The day started with some nice Altocumulus “pancakus”, some lenticulars and breezy conditions, reminding one of fall day with a cold front approaching. Small Cumulus appeared quickly, but with the wind, you wondered if they would get enough heating to power upward into Cumulonimbus clouds.
By noon you had your answer as a large Cumulonimbus complex settled in just beyond the Tortolita Mountains west of Catalina. And it pretty much recurred there and over the Tortolitas all afternoon. In the meantime, passing light showers dotted this side of the Catalinas, but that was about it. No “Code 4” shafts on those mountains yesterday. Rain totals were less than a half inch, and most less than a third. On the other hand, would guess that parts of the Torts got well over an inch. The cores missed us again, with Sutherland Heights logging only 0.03 inches.
Developing showers passed over Catalina dropping occasional very large, sparse drops, but shafts generally fell out of those clouds after they had passed off to the northeast.
Late in the afternoon, the line of recurring showers finally approached Catalina, but as dry air encroached in the middle levels, at the same time, catching up to that standing line, all those great mushrooming clouds were no more. The cloud story board is below:
(by Chad and Jeremy but with photos of Peter and Gordon with whom the former were often confused with, the site notes! How funny is that?)
Oh, well, yesterday might well have been the end of the summer rain season here in Catalina as far as rain goes, so an ending point song seemed appropriate.
6:16 AM. Altocumulus with a underlying Altocumulus castellanus.6:16 AM. Another view of Altocumulus with an underlying line of Altocumulus castellanus.8:06 AM. Altocumulus perlucidus translucidus (real thin).10:55 AM. Altocumulus lenticularis clouds provide the real look of a fall day with a significant jet stream overhead. Cumulus begin to form on the Tucson Mountains in the distance.12:56 PM. The idea of a fall day is quickly dispelled by the rapid growth of a narrow Cumulonimbus calvus cloud.12:57 PM. Wow. At the same time, there’s been an explosion of Cumulonimbus clouds to the west through northwest of Catalina. This looked REALLY promising for a dump here, since it would surely expand southward (to the left) from the rain shafts in progress.1:30 PM. Line of thunderstorms reaches the Tortolita Mountains. This is looking extremely good for Catalina though the thunderstorm is moving left to right rapidly, not toward us. Why does it look good for Catalina? Because you expect winds pushed away by all that falling rain to blow back against the sotuhwest winds and generate new Cu congestus and Cumulonimbus clouds upwind of the shafts, and more in line with Catalina. Summary: it didn’t happen though there were numerous times it looked like it was verging on doing this. So, all those thoughts you had out there that this was going to happen were in considerable error. This was probably because the southwest wind against which the outflow was clashing, was too strong yesterday, limiting how far upwind new clouds could develop.1:34 PM. This was looking so great! Bases massing there on the right side, pretty much upwind of Catalina.1:43 PM. Tortalitas now obscured by water.1:49 PM. Showers are developing farther upwind of the main blast over the Tortolitas as expected and near to upstream of Catalina! Gloating here. Was SURE now we’d get a tankful of rain within the hour.1:53 PM. In only a few minutes its looking so much better for us, and those showers and thunderstorms are racing this way! Looks like the whole line is drifting east, too. In the meantime, the thunderstorms moving away from the Tortolitas and toward Saddlebrooke Ranch and points north have sent out a blast of northerly winds into Sutherland Heights, pretty much like yesterday. The clouds overhead begin to respond to that uplift caused by this blast of north winds.2:06 PM.2:16 PM. That first nice cloud base waited until passing by to drop its load, but another promising one appeared upwind!2:17 PM. In the meantime, another ferocious thunderstorm is dumping on the same area of the Tortolitas as the prior ones!2:21 PM. A closer look at the Tortolita blast. Expect wind from this to reach Catalina.2:22 PM. WIth the north wind blowing you’re looking for something to erupt upwind of us as the nose of that north wind pushes into Oro Valley. But here you see that the organization of the cloud bases is poor, too many little light and dark areas, no broad base indicating a strong updraft. This was a depressing shot but I took it anyway.2:27 PM, The severe thunderstorm over the Tortalitas has moved NE. Here you see the kind of cloud base you want to see just upwind of you, not that mess in the previous photo.2:29 PM. Only a few minutes later, but look at the change that has occurred upwind of us! That north wind scooting down into Oro Valley has finally triggered a massive base just upwind of us We are going to get pounded!2:33 PM. But that great cloud base moves to the west of us, adajacent to yet another blast on the Torts. Ugh. Just can’t get this right.2:36 PM. Some lightning for you in case you don’t believe me that these were thunderstorms.2:49 PM. Yet another promising base, more in the upwind direction passed over, only to leave some enormous drops. Compare splash marks to that mesquite pod on the sidewalk. Sounded like hail at first. But the main load fell downwind. I thought we were going to really get shafted right then, too. Not.3:03 PM. An example of poor cloud base structure upwind of us.3:04 PM. Curtains of heavy showers continue to bombard the Tortolitas, Amazing how many cells passed through that area as this zone of converging winds remained stationary instead of advancing toward us as I believed it would.3:18 PM. As skies cleared overhead, some of the prettiest scenes of the day were of these brilliantly white Cumulus congestus clouds over the Catalinas.3:20 PM. Ice detection drill… Can you tell that those two turrets in the last photos are now mostly ice?3:28 PM. Can a scene be more beautiful? The turret on the far left has converted to ice.3:29 PM. A single strand of hail or the largest drops have plummeted out of this base. This suggests that they were either very large particles, or that the updraft had a minute weakness that allowed some of the load aloft to escape in something of a narrow chute. And, of course, its part of the line still pounding the Tortolitas!3:47 PM. FINALLY the line appears to be shifting east toward Catalina, but the tops aren’t as high, there are no giant cells any more, an indicating that both drier air is moving in and that the instability aloft is changing to less favorable for large storms. Oh, me. This was a discouraging scene.3:55 PM. While not as heavy as prior showers, there is still hope that the line will produce measurable rain in Catalina as it drifts east.4:05 PM. By this time, its looking like the slowly advancing line will die before it gets here.5:24 PM. That line: Done and done.6:39 PM.
As well as some shots of that violent blast that hit the CDO HS and the area around Concordia Ave. One ALERT gauge reported 1.34 inches! Nice. The uprooting of trees wasn’t so nice, however.
Sutherland Heights whiffed again on rain, except for that little sprinkle just after 8 PM, sad to say.
4:37 PM. What a great looking pileus of Cumulus congestus with a little pileus veil at the very tippy top. This is heading toward being a Cumulonimbus calvus (remember, “calvus” means “bald”), the most ephemeral stage of Cumulonimbus. This stage doesn’t last long since its when the cloud droplets are disappearing because of the rapid formation of high ice particle concentrations inside the turret. Remember, ice and water don’t stay together long; water disappears, evaporates due to mixing of environment air around the turret, all that ice sucking the life out of those poor droplets since water vapor molecules love ice more than being inside a droplet when ice is around and they escape to the nearest ice particle, which then gets fatter and fatter, cannibalizing those droplets in a sense.
4:52 PM. Jumbo Cumulus congestus has congealed into a complex of Cumulonimbus clouds, riding the north wind that was about to sweep into the Sutherland Heights later in the evening.6:32 PM. WIth the gush of north winds, Stratocumulus and Cumulus bases quickly covered the sky, some piling higher into Cumulonimbus clouds.6:55 PM. Northerly wind and associated line of Cumulus above it grow into Cumulonimbus clouds. Very pretty scene. But tops not doing much here, so big dump not likely without something changing, which did! The older wispy turret above the larger rain shaft is already sinking back. The new shaft is coming out of the youngest, firmest looking turret.6:55 PM. Zoomed view of the top of turret where the new rain shaft is coming out. That bubble on the right side is just starting to show its ice externally, though grauple (soft hail) and/or hail were already hidden inside it as evidenced by that new thin rain shaft. Notice the younger turret behind it is higher, and therefore colder, and must also be full of precip. Watch out below! It doesn’t show the “softness” as the droplets evaporate in the presence of ice likely because its still on its way up, and condensation onto drops is faster than removal of vapor by ice. Watch out below, #2.6:57 PM. In the meantime, the Catalinas reap a nice sunset shower.7:08 PM. That new turret is now unloading around Ina and Oracle. Very exciting and a pretty scene, too, with the glow of the sunset. This storm was to go on for another hour.7:23 PM. Slightly out of focus, but you can see one of the MANY strokes of lightning that accompanied this tremendous downpour.
AZ mod (from 5 PM data last evening) thinks we have a chance for an afternoon dump today, Thursday.
7:21 PM, August 13th. A sky so full of portent that evening after a clear day. This our last chance for rain for quite awhile, but Sutherland Heights and Catalina whiffed on this incoming complex of thunderstorms. But, we had a fabulous light show from a cell that developed almost overhead, pf Sutherland Heights as dark fell, but a little to the SE, dumping heavy rains in the Romero Canyon/Pusch Ridge area.7:16 PM., August 13th. A very dramatic looking shelf cloud (Stratocumulus) spread across and otherwise completely clear sky that evening providing a great sunset photo op. Northerly winds of 25-35 mph and a temperature drop of about 10 degrees accompanied this scene.6:57 PM. The churning, roiling motion of this turret was remarkable, almost like time-lapse there was so much of it. That easily seen churning was evidence of how unstable the atmosphere was on this day. It was unusually cool for summer at 20, 000 feet or so above us. leading to a strong drop in temperature from the 100 F or so at the ground. So, as the warmer air that clouds represent relative to their surroundings, made them more buoyant than usual as they climbed upward; a hotter than usual hot air balloon, if you will, one that goes up faster. Stronger updrafts are thought to lead to more lightning compared with Cumulonimbus clouds having weak updrafts.3:57 PM, August 13th. Even slender clouds could shoot up and reach the “glaciation level” where the tops became comprised of only ice crystals, and sent long plumes of ice out from the parent cloud. The long trail of ice shows how much the wind increased with height at the top of this cloud. As that evening’s storm approached, all of the anvils from the many Cumulonimbus clouds that were approaching were mostly kept from view so that you couldn’t see them. This cloud also poses a naming enigma. Its got an ice plume, a very little rain fell out on the left side where Pusch Ridge begins, but no shaft is visible. It can hardly be called just a “Cumulus” cloud, and yet the more accurate label, “Cumulonimbus” with all of its attributes, makes one a little uncomfortable due to the lack of a visible shaft.
The End (of the cloud discussion)
New “not pubbed” item:
I’ve added RViewpoint_10-24-06_submitted date Aug 31, 2006_final, something that’s been sitting around for years! Spent a lot of time writing it, but ultimately deemed it a hopeless task that it would be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteor. Soc. under then current leadership in the weather modification domain of that journal, and ultimately never bothered to submit it. I was sick of the conflict, for one thing. Haven’t read this piece in years, either, but just wanted to do SOMETHING with it so here it is on this blog.
A longer piece, “Cloud Seeding and the Journal Barriers to Faulty Claims: Closing the Gaps“, also worked on again in spare time at home, for about two years, with the final rejection in 1999 under pretty much the same Bulletin editorial leadership. In this MS, I had a chance to get in, but the specific reviewer whose demands the Editor said I had to meet, insisted that I indicate in the manuscript that the lead scientists in the faulty published reports I wrote about “did the best they could under the circumstances” in the two early benchmark experiments, those in Colorado and Israel. I knew from direct personal experience that wasn’t true; I couldn’t write such a bogus statement that might have made the difference in “getting in.” So two years of on and off effort went down the drain. Sometime soon I will add this second futile effort to the “not pubbed” list! I have a number of those….. It didn’t help either that the two leading scientists whose work I questioned were also the two most beloved scientists in this field.
As with all but one of these pubs (Hobbs and Rangno 1978) in the domain of weather modification, they were done at home, outside of grant funding work while I was at the University of Washington in the Cloud and Aerosol Research Group. And, as I sometimes alert audiences to, working at home on stuff year after year. thousands of hours involved, could be considered a “crackpot alert”. Well, I think of myself as a “good crackpot.” haha.
Its not a McDonald’s product, but rather a reference to yesterday’s rain total here in the Sutherland Heights, but maybe there will be some extra blog “drive bys” of people looking to order a small meal…
Yesterday’s 0.26 inches was only the second day in 39 years that measurable rain has fallen on June 10th (normally reported the following day, today, at 7 AM 1 novella-sized ). Rain mainly fell in Sutherland Heights and to the north in this first episode, and later to the southwest through west of us as a big cell came in after 4 PM from the south sporting a huge anvil.
Measurable rain of at least a mm (0.04 inches), enough to trip the ALERT gauge bucket, did not even fall on the CDO Bridge at Lago, while 1.02 inches fell 1.5 mi west of Charouleau Gap (Cherry Spring ALERT gauge) yesterday. Nice.
Continuing with interesting information….
The day of this blog was Saturday, June 11th.
In the past 39 Junes, it has not rained in Catalina on this day. Check it out with this updated rain occurrences chart with generalities on it, ones that don’t always apply:
The Banner University of Arizona’s Weather Department computer model foretells rain in Catalina beginning just after noon today. If that happens, and I think it will, we will all experience a very rare event! I am really happy for you!
Yesterday’s clouds (which is now a few days ago, June 10th actually)
12:00 PM. This was an exciting shot for us since it shows that the mid-and upper portions of the Cumulonimbus clouds that are going to form over the Catalinas a bit later, are going to eject out rapidly toward Catalina. Some good rains here can happen in this situation, though not the heaviest ones since those have to fall through the whole body of the cloud rather than from well above the base since evaporation will take a toll on those falling drops once outside the cloud.12:24 PM. Another cloud builds explosively upward from Mt. Lemmon. Will this one rain?12:23 PM. Top of a weak Cumulonimbus passes directly over Sutherland Heights. A light rain shower is falling from the most distant part where ice formed. The ice was forming as the top went over us, and so the precip fell out after it had gone by, pretty unusual. This was partly because this top had not gotten as high as the one forming over us and downstream from Mt. Lemmon as this photo was taken. Sometimes we get pretty good rain in Catalina from clouds whose mid and upper portions eject out over us from Mt. Lemmon.12:24 PM. A glaciated portion of the Cumulonimbus top peaks out. No rain was evident from this cloud on top of Mt. Lemmon and whose top passed right over Sutherland Heights. Can you find it? If not, see zoom of this view next.12:24 PM. An clearly glaciated portion of the top of the Cumulonimbus cloud sitting on Ms. Mt. Sara Lemmon. Pretty exciting to see for us since no shaft was visible at this time, and only the tiniest radar echo was present since the radar was in between sweeps of our area.1:05 PM. Rain spreads downwind from Samaniego Ridge and is now falling in Sutherland Heights.12:34 PM. Shaft emerges from Cumulonimbus base onto Samaniego Ridge. Ice aloft was seen before this happened.7:28 PM. Sun elongates toward the horizon as it sets.7:50 PM. Looked promising as this TSTM moved toward Catalinaland but faded before it got here.
——————————————
1Mr. Cloud Maven Person was so excited he forgot that the rain that fell on June 10th will be reported on June 11th. By convention, the 0.26 inches which fell on the 10th, will be reported as though it had fallen on the 11th. That’s because it will be the 24 h total ENDING at 7 AM local standard time, the time when most obs are recorded these days.
“These days”?
Yep. It used to be the most stations, except those having recording gauges as here, as here, which can partition the rain by the exact 24 h it fell in, reported their precip in the late afternoon, 4-6 PM local standard time. The shift requested shift for cooperative observers like me occurred in I don’t when, maybe 20 years ago.
This shift had an important impact on climate since reading your thermometer, say, at 5 PM in a heat wave, might mean the highest temperature for the following 24 h was almost the same temperature as you had on your prior observational day even if a cold front came through a few hours later on that day and the high temperature on the following day was cold as heck, the high temperature actually 30 degrees lower. But the thermometer you reset at 5 PM the prior day will be immersed in those higher temperatures right after you made that ob. So, when a crazy thing could happen. The actual high temperature the following day could be 52 F, but the reset thermometer might have 81 F as the high for the whole 24 h following the official ob time. Got it? It is confusing, and something that causes headaches in climate studies.
Now, it is thought that the shift to 7 AM obs could lead to a slight amount of cooling since that same effect could happen during a cold spell. The low temperature of a cold, cold morning might carry over as the coldest temperature for the next 24 h day even if that next day was far warmer. Glad I’m not too interested in temperature, but rather clouds! Temperature is too hard, as Homer Simpson might say.
As you can deduce or not, the problem is that cooperative observers only read their instruments once a day as a rule, and the high and low temperatures for a day are averaged to get the average temperature for the whole day. Its the best we can do since cooperative observers for the National Weather Service are unpaid volunteers, which is redundant.
However, the cooperative observer network for climate data in the US is in collapse these days; not enough money to keep it up and so if you were to check the government publication, “Climatological Data”, mostly comprised of cooperative observations with a sprinkling of official National Weather Service ones, you would find lots and lots of missing reports. No one seems to care a lot about climate obs these days, though there is a mighty interest in climate models!
Well, we’ve gotten off into quite an informative harangue here…..
Morning thunder, evening thunder; 0.84 inches of rain, 1-2 inches in the mountains, with some of the most dramatic skies and shocking cloud changes ever seen (by me). “But, hey, enough of ‘me’, lets get on with the ‘shockumentary'”, as Rob Reiner might say.
Scene 1: Its morning. A horsey ride has been planned with an important, published friend. You’re thinking, “It will be good to be seen with someone important.” No one’s paying attention to weather. The weather is cloudy, quite nice really, but nothing threatening can be seen.
6:48 AM. Nothing to worry about really. Just a patch of Altocumulus castellanus. Quite pretty.
Scene 2. Heading out.
7:20 AM. Wonder what that is coming ’round the mountain. Probably nothing, though it is kind of dark over there. Cloud bases are lower, too. Desert’s turning a nice green now after the recent rains. Too bad there isn’t more rain ahead.
Scene 3. On the trails.
7:33 AM. Been on the trails for quite awhile, maybe more than 12 minutes… Cloud bases lower still, but, its probably just harmless, non-precipitating Stratocumulus. Nothing to be too concerned about, though the amount of water in the air must be prodigious today.
Scene 4. Ooops
7:43 AM. Rain and thunder approached rapidly. Note horse’s rear pointing in the direction of the storm (lower center right). As a horseman, you would know that horses often point there rear ends at storms, hard to say why, but its a classic sign that a storm is approaching from that direction, though you can see it yourself as well. Actually, we were fleeing like mad, embarrassed galore that cloud maven person did not look at radar that morning to see what was over the hill.
Scene 5. Dramatic skies and a few close strikes.
7:47 AM. Just about back, but LTG strikes getting closer faster.
The storm passed dropping 0.22 inches. And, compounding error, as we know, when potent upper air disturbances bring morning thunder and rain, its pretty much always the case that the rest of the day will be dry as a subsiding couplet of air follows a rising one, the the strongly rising couplet of air that forced our morning clouds and storm.
So, was kind of looking ahead to a disappointing rest of the day , but was thankful for the unusual morning storm.
1:49 PM. As expected, a large clearing occurred following the morning rain, and a few harmless Cumulus developed over the Catalinas.5:49 PM. A thunderstorm passes NE of Catalina, but like the day before, will likely only bring on “a mighty wind”, to quote Rob Reiner again, though a rain-cooled one. That will be nice.5:59 PM. Quite “histrionic”, but certainly won’t get here…..6:07 PM. Nice Cumulus congestus in foreground; giant anvil in back from the storm to the N-NE.6:10 PM. Nice scruff of Stratocumulus/Cumulus mediocris rides above the NE winds that blew out of the storm to the north. Certainly, these clouds won’t do anything. Bases disorganized, nothing congealing.6:17 PM. Huh. Bases looking a little better, especially back there over the mountains. Still, seems VERY unlikely anything will happen. Its late in the day, temperature falling…..6:31 PM. The larger base has crept closer to Catalina. But, as you can plainly see, its not doing anything, and hasn’t over the past 20 min or so, so you can pretty well forget that it will do anything. A few minutes later, thunder began to erupt from it. I could NOT believe it, as you were thinking as well. No sign of an anvil, ice, or shaft! Forecast of no rain going bad….very bad.6:34 PM. There it is, on the right, the emergence of the shaft from one of the smallest thundering clouds this writer has ever seen. Within a couple of minutes, Oro Valley below was not visible!6:40 PM. Looking at Oro Valley!6:41 PM. Looking toward Catalina, lower portion. Its gone. The visible sun shows that the intense rainshaft and cloud cover were quite narrow and limited.6:54 PM. Backside of first dump shown above. Magnificent!
But it wasn’t over by a long ways was it?
6:53 PM. A new, much larger, firmer base has formed in the same spot as the previous storm. And you KNOW its going to dump on us!7:01 PM. What a blast! This one brought pea-sized hail to the Sutherland Heights neighborhood.7:02 PM. Perhaps the shot of the day of the first evening blast as it moved over and past Saddlebrook.
From a single snap, this LTG complexity caught three evenings ago.This was taken seconds before the big flash, which kind of ruined the exposure when it happened.This last series of photos were taken the evening before. Kinda pretty I thought.
In other news…..
Record July rains are falling in much of the coastal and intermediate valleys of southern California as the pathetic remnant of once proud Category FOUR hurricane Dolores makes landfall there today. Places like San Diego have had well over an inch, unheard of in July. August, not so much, since tropical storm remnants have passed over southern Cal in a few Augusts. Remember August 1977, when two inches fell on LA due to a tropical storm remnant?
That also August deluge in Los Angeles, by coincidence I am sure, preceded the big Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) switch in which low centers in the Pacific shifted farther to the south beginning with the 77-78 winter and the Arctic warmed up. Wallace et al 1995, Science Mag, discoverers of the PDO, were claiming that the PDO shift had seriously muddied up the global warming hoopla of the time, suggesting caution in those global warming claims.
Nobody really paid any attention, since it was about to get even WARMER in the years immediately ahead, like in the 97-98 winter when a giant El Nino, like the one now out there, spiked earth temperatures to a record high of the time.
By the way, the phrase, “global warming”, has been supplanted by the phrase, “climate change”, one that has been bastardized from its original use since climatologists have always considered the phrase, “climate change” a temperature-neutral, precipitation-neutral, could-go-either-way one, but as you know today it is one-tailed; that is, “climate change” today has only ONE meaning by those (often non-professionals) who use it; that an anthropogenic WARMING of the climate is underway with its attendant effects on precipitation and life itself.
When the earth stopped warming some 15-20 years ago, the global warming phrase heard all over the media had to be supplanted with something else, of course. I laugh, bitterly really, when I think of award-winning science geophys writer, Richard Kerr, of Sceince Mag, who wrote an article in Science, quoting the Hadley Center and such, titling his 2009 article about the hiatus in the rise in temperature, “What Happened to Global Warming?”
Of course, today such a title would not be allowed in Science Magazine. But then, Richard Kerr could not have titled his article, “What Happened to Climate Change?” either, since climate change is always happening on this planet, probably the others like it.
Speaking of mud, or muddying things up, some scientists (Karl et al.) are now claiming (in 2015) there was NO HIATUS in the earth’s temperature; that its been rising all along! This astounding finding is due to some manipulations/”corrections” of existing data and use of African and other data not previously available. You can read about this in summary form: Lost and Found_Sci 6-5-2015
This made me feel sad for the great scientists of the day, like Susan Soloman and others, who have generated hypotheses about WHY the pause in the rise in temperatures has occurred, even publishing those hypotheses in high end journals like Science Mag or Nature.
Those folks are bound to be pretty embarrassed now since they may have been explaining nothing that was real. It doesn’t get more embarrassing than that; kind of like explaining N-Rays, that bogus radiation reported after the turn of the century by French scientist, Renee Blondlot, at Nance University (the “N” was for Nance). Man, was Blonbdlot embarrassed when American physicist, Robert Wood, went to France to see “N-Rays” for himself and found that they were imaginary and reported them as so1. N-Rays, though they had been “confirmed” in numerous studies, were soon gone from the scene, one of the greatest mass delusions known to science.
Was there REALLY no hiatus, that the Hadley Center in England, perhaps the foremost climate center in the world, was somehow misled when they were reporting a pause or hiatus in warming? One thinks that the Karl et al 2015 report will get a LOT of scrutiny. Stand by….
More TSTMS in the area today through most of the summer. Hope one hits here in the Heights. We’re falling behind our 3.5 inch or so average for July.
The End.
————————
1It was the story of American physicist, Robert Wood, as told in the 1982 book, Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science, by William Broad and Nicholas Wade, that partially inspired your Catalina Cloud Maven.com to go to Israel in 1986 to see the clouds for himself since, in his experience after years of airborne cloud work at the University of Washington), the cloud reports emanating out of Israel were goofy, also the likely product of someone’s imagination. Those Israeli cloud reports WERE goofy as found by your author (1988 pub), and independently by others (U of Tel Aviv).
In fact, the chance of MEASURABLE rain in Catalina is at least 100%, maybe as high as 300%, between 5 AM AST, Sunday, March 1st and 5 AM, AST, March 4th. Namely, its gonna happen.
Now, its not gonna rain that whole time, likely starting later in the day on the 1st. Pretty darn exciting to have a sure thing in the future! Check out this 4-panel presentation of maps from Enviro Can, I really like them:
Valid for Monday, March 2nd. Heavy rains foretold in western AZ by this time. Likely will be here by this time, too, though THIS model thinks the rain is still to the west.
Perhaps going farther than one reasonably should, the likely minimum amount will be 0.33 inches (10% chance of less) and top amount, gee, this situation has a big top, 1.50 inches, due to this trough’s deep reach into the sub-tropics, meaning it could pulling extra wet air toward us if everything works out in the “best” possible scenario. The best guess, between these two extremes is the average, or about 0.9 inches during our rainy spell. Should keep the washes flowing, though this one being colder than January’s tropical rains, should pile up lots of snow on top of Ms. Lemmon, so
Moving ahead to yesterday……
A pretty nice 0.09 inches fell yesterday morning in The Heights. “Nice”, because some model runs a few days in advance of this had no rain as a dry cold front went by.
When did the cold front pass?
9 AM yesterday, marked by a freshet from the NW with gusts to maybe 20 mph, with a falling temperature. Fell from 51 F to 42.x F by mid-morning, snow down to about 5,000 feet on Samaniego Ridge, too, though it melted almost immediately.
A push of wind like that virtually always builds a cloud above it, and yesterday was no exception. Here’ the cloud associated with that “freshet”:
8:31 AM. Wind shift line cloud shows up NW-NE of Catalina. Get ready!8:32 AM. Mini-rainbow appeared for just a moment.8:34 AM. Tiny holes in clouds produce pretty highlights on Eagle Crest as the windshift line cloud approaches.8:34 AM. Ditto above.9:03 AM. Windshift and line cloud pass over Sutherland Heights. Starting to rain here, though very little.9:03 AM. Close up of the bottom of the windshift line cloud.12:39 PM Post frontal passage quiet time with flattened clouds.1:28 PM/ Clouds swell up, first ice seen. Can you find it? More to north at this time.2:24 PM. Lots of pretty cloud “streets”, Cumulus clouds aligned in a line. Here’s a common one coming at you, one that comes off the Tortolita Mountains on Cumulus formation days with a westerly wind in the boundary layer (the layer between the ground and the tops of these clouds).3:19 PM. Walkin’ dogs now, but spotted trace of ice overhead in that SAME cloud street coming at me from the Tortolitas. Uh-oh. Do you see the trace of ice up there?3:21 PM. Few raindrops beginning to fall. Can you detect that bit of a rain haze on the left of center in this photo, out toward the Torts? Very hard to see, but there was an nearly invisible “shaft.”3:33 PM. Tiny snow shaft hangs from this same cloud line as it began to shift to the south and east. Can you find it?
Of course, the best part of days like yesterday is the play of the light and shadows on our mountains:
5:19 PM.5:58 PM. Stratocumulus clouds above the Charouleau Gap.
Worn out from yesterday, which resembled the day before with the late “bloom” of fabulously photogenic Cumulonimbus clouds, much lightning, and an equally fabulous sunset. Took too many photos (200 plus I think) kind of out of control, due to excessive excitement again; hard drive filling up. Locating brain now in this cup of coffee.
First, before the cloud photo diary for yesterday, this wonderful, uplifting look at the weather way ahead from NOAA’s spaghetti forecasting machine last night, calculated from global data taken around the world, to be redundant, at 5 PM AST last evening, valid for 5 PM AST Friday, August 30th:
Isn’t this great?! One of the best maps I’ve seen this summer. Looks like the summer rain season1 hereabouts will be in pretty good force through the end of August now after abosrbing this NOAA check of chaos theory. Maybe Sutherland Heights will catch up to our average rainfall for July and August by the end of the month, 6-7 inches. Now sitting on only 3.2 inches since July 1st.
Yesterday’s clouds and storms
Here’s how it all started:
10:38 AM. Cumulus specks began to appear over Ms. Lemmon an hour or two earlier than the previous day, always a good trend.11:21 AM. Early sign of an aroused atmosphere, one ready to produce deep clouds. Thin, spindly clouds shooting upward rapidly, sometimes, as here, in the formation of an obscene gesture.12:57 PM. And before 1 PM, this early Cb (calvus) off the mountains to the NW! I was really preparing for giant storms ALL day in the area. But, that’s NOT what happened. They faded soon after this. Ms. Lemmon, never mind the raging heat, became devoid of clouds. It was nothing less than astonishing that it could be cloud free in the middle of the afternoon with such an “auspicious”, if rude, early start of Cumulus clouds.
3:08 PM. Its 106 F in Sutherland Heights. This view of piddly-pooh Cumlus clouds over the Catalinas didn’t seem possible, in a sense, an amazing sight. All the day’s early promise was somehow gone, drier air was moving in, and that thought made the heat even more intolerable, though I don’t mind it myself, adding a personal note here.3:25 PM. Its a 107 F; cloud drought over the Catalinas continues. May seem silly, but this was just an incredible sight I thought.5:51 PM. Within half an hour, the Cumulus began to perk up. Could the same thing happen, that sudden explosion of Cumulus into Cumulonimbus like yesterday occur AGAIN? Yes
5:51 PM. “Muffin” Cu congestus, center, has top high enough already to produce ice and precip!6:13 PM, 22 min later. “Muffin” Cu cong has grown into a small Cumulonimbus with this pretty rainshaft. But LOOK at how the clouds have filled in toward Sutherland H.!
6:53 PM. By this time more clouds were building upward, joining the fray, as here, and the whole sky was filling in. There was some stupendous cloud to ground lightning strikes with this one, but didn’t capture them.
7:05 PM. Hard to put into words how pretty a sight this was, and so dramatic, full of portent.
7:18 PM, 13 min later, the dump has come. This was the cell that produced almost continuous lightning toward the west into the early evening.
7:14 PM. In the meantime, this cloud base was expanding in the upwind direction toward Saddlebrooke-Charoleau Gap, eventually to be our rain-producer last evening just after 8 PM AST.
Today’s weather? You’ll want to see Bob’s view and, of course, that of the TUS NWS, or your favorite TEEVEE forecaster’s. U of AZ experts though today would be better than yesterday!
The End.
——————————-
1Sometimes confused with the “monsoon” of India and south Asia, which is really a MONSOON with a giant low center circulating air around it for millions and millions of square miles. Hey, Jabalpur had 17 centimeters of rain yesterday, 6.70 inches, and the rain is supposed to get heavier in the next couple of days!
Yesterday was interesting because Mr. Cloud Maven person1 gave up on ANY rain around here as late as 5:30 PM yesterday, when the sky was punctuated by only Cumulus mediocris clouds. Sure, there were large, and quite pretty Cumulonimbi to the NW-NE over the distant high terrain, but it seemed Ms. Lemmon could not take part in producing the rainfull joy those distant clouds indicated as she so often does; was a real Cb wallflower. See below.
5:21 PM. Under 104 F skies, Cumulus mediocris over the Cat Mountains having bases way up at about 14 kft above sea level (of course, less high above sea level in future decades) produces a yawn.5:23 PM. Nearly solid mass of Cumulonimbus tops line N horizon.
Within half an hour, things began to change. What happened? Sometimes when you see changes taking place all around you its a sign of some upper level trigger, some pattern in the upper level winds that is causing the air below to come together under it, and produce large areas of clouds and thunderstorms, a little cyclonic swirl. I can’t really see anything to explain the suddeness, so I will quit this topic rather than leaving you hanging. I think I will show you two ant cones now.
Thought break: 7:57 AM, before the cloud development mystery, two symmetric ant cones. But why? There are many mysteries in life that can’t be solved, so I’m not feeling bad at all.5:45 PM. Nice, but still, at this size can only produce sprinkles and virga. Note slight bit of virga above Pusch Ridge. This WAS a sign that these modest clouds with high bases were beginning to reach upward to the glaciation level, where ice forms, a level that changes in height from day to day generally because it is partly dependent on the aerosol content in the air. This began happening in several clouds almost simultaneously! I am sure you started to get worked up, as I did.5:58 PM. Cute narrow shaft falls from a glaciated turret that has also climbed that bit farther from the prior photo. You also can see that while there is a big fluff of ice up there above the base, the rain that falls out represents only a tiny portion of where ice formed in the cloud. This would be the graupel/hail region of the cloud, melting of course on the way down because its so friggin’ hot, to be colloquial there for a second.
Cutting to the chase, these surrounding cloud eruptions that occurred simultaneously, suggesting some help from above:
6:01 PM. Rainshaft fibers began emitting from this pile of Cumulus crumpulus. It was amazing since it now seemed everything was starting to rain! And rain reached the ground under this in Oro Valley. Stupendous, because now you’re looking everywhere for something to go over you.
7:02 PM. Great looking oval base about to “unload.”
7:11 PM. The hammer is down. Likely 0.50 inches or so in this short-lived water bomb.
6:51 PM. “Man with hat and beer”; sun illuminated rain in background.
7:01 PM.
7:11 PM. Part of the spectacular electrical show last evening.
The late afternoon yesterday was like a Carpenter’s song, i.e., “easy listening” interrupted by Metallica, Megadeath, Slayer, Black Flag, Helloween, The English Dogs (“She Kicked Me in the Head and Left Me for Dead”), etc.
A day filled with moderately promising Cumulus congestus and brief area Cumulonimbus clouds, was suddenly overrun by a black steam roller with a watering tank behind it, and also having a big fan, to wind up a semi-ludicrous metaphor, coming down out of the northeast bringing an early nightfall, blinding rains, and winds of 60-70 mph. It was an astonishing change, and if you weren’t watching, but rather watching TEEVEE: “Ka-blam! What the Hell?” (More on TEEVEE later; see last caption.)
Some rain totals, ones up to 2.64 inches (!) can be found here in the listing of Pima County ALERT gages. More results will be available during the morning from the U of AZ network here, and from the CoCoRahs network. BTW, if you haven’t joined up, it would be good if you joined up with both of these latter “rain gangs.”
Of course, neurotic-compulsive cloud-maven person was watching for you. I only wish I had a huge microphone yesterday evening so that I could have alerted the people of Catalina, “CDP”, to its impending weather doom.
Non-weather side note: “Catalina: its not a town”, but rather, a “Census Designated Place” (CDP) where people are clustered, according to the Census Feds. Namely, we’re Catalina, CDP, Arizona, 85739. Its quite amazing the kinds of things you might read here, and its usually right after I find them out myself.
———-
Enough collateral information.
The day, had a tranquil but portentful beginning filled with potentiation, with those low, warm cloud bases. However, with the rising temperatures, ones into the mid-90s, so, too, did cloud bases rise. This is normal. As the daytime relative humidity falls, the cloud bases form at higher and higher levels. I hope you didn’t get upset seeing that the afternoon bases were above the top of Ms. Lemmon. Still, those higher, cooler bases did mean that the rain had farther to fall through dry air, not as good as having them down on the Sam Ridge line.
10:23 AM. Turrets begin shooting upward from bases topping Samaniego Ridge. This is good.1:37 PM. Weak Cumulonimbus (Cb) finally forms in the area. Getting a little concerned at the lack of “progress”, and much higher bases now.1:56 PM. Another weak Cb forms over the Tortolita Mountains.
3:43 PM. Another weak Cb forms this side of the Tortolita Mountains. That promising dark base above Catalina unleashed a sprinkle! (Sarcastically spoken).3:18 PM. Finally, something close! Looks promising, but fizzled out.4:14 PM. Not looking good. The Catalinas are back to producing shoots, not Cbs.
5:25 PM. Then “The Man” showed up, a gigantic Cb, one like the model had been suggesting would occur in the prior evening’s run.6:28 PM. The “black steamroller” appears, about to blow over lawn furniture everywhere.6:56 PM. Rolling into Sutherland Heights above Catalina, CDP, this 30-minute “incher”. I wonder who was watching TEEVEE, perhaps planning a TEEVEE party tonight, and not watching?
For a great movie of yesterday’s clouds from the U of AZ, go here.
Oddity
An as yet inexplicable odditity to yesterday’s stupendous storm. The lack of cloud to ground strokes; I didn’t see ONE, and I was looking. Second, the frequency of lightning was as high as it gets. In the dusky light, a new flash within the Cb in less than ONE second at the peak. Its was remarkable. That same kind of activity could be seen last night as the storms receded from us with almost continuous in cloud lightning, but no strokes to the ground (at least during the time I watched.
Today?
Still humid, still unstable aloft. Mods say another active day, so watch it (not teevee)!
About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
