Altostratus opacus virgae transitions to Altocumulus during day! Storms to bring rain!

What a day for cloud maven juniors and me, too, watching the Altostratus opacus (but sometimes “translucidus” cuz you could see where the sun was) become Altocumulus!  It happens pretty often and is the result of lowering, and warming of the cloud tops, but I need to generate some excitement on an otherwise somewhat dull day.

What else is happened as tops warmed?  Good-bye virgae (“virga”, in plain speak), except in a couple of locations that raised the question, “Was it hers (Mother Nature’s) or ours (aircraft effects)?”

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The TUS balloon sounding through all that Altostratus opacus virgae. Launched at about 3:30 AM. The top temperature is so cold (-60° C, -76° F) we don’t even want to know here in Arizona that such temperatures are possible. So, you can imagine all the ice that might form in a moist layer of air. The bottom is even cold at nearly -15° C, there were the temperature jumps out to the right.  This is a situation we call “overrunning”, where warmer air is going over a colder air mass.  This cloud was about 22,000 feet thick, 7 km at this point.

The slight spread between the two lines illustrates the classic representation of what we measure when the balloon passes through an all ice crystal/snowflake cloud like this version of Altostratus was yesterday morning.  The humidity element on the balloon measures the humidity relative to liquid water, not ice, so there will be some spread between the dew point temperature (line on the left) and the temperature (line on the right) when the balloon ascends through an ice cloud.   Saturation with respect to ice is indicated here in that deep “overrunning” layer, something also likely to happen tomorrow to the writer’s “company” fubball team tomorrow.

And here's the TUS sounding launched yesterday afternoon when we only had Altocumulus opacus clouds, just as dark as Altostratus opacus, but much thinner. Tops around -10° for the most part, but there may have been some turrets to almost -20° C. The balloon almost certainly passed between clouds, did not go exactly through a Altocumulus cloudlet.
And here’s the TUS sounding launched yesterday afternoon when we only had Altocumulus opacus clouds, just as dark as Altostratus opacus, but much thinner. Tops around -10° for the most part, but there may have been some turrets to around -20° C. The balloon almost certainly passed between clouds, did not go exactly through a Altocumulus cloudlet.  Don’t worry if you can’t make out the actual temperatures on the lines sloping up to the right, just take my word for everything I say.  You can easily see how much it dried out in the middle and upper cloud regions between the morning sounding and this one.

Yesterday’s clouds and the transition

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8:29 AM. Altostratus opacus virgae (has some downward pendants of ice and snowflakes coming out of it). The TUS radar had some sprinkles showing up here and there.
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8:29 AM. Altostratus opacus virgae (has some downward pendants of ice and snowflakes coming out of it). The TUS radar had some sprinkles showing up here and there. If this seems familiar, the caption is identical with the prior one. Redundancy is one of the niches we practice here, mostly in cloud photos of the same thing.

Now let’s look over here:

8:29 AM. The same.
8:29 AM. The same.
9:19 AM. Thin spot in the overcast.
9:19 AM. “Thin spots in overcast”:  we used to say that a lot in our human weather reports of ages gone by.  Here the thin spot makes this Altostratus translucidus.. While there is an irregular look to this Altostratus due to virga hanging down, there is no indication of liquid water elements, ones that would show up as sharply-outlined darker elements.  While this is hours later than that morning TUS sounding, it is likely that in spite of this thin spot, the Altostratus layer was still many kilometers (thousands of feet thick).  Ice crystals and snowflakes are far less numerous than droplets in liquid clouds, and,  therefore clouds composed of ice are more transparent given equal depths.   Compare the visibility in a dense fog with being in a light snowfall.
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9:38 AM. Example of a some sharply-outlined liquid clouds embedded in the Altostratus layer have formed. The growth of ice crystals and snowflakes is enhanced in  liquid clouds because they represent regions where it is saturated with respect to WATER, and highly supersaturated with respect to ice (the relative humidity with respect to ice is well over 100%).  Also, if the droplets in these clouds are large enough (larger than about 15 microns in diameter) they can be collected by the falling ice and snow, adding to their mass of those, causing them to fall faster.
10:29 AM. Had numerous, dramatic outbreaks of mammatus around this time, probably representing the fall back of turrets on top of the Altostratus as this time. We will say no more about mammatus since the author has tended toward the prurient to break up the tedium in past notations about mammatus.
10:29 AM. Had numerous, dramatic outbreaks of mammatus around this time, probably representing the fall back of turrets on top of the Altostratus as this time. We will say no more about mammatus since the author has tended toward the prurient to break up the tedium in past notations about” mammatus.”  This might be viewed as an upside down look at the cloud tops at this point, BEFORE they collapsed and dropped below the main bottom of this layer.  At the top (rumpled area), regions of a liquid cloud layer are beginning to appear, a sure sign that tops are receding.
11:55 AM. Moving along,looking upwind across the Oro Valley. Still looks composed mostly of ice, but liquid clouds are on the far horizon.
11:55 AM. Moving along,looking upwind across the Oro Valley. Still looks composed mostly of ice (Altostratus opacus virgae here), but liquid clouds are on the far horizon.
1:21 PM. Altocumulus opacus rules. The deep icy cloud is all gone by now.
1:21 PM. Altocumulus opacus rules. The deep icy cloud is all gone by now.  No virga.  Notice, too, in spite of being less than a kilometer thick, this cloud looks as gray as the Altostratus that was many kilometers thick.  The droplet concentrations in a liquid cloud such as this might be 200, 000 per liter, while the ice concentrations in that Altostratus cloud were likely in the 10s per liter.  The smaller particles in Altocumulus clouds, average perhaps only  15-20 microns in diameter  also are able to reflect far more sunlight back into space, and less sunlight reaches the bottom making it darker.  In contrast, the (ice) particles in the Altostratus would be hundreds of microns to millimeters in diameter (i.e., precip-sized).
2:22 PM. Looking around at these cold Altocumulus clouds, generally not showing virga, you begin to wonder if those areas you do see have been the result of an aircraft passage, as here in that little spot of virga.
2:22 PM. Looking around at these cold Altocumulus clouds, generally not showing virga, you begin to wonder if those areas you do see have been the result of an aircraft passage, as here in that little spot of virga.
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2:28 PM. Some breaks in the overcast allowed some nice scenes to fall upon our mountains. Here, the Charouleau Gap is highlighted.

The weather just ahead

Here’s the latest projected rain totals from the U of AZ Wildcat Weather Department Weather Calculator:

From the global ingest of data at 11 PM AST last evening. Indicates that green Catalina will be in the half inch to three quarters of an inch between now and New Year's Day afternoon. Comes in two segments, the first overnight tonight, and then another starts New Year's Eve.
From the global ingest of data at 11 PM AST last evening. Indicates that green Catalina will be in the half inch to three quarters of an inch between now and New Year’s Day afternoon. Comes in two segments, the first overnight tonight, and then another starts New Year’s Eve.  Seems reasonable.  Probably not quite reasonable is the red on the Cat Mountains, indicating 3-4 inches accumulation during this time, probably a bit overdone.  Both storms are rather small in size, so the amount of rain depicted in these model runs has varied a lot.  But, they seem to be settling on something decent.  Seems the least we’ll end up with has to be more than a third of an inch, worst case scenario.  See Bob and the NWS for a good look at these incoming events.  We’re mostly about clouds here.

Undercutting flow from the tropical Pacific is on schedule.  So, a good chance for major rains along the southern portions of the West Coast in a few days, with a pretty good chance they’ll leak into Arizony.

 

The End

November thunderama

Doesn’t happen every November, thunder, but it sure pounded away at times yesterday.   Seemed louder than usual thunder a few times even with the lightning over there by the Tortolita Mountains. Of course, that’s where the heaviest rain fell as several T-storms tracked along a similar path over there just a little to the W through N of us, Bio2, in one of the heavier cloberations receiving 1.17 inches.

Here, in The Heights, we received a disappointing, but nevertheless welcomed final total of 0.24 inches.  This brings our total here in Sutherland Heights for November up to 0.60 inches.  Average is 0.96 inches1.  Here, the regional totals as the storm was coming to an end:

"Us" is here in the Sutherland Heights; "Them" is Bio2. Wanted to reflect the general world situation now days by using an oft used cliché.
“Us” is here in the Sutherland Heights; “Them” is Bio2. Wanted to reflect the general world situation now days by using oft used cliché terms.

As is proper, let us begin examining the nubilations of our storm by looking at those clouds that preceded the actual rain day yesterday.

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7:02 AM. This pretty sunrise over the Catalina features a couple of flakes of Altocumulus clouds, and a vast layer of Altostratus.
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7:04 AM. Yes, the sun is coming up, though really its the earth rotating toward the sun. The sun does not go around the earth every day; it only SEEMS that way. We’re looking at the same two cloud generas, btw. Nice rays produced by pretty regular humps in clouds over the horizon, a little row of Altocumulus castellanus might cause these rays/shadows.
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7:05 AM. This was pretty interesting, to use “pretty” again. This would be an Altostratus mammatus. Men often find this formation especially interesting and pretty. Here you can also see how a cloud protuberance can produce a shadow. But why is there only one feature like this? Typically mammatus are like upside down Cumulus turrets representing  downward moving cloudy, in this case, air filled with ice crystals).   Adjacent to this feature, the ice crystals and snowflakes are just settling out.   As the moving downward air in mammatus features slows, these breast-like globules open up and you’ll have ordinary virga. The ice crystals are typically rather small and not rimed (that is, have not collided with cloud droplets) or they would fall out and not be constrained to this pretty,  rounded shape.
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7:07 AM. The underside of the Altostratus is lit up, showing the detailed areas of virga. Altostratus, by definition, is a precipitating cloud. Its just that the bases are too high for the precip (snow) to get to the ground, though sprinkles could occur in the thicker, deeper versions. When and if it starts to rain steadily, the cloud is better termed a “Nimbostratus,”
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11:20 AM. The Altostratus deck departed with its pretty mammatus and virga, leaving great examples of Altocumulus opacus clouds most of the morning and into the early afternoon.
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3:24 PM. An example of Altostratus translucidues doesn’t get better than this.  Hope you captured it.  The As  (abbrev. for “Altostratus”) cloud over took over by mid-afternoon as the moist layer deepened again following the Altocu. Tops of this all ice Altostratus layer, in spite of being able to make out  (“discern,” not “make out” in the social sense of the phrase–still thinking about that mammatus formation) the sun’s position, are usually around Cirrus levels, the top of the troposphere.  The TUS sounding suggested “bases” (actually where the ice crystals are evaporating rather than droplets that comprise the bases of Cumulus, Altocumulus or other droplet clouds) at 14,000 feet ASL, and tops around 34,000 feet ASL  Subtract about 3 kft to get heights above the ground here in Catalina.

 

Moving ahead to yesterday…..

7:13 AM. With an approaching upper level trough and big low center in the Great Basin, the winds had become gusty, and the clouds had lowered to Stratocumulus status, topping the Catalinas. I thought the lighting was really pretty here, and that shaft out there shows that turrets are climbing shooting up well beyond the general tops of the shallow Stratocu. Pretty exciting since it meant that the tops of other Stratocu might bunch into other Cumulonimbus clouds, which is what that shaft tells you.
7:13 AM. With an approaching upper level trough and big low center in the Great Basin, the winds had become gusty, and the clouds had lowered to Stratocumulus status, topping the Catalinas. I thought the lighting was really pretty here, and that shaft out there shows that turrets are climbing shooting up well beyond the general tops of the shallow Stratocu. Pretty exciting since it meant that the tops of other Stratocu might bunch into other Cumulonimbus clouds, which is what that shaft tells you.
8:18 AM. A line of Cumulonimbus quickly erupted and it looked like it was about to crash into the Oro Valley Catalina area, but instead stayed to the west over the Tortolitas.
8:18 AM. A line of Cumulonimbus quickly erupted and it looked like it was about to crash into the Oro Valley Catalina area, but instead stayed to the west over the Tortolitas.  Thunder heard!
8:19 AM. Looking WNW toward the Tortolitas.
8:19 AM. Looking WNW toward the Tortolitas.
9:27 AM. After some light showers passed along the Catalinas, this pretty scene. Note the glistening rocks that added such pretty highlights.
9:27 AM. As some light showers passed along the Catalinas, this pretty scene the sun broke through.  Note the glistening rocks that added such pretty highlights.
9:28 AM. Pretty nice over toward the Gap, too! I will never get tired of these scenes!
9:28 AM. Pretty nice over toward the Gap, too! I will never get tired of these scenes!
11:12 AM. Disappointingly, in view of all the rain predicted here (0.575 inches) that first line of Cumulonimbus clouds stayed stayed west of Catalina.
11:12 AM. Disappointingly, in view of all the rain predicted here (0.575 inches) that first line of Cumulonimbus clouds stayed stayed west of Catalina.  But, that line of Cumulus or Stratocumulus clouds on the horizon is full of stormy portent, that a windshift line might be about to strike and generate another line of Cumulonimbus clouds.  Any solid line of clouds like that, kind of by itself, suggests a windshift; it more than just a fair weather “cloud street.”
11:11 AM. Zooming in on that line of clouds. Its fun to zoom, since you are in a way, flying toward what you're looking at, getting so much closer!
11:11 AM. Zooming in on that line of clouds. Its fun to zoom, since you are in a way, flying toward what you’re looking at, getting so much closer! I wish that line of clouds was here already!

 

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11:27 AM. Yep, there it goes, fattening upward into Cumulus congestus and to the N, Cumulonimbus clouds! This one will surely blast across Catalina as the upper trough and associated cold front approach; heck, maybe that’s the cold front windshift line and temprature drop right there!
11:27 AM. Yep, there it goes, fattening upward into Cumulus congestus and to the N, Cumulonimbus clouds! This one will surely blast across Catalina as the upper trough and associated cold front approach; heck, maybe that's the cold front windshift line and temprature drop right there!
11:27 AM. Yep, there it goes, fattening upward into Cumulus congestus and to the N, Cumulonimbus clouds! This one will surely blast across Catalina as the upper trough and associated cold front approach; heck, maybe that’s the cold front windshift line and temprature drop right there! Repeated for emphasis.
11:29 AM. A Cumulonimbus cloud is a bit farther north in this line.
11:29 AM. A Cumulonimbus cloud is a bit farther north in this line.  This HAS to be the windshift and cold front!
11:46 AM. Was inside for a few minutes (18) and that cloud line just exploded over there. Here looking again toward the Tortolitas. But surely they will wall out and crash the sunny party in Oro Valley (I was thinking).
11:46 AM. Was inside for a few minutes (18) and that cloud line just exploded over there. Here looking again toward the Tortolitas. But surely they will wall out and crash the sunny party in Oro Valley (I was thinking).
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11:52 AM. Well, these followup Cumulonimbus clouds aren’t looking so great, no evidence of strong turreting, weak and leaning, wispy, frail, “indolent”, cloud “couch potatoes.” Hope fading for a big shafting here in The Heights
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12:12 PM. The cloud line, as expected is progressing across Oro Valley, but shafting is meager. Its real windy, though, adding some drama. Gusts to 40 mph! Note however the weak shafting, as evidenced by a slope across the whole thing; no heavy, large particles falling out of this guy as we see in those vertical summer shafts. Indicates that the tops are getting very high, producing lots of condensate. So even here, with a nice dramatic scene, you’re thinking (to put words in your brain) that its going to be a disappointment in rain production, and you might be missed altogether!
12:24 PM. It was pretty much all over 12 min later, that is, the chances for a real shafting. A well formed Cumulus congestus base formed just upwind of Catalina, but as so many do, slipped a little east before reaching Cumulonimbus stage and unloaded on the Catalina foothills NE of Catalina. Sometime, when clouds like this are overhead and show no precip, it just can dump out of the black. But, it didn't happen yesterday.
12:24 PM. It was pretty much all over 12 min later, that is, the chances for a real shafting. A well formed Cumulus congestus base formed just upwind of Catalina, but as so many do, slipped a little east before reaching Cumulonimbus stage and unloaded on the Catalina foothills NE of Catalina. Sometime, when clouds like this are overhead and show no precip, it just can dump out of the black. But, it didn’t happen yesterday.  By now, the wind had shifted, the temperature was falling, and soon, the light to briefly moderate rain fell as the cold front went by.
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1:14 PM. By this time, you could pick up a couple of nice photos of just Stratocumulus clouds following the passage of the front. Here we see some indications of mammatus formations (upper center, right) in a droplet cloud, an extremely rare event since droplets evaporate so much faster in downward moving air that the pouches represent. One can surmise that those pouches may have contained higher amounts of liquid water, and the downdrafts were very slight.  OK, so we’re kind of fixated on mammatus today….  No apologies; I’m just a man.

The great thing about yesterday was that because the upper trough lagged so much behind the cold front, you could be sure it wasn’t over, that is, the rain chances.  In fact, as the wind turns aloft from a southerly or southwesterly direction to a more westerly one, we here in Catalina have a better chance of having the clouds pile up over us, even if they’re not full fledged Cumulonimbus clouds, they can still reach depths where they precipitate while upwind, they don’t because they may not be deep enough.   The Catalina Mountains provides the lift that helps do this, and we saw that happen later in the afternoon and evening when it began to rain again long after the cold front and it so-so rain band went by.

3:06 PM. Starting to look more favorable for rain and the clouds began to cluster after the boring spell of Stratocumulus except for the brief display of pretty mammatus.
3:06 PM. Starting to look more favorable for rain and the clouds began to cluster after the boring spell of Stratocumulus except for the brief display of pretty mammatus.  The air aloft was getting a little colder, too, helping the Cumulus clouds deepen upward in spite of cool temperatures following the front.  This view is looking upwind to pal Mark Albright’s house there in Continental Ranch, Marana.  Mark is a fellow U of WA research meteorologist, though he hasn’t thrown in the towel yet, is still working.
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3:34 PM. Even as the clouds filled in and the light showers began, some pretty highlights were observed where the sun peaked through holes in the overcast. Here, Eagle Crest to the north of The Heights is spotlighted. If you are a resident of Eagle Crest and you would like a copy of this photo entitled, “Spotlight on Eagle Crest”, you can get one today for $1200, If you call now, you can get two for $2400.
5:25 PM. FInally, as the light rain fell, adding a few more hundredths to our total, sunset occurred! You can see it WAS raining by the drop on the camera lens, I didn't just say it was raining because I wanted it to. Note the lack of shafts. This tells you the tops of the clouds are pretty uniform, not protruding much above us. The rain was "pretty" steady, another indication that the clouds are relatively uniform in the horizontal.
5:25 PM. FInally, as the light rain fell, adding a few more hundredths to our total, sunset occurred! You can see it WAS raining by the drop on the camera lens, I didn’t just say it was raining because I wanted it to. Note the lack of shafts. This tells you the tops of the clouds are pretty uniform, not protruding much above us. The rain was “pretty” steady, another indication that the clouds are relatively uniform in the horizontal.

The End, FINALLY!

—————–

1If we don’t get more rain by the end of November, I will delete the sentence of a week or so ago stating that November would have above average rainfall.  No use having people see that.

Creamy mammatus precedes overnight thunderation

Thin Cirrostratus overspread the sky at dinner time from the east, thickening into Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus mammatus (you can breath now), toward the Catalina Mountains and in the direction of Oracle.  What a gorgeous sight this was!

While the storms that spawned this icy blob were mostly dead by this time, undercutting Altocumulus castellanus below the mammatus formation (barely visible in the photo below) gave hope that the day was not done as far as rain was concerned.  And it wasn’t.

Round about midnight, the wind and one of the more intense lightning shows of the summer crept over the Catalinas and into Catalina, sparks flying.  Strikes too close for CM to feel comfortable on the front porch in metal lawn furniture.

Sutherland Heights was watered with 0.18 inches, an OK amount, enough to revive some of the wilting desert weeds of summer.  The Cat Mountains, not surprisingly, got the most.  Ms. Sara Lemmon got 1.02 inches, Sam Peak, 0.83 inches. Hope they weren’t having an astronomy show at the Sky Center!

You can see the list of Pima County gauges here.  LTGICCCCG1 still out there to the distant SSW at this hour, and major rains are still in progress in western Arizona, all good.  (Those low lying areas of western Arizona such as along the Colorado River,  have a “bi-modal” peak frequency of late evening and early morning rains, btw.  Not much happens in the middle of the day to mid-afternoon out there.)

No clouds during the day yesterday, even over Mt. Lemmon, was a surprise, and is rare in my seventh summer here, and is a testimony to how dry the air was aloft over us even with some humidity near the surface.  Things quickly changed during the night, and this morning, we’ve got it all, significant humidity at the ground all the way up to Cirrus levels.  Perhaps due to the low starting temperatures associated with the rains in the area, the U of AZ mod doesn’t think Cumulonimbus clouds will form over our mountains until late afternoon into the evening hours.

In any case, should be a great day visually; lots going on.  Thinning clouds this morning, then the rise of the Cumulus, and we hope, as the mod projects, another blast of rain in the evening and early nighttime hours.

7:26 PM.
7:26 PM.

 

 

6:00 AM.  In case you missed it just now, this beauty.
6:00 AM. In case you missed it just now, this beauty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Weather WAY ahead

The NOAA spaghetti factory still is not showing patterns that are fruitful for generous rains overall in the next 15 days or so.  So, anything we get should be considered quite a blessing during this time.  Another giant trough is going to affect the East Coast and Midwest (the last one, a couple of weeks ago, brought the coldest July day in the 140 year history of Memphis records where for the first time the high temperature did not reach 70 F in July!  Wow.)  Those east of the Rockies may well wonder in the times ahead, what happened to summer?  Of course, those cool temperatures might well be welcomed in late July and August, but the circulation pattern that brings them is also not so great for summer rains here.  Oh, well, hoping for the best.

Sincerely, your CM.

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1Weather text for “Lightning in the cloud, cloud-to-cloud, and cloud-to-ground.”  A weather report amended with this comment, LTGICCCCG, was always one of the most exciting that you could see reported from a station, especially if you lived in lightning-deprived areas like California and Washington as did CM.

Great expectations of mice and men…

…weren’t quite realized1 in the rain totals that our storm produced; the very exciting prediction of several inches of water content foretold for Ms. Lemmon didn’t happen (see ALERT gauge listing below, saved for pretty much the maximum 24 h period of our storm.)

Still, rains were substantial, the occasional morning lightning was great, and in a few places in PC (Pima County) the rain total did exceed 2 inches, with amounts of an inch and a half in the Cat Mountains.  Good, better, but not as “great” as in expectations, except maybe at Park Tank, Reddington area, where the ALERT gauge says, 3.78 inches.  Also, if you didn’t catch it, a stupendous sunrise and sunset; see pics WAY below.

Here in Sutherland Heights, 0.60 inches fell, by far most of that during the middle of last night when strong storms bounded in and abounded all over eastern AZ with a final rainband.  Here’s what that 3rd and final rain “act” looked like on radar and in the satellite imagery last night (very exciting weather shape, BTW; “the curl”):

Radar and sat imagery from IPS MeteoStar for

Radar and sat imagery from IPS MeteoStar for 1:15 AM.  The heaviest rain fell just to the north of us.  This “curl” configuration indicates that a potent part of the trough was passing by, causing clouds to explode upward from the tip of the “tail” near Rocky Point on their way to the NE from there.  Got even bigger as they passed by us and headed toward Miami-Globe area.  You can  also see the three bands of rain that affected us, more or less still intact.

 
              Precipitation Report for the following time periods ending at: 03:59:00  03/02/14 (also learn where stuff is)
                       (data updated every 15 minutes)      
              Data is preliminary and unedited.
              —- indicates missing data
                          
    Gauge    15         1           3          6            24         Name                        Location
    ID#      minutes    hour        hours      hours        hours
    —-     —-       —-        —-       —-         —-       —————–            ———————
Catalina Area
    1010     0.00       0.04       0.16        0.28         0.43      Golder Ranch                 Horseshoe Bend Road in Saddlebrooke
    1020     0.00       0.00       0.24        0.43         0.67      Oracle Ranger Stati          approximately 0.5 mile southwest of Oracle
    1040     0.00       0.00       0.16        0.31         0.51      Dodge Tank                   Edwin Road 1.3 miles east of Lago Del Oro Parkway
    1050     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.28         0.47      Cherry Spring                approximately 1.5 miles west of Charouleau Gap
    1060     0.00       0.00       0.35        0.55         0.83      Pig Spring                   approximately 1.1 miles northeast of Charouleau Gap
    1070     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.20      Cargodera Canyon             northeast corner of Catalina State Park
    1080     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.24         0.35      CDO @ Rancho Solano          Cañada Del Oro Wash northeast of Saddlebrooke
    1100     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.20         0.31      CDO @ Golder Rd              Cañada Del Oro Wash at Golder Ranch Road

Santa Catalina Mountains
    1030     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.04         0.43      Oracle Ridge                 Oracle Ridge, approximately 1.5 miles north of Rice Peak
    1090     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.39      Mt. Lemmon                   Mount Lemmon
    1110     0.00       0.00       0.39        0.71         1.02      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        0.08         1.46      Dan Saddle                   Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge
    2150     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         1.30      White Tail                   Catalina Highway 0.8 miles west of Palisade Ranger Station
    2280     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.20         1.34      Green Mountain               Green Mountain
    2290     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.12         1.54      Marshall Gulch               Sabino Creek 0.6 miles south southeast of Marshall Gulch

Santa Catalina Foothills
    2090     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.12         0.75      TV @ Guest Ranch             Tanque Verde Wash at Tanque Verde Guest Ranch
    2100     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.16         0.43      DEQ Swan                     Swan Road at Calle del Pantera
    2160     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.08         0.31      Sabino @ USFS Dam            Sabino Creek at USFS Dam
    2170     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.12         0.59      Ventana @ Sunrise            Ventana Canyon Wash at Sunrise Road
    2190     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.20         0.75      Al-Marah                     near El Marah on Bear Canyon Road
    2200     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.12         0.71      AC Wash @ TV Bridge          Agua Caliente Wash at Tanque Verde Road
    2210     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.12         0.79      Catalina Boosters            Houghton Road 0.1 miles south of Catalina Highway
    2220     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.20         0.83      Agua Caliente Park           Agua Caliente Park
    2230     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.16         0.79      El Camino Rinconado          El Camino Rinconado 0.5 miles north of Reddington Road
    2240     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.16         0.91      Molino Canyon                Mt Lemmon Highway near Mile Post 3
    2390     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.16         0.39      Finger Rock @ Skyli          Finger Rock Wash at Sunrise Road

Redington Pass Area
    2020     0.00       0.08       0.55        0.67         3.78      Park Tank                    Redington Pass, 0.8 miles south of Park Tank
    2030     0.00       0.04       0.28        0.39         2.09      Italian Trap                 Redington Pass, 0.7 miles east southeast of Italian Trap Tank
    2040     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.16         1.14      White Tank                   Redington Road near White Tank
    2050     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.16         1.14      Bellota Ranch Road           Bellota Ranch Road near Redington Road
    2070     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.24         0.87      TV @ Chiva Tank              Tanque Verde Wash 0.5 miles south of Chiva Tank
    2080     0.00       0.04       0.12        0.16         0.87      Alamo Tank                   Redington Road near Alamo Well

Rincon Mountains
    4100     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.04         1.06      Manning Camp                 Manning Camp in the Rincon Mountains
    4110     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.08         0.47      Rincon Creek                 Rincon Creek at X-9 Ranch

Greater Tucson
    2110     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.16         0.71      TV @ TV Road                 Tanque Verde Wash at Tanque Verde Road
    2120     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.20         0.59      TV @ Sabino Cyn Rd           Tanque Verde Wash at Sabino Canyon Road
    2300     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.16         0.63      Well D-37                    Rosewood Street west of Harrison Road
    2310     0.00       0.04       0.08        0.16         0.67      Well E-23                    Rancho El Mirador north of Broadway Boulevard
    2320     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.08         0.47      Beverly Well C-51            Beverly Avenue at Hawthorne Street
    2330     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.08         0.51      Kolb Boosters                Kolb Road at Golf Links
    2350     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.12         0.39      Rillito @ Dodge              Rillito Creek at Dodge Boulevard
    2360     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.20         0.43      Rillito @ La Cholla          Rillito Creek at La Cholla Boulevard
    2370     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.28         0.63      Alamo @ Glenn                Alamo Wash at Glenn Street
    2380     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.16         0.35      DEQ Ruthraff                 Ruthrauff Road at La Cholla Boulevard
    4160     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.12         0.55      E-8                          Irvington Road near Pantano Road
    4180     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.12         0.51      Pantano @ Houghton           Pantano Wash at Houghton Road
    6040     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.04         0.43      Santa Cruz@Valencia          Santa Cruz River at Valencia Road
    6180     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.08         0.39      ArroyoChico@Cherry           Arroyo Chico at Cherry Street
    6190     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.12         0.59      Arroyo Chico@Randol          Arroyo Chico at Randolph Way
    6230     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.12         0.55      Ajo Detention Basin          Tucson Diversion Channel at Ajo Detention Basin
    6240     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.12         0.63      DEQ Cntry Clb                Country Club Road near Columbia Street
    6250     0.04       0.04       0.16        0.20         0.75      Craycroft@Golf Link          Craycroft Road at Golf Links Road
    6260     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.08         0.55      Tucson Electric Pow          Irvington Road at Belvedere Avenue
    6270     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.16         0.59      Pima Air Museum              Valencia Road at Pima Air Museum

Southern Tucson Area
    6200     0.00       0.04       0.20        0.20         0.67      Summit Elementary            Summit Street at Epperson Lane
    6210     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.12         0.59      Franco @ Swan                Franco Wash at Swan Road
    6220     0.00       0.00       0.20        0.20         0.83      PC Fairgrounds               Houghton Road at Dawn Road
    6280     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.16         0.63      Wilmot                       Wilmot Road 2 miles south of Old Vail Connection Road
    6290     0.00       0.04       0.55        0.55         1.42      Corona                       Sahuarita Road at Sewage Treatment Plant

Altar/Avra Valley Area Area
    6370     0.00       0.04       0.16        0.31         1.77      Arivaca                      Las Guijas Mountains near Arivaca
    6380     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.31         1.10      Altar Wash @ Hwy 28          Altar Wash at Highway 286
    6410     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.24         0.59      Diamond Bell                 Diamond Bell near Stagecoach Road at Killarney Avenue
    6420     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.20         0.31      Brawley@Three Point          Brawley Wash at Highway 86
    6430     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.08         0.28      Vahala Park                  Wade Road at Los Reales
    6440     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.20         0.24      Brawley@Milewide             Brawley Wash at Milewide Road
    6450     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.16         0.43      Hilltop Rd                   Hilltop Road at Riveria Road
    6460     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.28         0.35      Picture Rocks CC             Picture Rocks Community Center
    6470     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.16         0.35      Michigan @ Calgary           Michigan Street at Calgary Avenue

Marana/Oro Valley Area
    1200     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.20         0.28      CDO @ Ina Road               Cañada Del Oro Wash at Ina Road
    1230     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.24         0.31      Oro Valley PW                Calle Concordia at Calle El Milagro
    1240     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.28         0.35      Moore Rd                     Moore Road at La Cholla
    1250     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.24         0.35      Pima Wash @ Ina              Pima Wash at Ina Road
    1260     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.28         0.43      Big Wash                     Big Wash at Rancho Vistoso Boulevard
    1270     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.20         0.31      CDO @ Big Wash               Cañada Del Oro Wash near Oracle Road
    6020     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.24         0.35      Santa Cruz @ Ina             Santa Cruz River at Ina Road
    6110     0.04       0.04       0.08        0.24         0.24      Avra Valley Airpark          Santa Cruz River 0.5 miles east of Sanders Road

Vail Area
    4220     0.00       0.00       0.16        0.16         0.79      Rancho Del Lago              approximately 1.8 miles northwest of Vail
    4250     0.00       0.04       0.39        0.43         0.94      Pantano @ Vail               Pantano Wash 1.5 miles southeast of Colossal Cave Road
    4270     0.04       0.04       0.24        0.24         1.06      Salcido Place                6 miles north-northwest of Mescal
    4280     Site temporarily removed due to road construction        Cienega Crk @ I-10           Cienega Creek at Interstate 10
    4290     0.04       0.04       0.20        0.20         0.91      Mescal                       2 miles northwest of Mescal
    4310     0.00       0.00       0.55        0.55         1.22      Davidson Canyon              Davidson Canyon Wash 0.25 miles south of Interstate 10
    4320     0.00       0.04       0.12        0.12         0.43      Empire Peak                  Empire Peak
    4410     0.00       0.04       0.04        0.04         0.75      Haystack Mtn.                Haystack Mountain

Green Valley Area
    6050     0.00       0.00       0.47        0.67         1.61      Santa Cruz@Continen          Santa Cruz River at Continental Road
    6060     0.00       0.08       0.16        0.20         1.22      Santa Cruz@Conoa             Santa Cruz River at Elephant Head Road
    6080     0.04       0.08       0.12        0.12         1.34      Santa Cruz@Tubac             Santa Cruz River at Tubac
    6310     0.00       0.00       0.20        0.24         0.98      Keystone Peak                Keystone Peak
    6320     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.08         1.18      Tinaja Ranch                 near Caterpillar Proving Ground
    6330     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.08         1.10      Anamax                       Mission Road north of Continental Road
    6350     0.00       0.04       0.12        0.12         1.18      Elephant Head Butte          near Elephant Head Butte
    6390     0.04       0.20       0.35        0.35         2.80      Florida Canyon               Florida Canyon Work Center

There were numerous storm totals over 2 inches throughout the State, mountain ones that can be seen in the USGS rolling 24 h archive here (amounts will diminish due to the continuous updating that goes on, as with the PC ALERT gauges), and in the rainlog network from the U of AZ, and in the CoCoRahs reports for Arizona, the latter two sites do not have complete 24 h totals ending at 7 AM AST until several hours after 7 AM AST.

Southern California rains exceeded 10 inches in several mountain locals over the past few days, almost 14 inches at one mountain site in Ventura County.  So, SC’ans are quite happy,  today anyway.

——————————————–

Wow; those sunset clouds!

Good grief, there was quite the spectacular mammatus display late yesterday.   Even resembled the great mammatus ahead of the El Reno tornado in OK last May.  Then, as the sun set in a brief clearing to the west, the downward protruding bulges became lit, and the yellow-orange color of the fading sun light (as it passed through a great distance through the lower atmosphere and the shorter wavelengths of blues get scattered out) lit up the ground and foothills of the Catalinas.  It was almost too gaudy to be real and not “shopped” as we say today.

6:51 AM.  Sun burst on Stratocumulus.
6:51 AM. Sun burst on Stratocumulus bases.
4:22 PM.  Incoming Cumulonimbus mammatus.  The core of this shower was far to the S beyond Pusch Ridge.
4:22 PM. Incoming Cumulonimbus mammatus. The core of this shower was far to the S beyond Pusch Ridge.

 

4:24 PM.  Overhead already!
4:24 PM. Overhead already!

 

6:06 PM.  Breathtaking lighting.
6:06 PM. Breathtaking lighting.
6:11 PM.  Rainbow enhances sky mammatus drama.
6:11 PM. Rainbow enhances sky mammatus drama.

 

6:16 PM.  Mammatus bulges down out of "Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus."
6:16 PM. Mammatus bulges down out of “Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus.”

Expecting lots of nice looking Cumulus today, maybe some ice/virga, but no measurable rain.

The End

——————————-

1Titular nod to one of the great novel of our time, written some decades ago,

Smoothies

 

7:46 AM.  Stratocumulus lenticularis castellanus (has spires), an oxymoronic cloud.  You would call this Stratocumulus because its low enough to top Ms. Mt. Lemmon.
7:46 AM. Stratocumulus lenticularis castellanus (has spires), an oxymoronic cloud. You would call this Stratocumulus because its low enough to top Ms. Mt. Lemmon.  While some turrets can be seen, others are causing shadows.  Have never really seen something quite like this and I look a LOT.
10:35 AM.  Stratocumulus lenticularis on the Catalinas.
10:35 AM. Stratocumulus lenticularis on the Catalinas.  The moist air is resisting like mad being lifted over the Catalinas.  Oddly, once condensation occurs a bit of heat is released and on the left you see that it was enough heat to allow a Cumulus turret to rise out of the smooth cloud.  This is pretty darn rare site, seeing such smoothness AND Cumulus rising out of the same deck.
DSC_0440
3:46 PM. Cumulus humilis, no ice, except in those Cirrus clouds on the right.
DSC_0443
5:28 PM. Sun dog, or mock sun, also “parhelia” in natural Cirrus and in a contrail. The parhelia is likely brighter in the contrail since the simple hexagonal (six-sided) plate-like ice crystals that cause parhelias are smaller and more numerous in the early stages of a contrail.

 

DSC_0448
6:09 PM. Cirrus spissatus.

 

Today’s clouds

Much like two days ago. Higher based Stratocumulus/Altocumulus with patches of heavy virga and sprinkles around.
Back edge of the cloud mass times in around 2-4 PM. Might be a little early for a great sunset, but just in case, have camera ready.

Looking farther ahead….

Still mainly dry through the next two weeks, though close call on the 7th, a situation that appears much like today, That close rain call NOW appears in both the Canadian and US WRF-GFS models (yesterday they were vastly different).   So, with that, a chance of a few hundredths here after nightfall on the 6th into the morning of the 7th.

Spaghetti, in a dismal series of plots, also shows little hope for rain here through the 20th.  So, even with mistakes in the initial analyses, deliberate ones to see how different the forecast maps turn out, we still can’t exit our drought!  Oh, me.  Poor wildflowers.

The End (did you see the giant mammatus/testicularis to the north this morning?  If not, here it is:

7:15 AM today.  Altostratus opacus mammatus.
7:15 AM today. Altostratus opacus mammatus.

 

Plenty of late November rain ahead…in model; a sunrise beauty

In case you missed it, yesterday’s sunrise:

6:52 AM.  Altostratus with mammatus underlit by rising sun.
6:52 AM. Altostratus with modest downward hanging mammatus1 bulges under lit by rising sun above the Catalina Mountains.  Altocumulus clouds are in the background.  Was a magnificent sight.
6:57 AM.  Mammatus protuberances more evident here, and quite lovely.
6:57 AM. Mammatus protuberances more evident here, and quite lovely I thought.  I seem drawn to mammatus formations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weather way ahead

Well, the WRF-GOOFUS model has lots of rain for us again as November closes out, with the model rain amounts foretold in November for Catalina now totaling over two inches, or about twice normal. Its been great model month of rain for us. Below the latest rains foretold, beginning on the 27th, continuing into the 29th.  Here from IPS MeteoStar, these renderings from our best model, based on last evening’s global obs taken at 5 PM AST:

27th 2013111400_CON_GFS_SFC_SLP_THK_PRECIP_WINDS_336
Valid at 5 PM, Wednesday, November 27th.
28th 2013111400_CON_GFS_SFC_SLP_THK_PRECIP_WINDS_348
Vallid on Thursday, November 28th at 5 AM AST.
28th 5 pm 2013111400_CON_GFS_SFC_SLP_THK_PRECIP_WINDS_360
Valid at 5 pm November 28th. Green areas denote areas where the model has calculated that rain has occurred during the prior 12 h.
27th 2013111400_CON_GFS_SFC_SLP_THK_PRECIP_WINDS_336
Valid at 5 AM AST Friday, November 29th.

There is some evidence from the NOAA spaghetti factory that churns out those spaghetti plots that a big change happens in the last week of November, so rain at the end of the month, two weeks from now,  is not out of the question.   This rain pattern results from a stagnant upper low SW of us which you can see here.

What about the weather immediately ahead?

Global pattern shifting like mad today due to what we call, “discontinuous retrogression” caused by low cutting off out of the jet stream in the central Pacific.  Troughs/ridges jump westward almost overnight when this happens.  Highs disappear overnight as is happening right now over the whole West!  Very exciting, except in this case, while a trough blossoms overnight replacing a ridge in the West, its amplitude (how far south the jet stream in the trough gets) doesn’t seem to be enough to provide us with rain here in Catalina now.  Remember that winter rain here is nearly ALWAYS associated with a jet (at 500 mb) to the south of us.

This drastic change in pattern often only lasts a couple of days, too, before reverting to “same old same old” as we had, fair and warm.  I wanna cuss here.

The foretold development of a trough in mid-month in the West was a huge, and strong signal, you may recall, in our “Lorenz  plots” (I am hoping this name catches on; he deserves it), those balls of yarn I show every so often.  So the trough and cold air getting here to SE AZ has been “in the bag” for more than 10 days in advance,  according to those strange plots.

However, the rain here in the actual model runs has come and gone in them as mid-month approaches, and lately, there ain’t been nothin’ here.  At most, a few hundredths it would now seem, and most likely, nil.

———————–
1Gender-specific naming cloud variety convention: if male, as in the case of the writer, this cloud formation is deemed,  “Altostratus mammatus”;  if female, the proper name would be “Altostratus testicularis.”  Its part of an adjustment similar to the one when only female names were used for hurricanes, and doing that, it was felt,  lent a kind of stereotype to female behavior/character.  So, male names for hurricanes were introduced by NOAA in the 1970s to “even the score”.

Less splotchy; more filling

The clouds yesterday were supposed to be “splotchy”, big clearings between interesting middle clouds like Altocumulus with long virga strands.  Instead there was a vast coverage of Altostratus opacus “dullus” with long streaks of virga, with a few drops reaching the ground here and there but not here.  There was some mammatus-t clouds, too.   Also, the end of the clouds didn’t get here until after nightfall, not in the afternoon as anticipated from this keyboard.

The result was a much cooler day than expected, too.   On TV, they were talkin’ low 80s for yesterday, a reasonable expectation given “splotchy clouds”, but in Catalinaland, it only reached 73 F under the heavy overcast.  Very pleasant for being out-of-doors.

Oh, well.  Maybe I’ll try building model airplanes and talk about those instead. Or make up historical anecdotes that aren’t true, mixing characters up from different eras and see if anybody notices.  Now that would be fun! (Naw.  Too silly.)

Here’s your day, beginning just before sunrise when some fabulous, fine-grained Cirrocumulus clouds came over top:

6:31 AM.  Finely grained Cirrocu top of photo, line cloud would also probably qualify as Cc, though calling it Ac would not result in a fine from C-M.
6:31 AM. Finely grained Cirrocumulus (Cc) top of photo, line cloud would also qualify as Cc, though the granulation is larger, still not large enought to be Altocumulus.  With a little imagination, the top center cloud appears to be hanging down like those house Christmas lights.
Also at 6:31 AM. Here are your splotchy clouds. I can’t believe how good the forecast is going after an hour! There some much ice in the center cloud that you’d have to call it Cirrus spissatus, but an hour ago it was likely an Altocu cas, or floccus, one at very low (not “cold”, to be proper) temperatures.
7:41 AM. Clearings between clouds disappearing! Passing by, and from a thick Altostratus opacus cloud, a display of mammatus/testicularis left center (trying to be even-handed here in cloud nomenclature).

 

SONY DSC
Also at 7:41 AM. More mammatus-t over there, too. My mind has kind of drifted off to mammatus now. Quite nice dispay here. Note: Not associated with thunderstorms, as some urban myths have it.  Look, I’m trying to make a dull day interesting.  Its hard.
1:04 PM.  Line of heavy virga from what else, Altostratus opacus, tops at Cirrus levels.  Chance of late sun pretty much gone by now.  BTW, if you saw a time lapse of mammatus clouds, you would see that the upside down Cumulus turret look, opens up to fibrous little shafts like these.
1:04 PM. Line of heavy virga from what else, Altostratus opacus, tops at Cirrus levels. Chance of late sun pretty much gone by now. BTW, if you saw a time lapse of mammatus-t clouds, you would see that the “upside down Cumulus turret” look (as in the prior two shots), open up to fibrous little shafts like these.
6:50 PM.  Good sunset, not great, as backside of As clouds finally comes into view on the horizon.
6:50 PM, just before Husky softball defeated No. 2, ASU last night in Tempe, the heart of devil-land. Good sunset, not great, as backside of Altostratus (As) clouds finally comes into view on the horizon.  The lower cloud specks at the base of the As layer are those comprised of droplets, not ice, as is the higher As.  This shot helps show how different in appearance clouds of the two phases,  liquid and ice, are. When they’re together, mixing it up, we call that a “mixed phase” cloud.  Because there are so many particles that droplet clouds can form on (typically, in continental settings, there are hundreds of thousands per liter) those clouds have more detail and the drops are too tiny to fall as precip.  In the higher Altostratus layer, the concentrations of ice particles that comprise it are probably only in the tens per liter, and those ice crystals/particles are far larger than the droplets in droplet clouds.    Most of the ice particles in the As, therefore,  are settling downward, evaporating.  However, all ice clouds can produce light precipitation to the ground, one of the THREE ways we get precip out of clouds; all ice, mixed phase, and all liquid processes.  (Some textbooks I’ve seen only talk about the latter two, BTW.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want, you can go to this loop from the U of WA Huskies Weather Department here and see how the little splotchy cloud thing with that passing upper trough became a big fat thing as it came by.  Also in this retrospective, you should examine the U of AZ Weather Department time lapse film.  You’ll be amazed at all the stuff going on in a day that looked pretty dull all in all.  Also, at the end (after 5 PM AST) you’ll seen the winds aloft change completely in direction as the backside of the trough, the clearing side, approached.  I saw stuff I didn’t know was happening.  You’ll also see how the mammatus pouches, if I may, open up into fibrous virga.  Thank you, U of AZ Weather Department, for posting these great instruction films!

Not expecting clouds for most of today, but will likely see a couple of Cirrus streaming in from the NW late.

The weather ahead

Still no precip in sight, unless you consider lithometeors a form of precip, dust accumulations, that is, such as we had a few days ago.  Half inch (of dust) I predicted wasn’t that bad (hahahah).  Dust accumulations expected now on the afternoon of the 16th, and again on during the afternoons of the 25th and 26th of April.

C-M alive, local, and… finished with the dust report, now back to the studio.

The End.

Let’s look at March, now that its already underway; cloud and weather talk, too

First, a water year (Oct-Sept) update.   You won’t like it:WY through February 2013

One caveat about February’s total: It might be as much as 0.25 inches higher since a good bit of snow during the historic February 20th storm probably did not get into the Davis Vantage Pro gage located some six feet above ground level where wind raises havoc with snow measurements in particular. Gauges day had more all around mine. You can go to the U of AZ rainlog.org home, plug in the date (in this case the 20th, and see what other folks had compared to the crummy 0.52 inches the gauge here got following the meltdown. Generally, while there are a couple of goofy obs on the rainlog site, the amounts around here were 0.70 to 0.90 inches.   Thus, our February 2013 total is more likely around 1.20 inches, not 0.95 inches as shown in this graph.  Dang.

Here’s the March daily measurable rain climo:March Daily rain

Current and just passed weather

Traced last night, I’m sure you logged it.  Drops were falling, pretty big ones, at 2:42 AM. Only lasted about a two minutes.  If you want to see what happened in radar and clouds, go here.  Shouldn’t be surprising that it traced here given all the virga, and isolated spots where drops were already hitting the ground last evening.

Here are some shots after I got back from PHX-Anthem late yesterday.  Some drops hit the window, too.  First, I thought I would share with you a wildlife response to coming changes in the weather, something you’ll begin to notice as you traverse the long road to cloud maven juniordom.  Here, shelled creatures demonstrate a preoccupation with the sky over due to increasing Cirrus cloudiness in Anthem, late on March 2nd,  the day BEFORE all the heavy virga.  Its something to note when these creatures do this.  They are telling you something about the coming weather.  Well, anyway, that’s what you should say when you see this turtle formation;  your neighbors will then think you’re some kind of turtle “whisperer” AND a weather guru all in one.

At the Anthem Community Park.  Wildlife turtles becoming increasingly concerned about the increasing cloud cover late on the 2nd.
At the Anthem Community Park:  Wildlife shown here were clearly becoming increasingly concerned about the thickening cloud cover late on the 2nd.

 

3:53 PM.  Tentacles of virga from deep Altostratus clouds reach down toward the Tortolita Mountains.
3:53 PM. Tentacles of virga from deep Altostratus clouds reach down toward the Tortolita Mountains.
5:53 PM.  Altostratus with virga and mammatus, a term reflecting certain female mammalian characteristics.  As I have reported here in the past, some of the female grad students at the U of WA weather department were offended by such nomenclature, asking why such clouds couldn't have have been termed, "testicularis."
5:53 PM. Altostratus with virga and mammatus (left side), a term reflecting certain female mammalian characteristics. As I have reported here in the past, some of the female grad students at the U of WA weather department were offended by such nomenclature, asking why such clouds couldn’t have have been termed, “testicularis” (quite an unseemly term, really) and drew lines through a label of a wall print of “mammatus”  on a fifth floor hallway. The culprit was never caught, and the “graffiti” was never removed.  Makes you realize the kind of issues that budding, bright female meteorologists at the U of Washington are thinking about.  BTW, this also demonstrates that the notion of “mammatus/testicularis” are always  associated with,  or indicating a thunderstorm, is quite goofy.
SONY DSC
6:30 PM. Had a late “bloom” as a distant hole in the overcast let the sun under light our Altostratus clouds with virga. Only lasted a few minutes. Nice.

 

The weather ahead

Of course, the big media weather stars with their gigantic salaries are all over this next storm, I am sure. Its mind boggling how much money they  make having fun with weather on TEEVEE…

Here’s is the latest forecast from our friends in Canada, most of whom want to live here in the good ole USA!; that’s why the entire population of Canada is so clustered near the US border. You can feel them up there (hahah, I like to tease my Canadian relatives):

Valid for 5 AM AST, Friday, March 8th.  "Vorticity maximum poised to strike AZ from low over central Cal.  "Vorticity maximum"?  Cloud and weather maker.
Valid for 5 AM AST, Friday, March 8th. “Vorticity maximum poised to strike AZ from low over central Cal. “Vorticity maximum”? Cloud and weather maker.  There’s some writing on this;  hope you can read it.
"Bee" sting.  LOOK at all the precip indicated for AZ!  THis is so great, one of the great model forecasts of our time, well, this winter anyway.
“Bee” sting! LOOK at all the precip indicated for AZ! THis is so great, one of the great model forecasts of our time, well, this winter anyway.

Range of amounts with this next storm: I think in view of the wetting up of the models, I too, will wet it up. Bottom amount, almost surely in the bag, 0.25 inches now, up from 0.10 inches. Top? Wow, in view of passage of this system in the afternoon, you have to think about enhanced convection, thunderstorms here and there, and with those, and luck, the top has to be around 1.00 inches now. Notice how similar the track of this in the Candadian model is to our historic Feb. 20 storm, one in which amounts over half an inch to an inch were the norm.  Can’t wait to see this go by, no matter what!

The End.

Bloggin’ cold, maybe snow here in Catalina

But first, “storm” 3 of six as foretold many days ago by our wonderful numerical models having “billions and billions and billions” of calculations (to use a numeric phrase made popular by the late Carl Sagan)  is going to pass over today.  Hoping for a sprinkle late in the day, but virga seems likely in the Altocumulus clouds that will develop/move in today.

The jet stream is powerful over us from the southwest, and when you have these weaker disturbances with marginal moisture, you can get some glorious, fine granulations in the clouds (Cirrocumulus to be exact) as we saw two days ago.  See photo below.  So, I am expecting to see the following types of clouds today:  Altocumulus with virga, some clusters large enough to produce a sprinkle even at the ground (see second photo from two days ago with “mammatus”-see footnote below and virga), Cirrocumulus, and some cirrus.  Could be a fabulous sunset with these kinds of clouds around.

OK, so “storm” 3 today may be just a few clouds without any precip.  Oh, well.


Cold and unusual snow occurrences ahead for the West and for Cat Land, too

The low pressure center and accompanying Arctic blast now developing in the Pacific Northwest will be historic.  What I mean is the that climate record books will be altered for things like late snow occurrences, one of the lastest snow occurrences (as in Seattle), latest lowest temperatures, all time February low temperatures, and unusual flurries and brief snow accumulations at anytime in places in California.  This is a whopper of an atmospheric ice berg from the ground all the way up through the troposphere in the West as it progresses down the West Coast.  Snowfall at SEA LEVEL is likely all the way down to….Los Angeles suburbs.

Then after shuttling down the coast, this “ice berg” takes a sharp right turn (as seen from the weather maps), that is, toward the east and to Arizona!  Egad.   Not only will it be unusually cold again, though nowwhere near the “historic” cold wave early this February when all kinds of low temperature records and pipes were busted, though another hard freeze does seem in the cards after the rain/snow/wind pass by.  Monday and Tuesday mornings look awful darn cold right now.

Did I mention wind?  Along with this situation will be an unusually strong low pressure center that will give us the kind of blustery day this Saturday as we had last Saturday with gust to 50 mph here on the Catalina Rise just west of the Cat Mountains.  So, if you’ve got dried out, stiff palm fronds you’ll probably lose a few more in this one.

Did I mention snow?  Its now looking like a greater chance for a small accumulation of snow as low as 3,000 feet here on the west side of the Catalinas on Sunday morning.  I’m not buying skis just yet, but this is a real interesting situation.

And, finally, it looks like an appreciable rain, too, with this, maybe more than half an inch between later Saturday and Sunday night.   Man, will this be welcomed around here!

Since I am overly excited about this interesting weather pattern that is on our doorstep, it should be noted that objectivity is in decline…  At the Unviersity of Washington we had a forecaster who loved snowstorms.  And so, when he saw a snowstorm coming and forecast an amount, say 10 inches, you had to divide that forecast by 100 to get the most snow that could possibly fall from that storm.

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Footnote:  On the fifth floor of the Atmospherics Science Building at the University of Washington, there was a line of large cloud photos on the wall, one of which was a “Cumulonimbus mammatus” that strongly resembled the “mammatus” in the second photo below.  The photo caption to that effect was vandalized, and we suspect by a female meteorologist/grad student who might have taken exception to this traditional, formal descriptor established decades ago.  The word “mammatus” was crossed out and replaced by “testicularis.”   It was horrible thing to see.