a little while longer, lightining began to flash to the east as the Reddington Pass area started to get hammered. Eventually in the early nighttime hours. these cells propagated to the west, giving us that bit of rain here in The Heights of Sutherland. How nice, and how mind-blowing this whole evening was!
Today
Got some Stratocu (castellanus in some parts) topping Sam (Samaniego Ridge) this morning, an outstanding indication of a lot of moisture in the air, moisture that’s not just at the surface. U of AZ has thunderstorms moving toward Catalina during the late morning (!) and afternoon from the SW, not the usual direction we’re accustomed to. So, keep eyeball out toward Twin Peaks or so for exciting weather today! Oh, my, towering Cu top converted to ice, must be 25-30 kft up there right now at 7:06 AM! Also, notice nice shadow on lower Ac clouds.
The End
————————————-
1“Truth-in-packaging” portion of web blog statement.
1Its chaos in the models due to errors in them we don’t always know about, chaos that we try to get a handle on with plots from the NOAA spaghetti factory. But you know all that already, so my apologies for repeating myself again and again. I thought I would see what would happen if I put TWO “1” footnotes….
2Of course, in those days, we had little knowledge about how many hurricanes there were down there due to the lack of satellite data and ship reports. But when the “Weather Bureau”, as it was called in those days did know, there was always good surf on the south facing beaches, like Zuma Beach. So going to the beach, unlike now where wave forecasting is so good, was a real crap shoot. You’d come over that first viewpoint of the ocean on Malibu Canyon Road, on your way to Zuma. one that over looked the ocean a little offshore from Malibu, and either go, “Holy Crap!”, or hope for the best. It was a swell time for lightly employed youth. Below, the best “Holy Crap!” view coming around to that viewpoint, early September 1963 (never saw anything like it before or afterwards; swells were never visible so far offshore from this spot, meaning Zuma would be gigantic). Still remember those Zuma waves, so far out to sea, as the height of small telephones…
Nearly drowned that day at Zuma, me and my pal ignoring lifequard’s advice not to go in. HELL, we’d been body surfing the biggest ones we could there for years by then. Fortunately, he didn’t have to come and get me, which saved a lot of face.
I was marveling at this title, one that just came out of nowhere, using the idea of a superhero and a standard measure of how bubbly the clouds might be. I really don’t know how it happened, but there it was…
Think of “supercloud” as a Cumulonimbus cloud, those giants of the cloud kingdom, ones that can top out near 70,000 feet above sea level and can have UPDRAFTS as high as 80-100 mph in their very rare and strongest forms (where nothing can fall out, of course). An armored T-28 research aircraft operated by the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology flew through one of those superclouds; went up on its own some 5,000 feet in a minute!
Well, of course, clouds in Arizona are never THAT bad (or good) depending on your viewpoint, but today, according to millions of calculations in the U of AZ Beowulf Cluster, the Cumulonimbus clouds of today will be more bouyant than the ones we had yesterday. We get that indication from last night’s 11 PM AST model run where it calculates something called “Convective Available Potential Energy”, or CAPE. Today’s CAPE will be about two or three times larger than yesterday’s, according to the model. Orangutang1. A first test of that U of AZ model’s prediction will be in this morning’s Tucson balloon sounding, which needs to replicate the model’s prediction for that time of day to have confidence in it. (Will have to wait for quite awhile here while our TUS sounding; its still on its journey upward now at 5:11 AM.)
Predicted TUS sounding for 5 AM AST by the U of AZ supermodel which downsizes that output from the NOAA WRF-GFS one. The red, dashed line delineates, with some terrible assumptions though, like the air isn’t mixing with the air around and above it, nevertheless its very useful. The amount of CAPE isn’t much here, only “500”, though its pretty good for 5 AM AST. Supposed to be well over “1,000” by this afternoon!
The TUS ballon sounding (“rawinsonde”) for 5 AM AST this morning (July 13th). Ooops! Not as much CAPE suggested here as in the model, though the definition is somewhat different from the model (which is Mixed layer CAPE, or MCAPE).
So, what does all this gobbledygook mean? Casting aside the fact that the actual sounding is not quite as unstable as our local model was predicting due to writer’s “confirmation bias”, a killer of good science, we should have sooner2, bigger dumps overall in the area, and happily, more of them. Thunder on Ms. Lemmon before noon will be a very good sign that the model has captured today pretty well.
Yesterday’s clouds and a stupefying sunset scene to the east
7:56 AM. Altocumulus perlucidus (cellular area) and opacus (solid gray areas). 1:55 PM. First moderate-sized Cumulonimbus arose just before this, vicinity of Oracle. 2:16 PM. Pretty typical of yesterday’s rainshafts. Sprinkled (its NOT drizzle!) here in Sutherland Heights after this. We get mad when we think of people calling sprinkles, “drizzle” as you know, and it just kind of came there.) My apologies. 7:19 PM. Glorious coloration of our fabulous Catalina Mountains, specifically, the lower portions of Samaniego Ridge. 7:27 PM. A glorious halo effect created by a former Cumlonimbus anvil, a few minutes later. This was an incredible scene. Was lucky to be out and capture it.
The End.
——————-
1An unexpected word has been inserted as a reader check. Is anybody still reading this? Techno-language causes droopy eyelids, makes people want to give up reading altogether, kids to fall behind in their STEM work. Its quite a powerful effect.
2I have a some relatives and friends in Oklahoma that root for the U of O Sooners. I will be rooting for sooners today, too.
Gauge 15 1 3 6 24 Name Location ID# minutes hour hours hours hours —- —- —- —- —- —- —————– ——————— Catalina Area 1010 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.08 0.43 Golder Ranch Horseshoe Bend Road in Saddlebrooke 1020 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.43 Oracle Ranger Stati approximately 0.5 mile southwest of Oracle 1040 0.04 0.08 0.12 0.12 0.47 Dodge Tank Edwin Road 1.3 miles east of Lago Del Oro Parkway 1050 0.04 0.04 0.08 0.08 0.47 Cherry Spring approximately 1.5 miles west of Charouleau Gap 1060 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.16 0.71 Pig Spring approximately 1.1 miles northeast of Charouleau Gap 1070 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.08 0.35 Cargodera Canyon northeast corner of Catalina State Park 1080 0.00 0.04 0.08 0.12 0.51 CDO @ Rancho Solano Cañada Del Oro Wash northeast of Saddlebrooke 1100 0.00 0.04 0.04 0.08 0.28 CDO @ Golder Rd Cañada Del Oro Wash at Golder Ranch Road
Santa Catalina Mountains 1030 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.20 Oracle Ridge Oracle Ridge, approximately 1.5 miles north of Rice Peak 1090 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 Mt. Lemmon Mount Lemmon 1110 0.00 0.04 0.12 0.24 0.71 CDO @ Coronado Camp Cañada Del Oro Wash 0.3 miles south of Coronado Camp 1130 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 Samaniego Peak Samaniego Peak on Samaniego Ridge 1140 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.24 Dan Saddle Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge 2150 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 White Tail Catalina Highway 0.8 miles west of Palisade Ranger Station 2280 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.31 Green Mountain Green Mountain 2290 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.24 Marshall Gulch Sabino Creek 0.6 miles south southeast of Marshall Gulch
As you can see, a couple of stations in the Catalina Mountains were virtually missed by the storm (ZERO total, for example, at Ms. Mt. Lemmon) or it snowed on those low total precip gauges and the snow has not melted and is sitting in the gauge’s funnel. Select choice number 2. Mountains just becoming visible; looks like snow down to 6,000 foot level.
Didn’t see any precip/virga before dark yesterday, started raining just before 10 PM, nicely, and continued through midnight when it quit. However, the main event, lasting about 6-8 h is supposed to start happening about now, but rain mostly lighting up in TUS. That means we should see some clearing around mid-day, but leaving enough low clouds stacking up around the Catalinas for some nice quilted sun and shadows on those mountains, one of our prettiest sights I think, along with our now snow-capped mountains.
FROPA, or “frontal passage” in weather text speak, occurred late yesterday afternoon. I wonder if you noticed the wind shift and dropping temperatures? However, was a very shallow depth of wind that shifted, and temperature took about 3 h to drop 10 F, (58 F to 48 F) not exactly as sharp a FROPA as was anticipated from this microphone yesterday. Also, a bit unusual, the rain band was displaced far behind the wind shift that occurred around 4:30 PM.
Yesterday’s clouds
I thought yesterday was quite an interesting day for you. Lots of cloud types to log in your weather and cloud diary. Let us begin our retrospective with Sunrise on the Equestrian:
7:05 AM.7:17 AM. Splayed Cirrus display, racing at you at over 100 mph.7:52 AM. Orographic Stratocumulus top the Catalinas, a very good sign that the incoming front will produce rain. Indicates reasonable lower level humidity already in place.9:34 AM. Small Cumulus form over the Oro, Cirrus above. So pretty a sight, I thought.12:17 PM. Micro-snowstorm (Cirrus uncinus) passes past the Catalinas. You can see this cloud from the U of A here in their time lapse movie.12:58 PM. Seattle-style Stratocumulus overcast. Got a little homesick there for a minute.
3:38 PM. Atop horsey Jake now, looking for signs, knowing that front is getting closer. Here those darker, lower line of clouds were atop the windshift that was about to occur, marking the leading edge of the front. This colder air has lifted and chilled the moist air from the southwest to help create that lower base, the sure sign of a wind shift. Looking north toward Saddlebrooke from near The Chutes on the 50-year trail .
toward
4:27 PM. Cloud bases lower significantly as the cooler air rushed in. But look, no precip in spite of the heavy cloud cover. What’s up with that? No ice present in them; cloud tops still too warm in even FROPA area1.Also at 4:27 PM, looking toward weak sun producing the lighting break on the Catalinas. Note haziness, likely due to dust.
Your next storm: due in Sunday morning. Likely just something around a tenth of an inch. Nothing showing up beyond that, but lots of mod fluctuations re storms. I suspect the one that showed up a few days ago for the 20th or so will arise again in some future run. Just a gut feeling since there’s no evidence in the spaghetti plots yet to support that hunch.
The End.
———————————————— 1The TUS balloon sounding yesterday afternoon about the time of the next to last photo. Shows tops WERE warmer than -10 C, in case you didn’t believe me because the clouds looked so dark yesterday afternoon. They were pretty dark because there was a higher ice cloud overcast (Altostratus) and when droplet concentrations are high, clouds are darker on the bottom. We usually have pretty high droplet concentrations here in old Arizony.
Note that the temperature of the air (blue) lines slope upward to the right.
An unusual sight yesterday: bulging dawn Cumulus fronted by fog. These Cumulus (not spawned by ground currents) suggest instability aloft, a rapid decline in temperatures with increasing height, which allows the buoyancy of “warmish air” in-cloud surrounded by cooler air to go up, whilst fog1 suggests the opposite; cold, damp, heavy air that can’t go anywhere but down, slip sliding away as it did yesterday because its topped by warmer air, a atmospheric “glass ceiling”. Ground fog like this is colder air that you can see.
7:21 AM. Looking NW from Equestrian Trail Road across Oro Valley. 7:19 AM. Odd multiple layers of ground fog (lowest) and Stratus clouds (“clouds” because they’re not on the ground) with shreds of Cumulus fractus above Samaniego Ridge. 7:07 AM. As above, suggesting a very fine layering of moist air with little temperature caps.
Here in Catalinaland, this kind of layering of cold air, as most of you know, is endemic on clear nights. Those who drive down across the CDO wash from Sutherland Heights or along Lago del Oro from the surrounding higher terrain know. Because of the stupefying amounts of rain in the past three days, the air is damp enough at ground level to form fog and you can see whose colder at night than you are IF you are above it. Also, anyone who walks their dog in the morning passed innocuous looking gullies, is aware of how cold air flows downhill and collects in low places.
The lack of density of this fog indicated that it formed in real clean air, air that didn’t have a lot of junk in it (which would also contain a lot of CCN, cloud condensation nuclei. Pretty hard to get fogs like we had in Bakersfield, CA.
Once things warmed up some, and with Arctic like air up top, Cumulus arose, a couple of which sprouted icy tops and shafts, namely, became small Cumulonimbus clouds, tops around 20-25 kft. Along with these clouds, there was a treasure of sunny highlights and shadows moving across the Catalinas. Here you go:
10:49 AM. Small Cumulus humilis, mediocris begin forming as temperature “warms up” to 50 F (egad).
11:13 AM. There’s water (glinting) on them rocks! One of the prettiest sights we get to see on the Catalinas after some rain. Not enough water was dumped on the mountains during our drought-denting storm to get water into the CDO Wash locally, but the Sutherland Wash developed a trickle. Just too much dry ground up there for much runoff with the relatively steady rains that we had.
12:10 PM. Small Cumulonimbus clouds erupt just north of Saddlebrooke. Thought I heard thunder from this complex later. 2:50 PM. While small Cbs developed to the north, the Cat Mountains were only able to produce Cumulus congestus (“heavy Cu”). Didn’t see any ice; neither did you, or there’s something wrong. But, if you go here (U of AZ time lapse), you WILL see some forming in the downstream portions of clouds over the Catalinas. Sometimes not seeing ice is because the tops are blowing off away from you before they show it, especially when there isn’t a lot.3:48 PM. Last gasp Cu congestus. Will highest turret form ice?3:49 PM. Ice starting to show!3:53 PM. Droplet cloud completely gone. No question now, nice ice plume. You want to target aircraft into densest portions of this ghostly veil of ice; will correlate with densest portions of liquid cloud. Not enough ice for a shaft below the cloud, but someone felt a few drops below it!
Below, one of the attributes of our partly cloudy days and low near-winter sun angle; pretty lighting:
5:19 PM.5:06 PM.3:54 PM.
The weather way ahead, first week in December.
Pile of cold air to drive into West Coast and Rockies during the first week in December. Snow even possible here, the air is that cold, but mainly the cold air will likely lead to the first cold spell where temps drop significantly below freezing. The worst days look like the 5th and 6th right now, after the threat of rain and or snow pass. So, if you have an evap cooler, you’ll definitely want to have it drained before then if you haven’t already taken care of it (like me).
Rain threat at the end of the month/first day or so in December is fading some in mods, but I refuse to give up on it!
The End.
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1Fog is “gof” spelled backwards, BTW. Has a lot of meanings and I avoided the obvious juvenile approach (today), “Think I’ll go goffing today” which I wouldn’t say anyway because I don’t play gof.
Clouds were so-so yesterday, didn’t deliver the big punch as one U of AZ mod foretold (Samaniego Ridge and vicinity only got a tenth of inch or so compared with the 1-2 inches that was predicted), but, the lighting yesterday morning, oh, my, that lighting on the mountains and elsewhere as little breaks in the overcast Altocumulus/Stratocumulus deck zipped by, were beyond description. Lost control and began snapping photos like a turtle or toad surrounded by little flying somethings that they thought would be great to eat. Here are SOME:
For the day in review go to the U of AZ time lapse movie. Its really pretty interesting, and if you thought it was a dull and disappointing day, at least it will go by fast.
At least we did receive another 0.04 inches here in SH-Catalina over the past 24 h, though it fell at an excruciatingly low rate; didn’t think that little tipping bucket would ever tip for that ONE hundredth amount. Seemed like drops fell for hours before it did. BTW, the forever reminder: it wasn’t drizzle precip, but rain, very light
RAIN!
(This is my legacy; that when I am done, folks say; “You know, I knew that guy. I don’t remember a thing that he said except that drizzle isn’t a few drops here and there, but rather a thick, misty kind of precipitation that floats under your umbrella if there’s much wind. Comes from the coalisions-with-coalescence rain formation process, one that doesn’t require ice, though I don’t know why I would want to remember something like that.”)
Today….
Another fun-filled cloudy day with rain here and there. “Take Me to the River“, as David Byrne wrote, and was covered by the Songs of Science by Bill Nye et al (which I can’t find online, dang), the tropical one. Well, its here, that tropical one, passing right over head and so the POTENTIAL for big rains continues for another day or so. Lots of rain predicted twixt now and midnight by that U of AZ WRF-GFS mod–you can go here and check it out. Of course, it wasn’t so great yesterday, but they’re just too good most of the time to discard and so maybe today and tonight, the errors won’t be so great and we’ll pick up an inch or so hereabouts.
