Category Archives: Something about baseball

Altocumulus clouds, Cumulonimbus clouds, Cumulus clouds, Definitions, Lighting, Something about baseball, Stories from the field, Stupendous storms, Sunsets, The weather ahead, The weather WAY ahead (10 days or more), Thunderstorm day

Best model output for you

August 19, 2014 Art Rangno

Been looking around at quite a number of model runs (well 2, anyway) trying to find the best one for you. Here it is. Its yesterday’s WRF-GFS run that was based on 11 AM AST global data. Has some great rains for us here in Arizona. Those rains, and that incredible hurricane that saunters up the coast of Baja in about ten days, aren’t depicted as well in later model runs, so there’s not much point in showing them. If you want a great, OBJECTIVE forecasting, you know, go to Bob, or the NWS, or wait for Mike L’s detailed one from the U of AZ later this morning! You’re not going to find “objectivity” here when it comes to forecasting rain for a desert region¹. Let’s look at two examples of weather excitement in that now-obsolete-run-but-doesn’t-mean-it won’t-happen-anyway-just-because-its-a little-older-run”¹: 1) Lotta rain in Arizona (that’s a different near-hurricane over there in the SW corner of the map, one that in one model run from Canada, formerly went over Yuma! Sorry Yuma, and all of Arizona, both of which would have gotten, in that event, a bigger dent in the drought than shown below. Oh, well.

2014081818_CON_GFS_SFC_SLP_THK_PRECIP_WINDS_072 — Valid on Thursday at 11 AM AST. Green pixels denote those areas where the model thinks rain has occurred during the prior 6 hours. Most of AZ covered in green pixies! Sweet.

2) Fascinating near-hurricane just off San Diego on the 29th of August, likely surviving so well due to the California Niño mentioned here lately. BTW, this particular hurricane is predicted to be exceptionally large and intense out there when it revs up in a few days, maybe a Category 4 at its peak, looking at some of the model runs. “Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learnin’ how….” The Beach Boys, 1962, sayin’ it like it was for us near-beach bums way back then when the summer hurricanes in the Mexican Pacific sent huge waves poleward on to our southern California beaches, as the one below will².

Valid in ten days. — Valid in ten days, Friday, August 29th at 11 AM AST. Near hurricane brings rain to San Diego. Colored regions now denote where the model thinks it has rained in the prior TWELVE hours (coarser resolution because its not going to be that accurate in the placement of highs and lows anyway, so why waste time over-calculating stuff?

Yesterday’s clouds

What an outstanding, if surprising day it was! After it appeared, in later model runs available late yesterday morning, that the late afternoon/evening bash from the high country wasn’t going to happen after all (producing local glumness), we had a remarkable in situ explosion of cloud tops. Those clouds just erupted from an innocuous, patchy group of Stratocumulus that invaded the sky around 5 PM. Still, even with the early turrets jutting up there, it didn’t seem possible, at 7 PM, there would be much more growth into showers, let alone, thunderstorms with frequent lightning lasting several hours that happened. Eventually rain even got into Sutherland Heights/Catalina, with 0.17 inches here, and 0.12 inches at the Golder Bridge, and that didn’t seem possible since the rain shafts were so locked onto the Catalinas, and east side for so long. Dan Saddle, about 5 mi S of Oracel, counting the mid-afternoon thunderstorms that locked in upthere, got a 2.68 inches over the past 24 h! That should have sent a little water down the CDO. BTW, a location in the Rincons is reporting 4.09 inches in the past 24!

5:50 AM. Day started with "colorful castellanus." Hope you saw this. — 5:50 AM. Day started with “colorful castellanus.” Hope you saw this.

Update ann DSC_0239 — 12:26 PM. After a late morning start, the Cumulus congestus tops were streaming away from the origin zone of Mt. Lemmon to over the north part of Saddlebrooke and the Charouleau Gap. No ice evident yet, but it was just about to show itself.
BTW, the “51ers” have a nice baseball team in Vegas (of course), this brought to my attention by neighbors recently, showing that a degree of strangeness permeates American life, as also shown in these blogs.

12:44 PM. Ice virga now seen in the right hand side falling out as I passed the budding wildlife overpass now being constructed on Oracle Road. I guess scents and signage will be used to direct wildlife to the overpass.

1:49 PM. Took about an hour more of rain and development for the thunder to start from these locked in turrets that kept springing on The Lemmon.

4:54 PM. Long before this, it was "all over', the rains no doubt up there had helped to put the fire out, so-to-speak, and with no anvils advancing toward us, there was even hardly any point to remain conscious. It is done. — 4:54 PM. Long before this, it was “all over’, the rains no doubt up there had helped to put the fire out, so-to-speak, and with no anvils advancing toward us, there was even hardly any point to remain conscious. It is finished.

6:54 PM. Shallow grouping of Stratocumulus provided a nice, if boring, backdrop to the setting sun's light on Samaniego Ridge. — 6:54 PM, 2 h later. Shallow grouping of Stratocumulus provided a nice, if boring, backdrop to the setting sun’s light on Samaniego Ridge.

7:04 PM. Only ten minutes later, and I'm out wondering around in the backyard looking for a nice sunset shot, when I see this shocking site, a protruding turret far above the other tops. Still, I pooh-poohed anything but a ragged collapse in the minutes ahead. It was too late in the day for heating or anything else to generate rain in situ from these lower clouds (now topping Mt. Lemmon). — 7:04 PM. Only ten minutes later, and I’m out wondering around in the backyard looking for a nice sunset shot, when I see this shocking sight for the time of day, a protruding turret far above the other tops. Still, I pooh-poohed anything happening but a ragged collapse in the minutes ahead. It was too late in the day for heating or anything else to generate rain in situ from these lower clouds (now topping Mt. Lemmon). Nice pastel colors, though.

7:32 PM. Though "pinkie" in the prior photo did fade, new turrets kept bubbling upward, and in disbelief, this one reached up beyond the ice-forming temperature threshhold (is probably topping out between 25-30 kft, not huge) and a strong rain shaft emerged on the Catalinas. After a little while longer, lightining began to flash to the east as the Reddington Pass area started to get hammered. Eventually in the early nighttime hours. these cells propagated to the west, giving us that bit of rain here in The Heights of Sutherland. How nice, and how mind-blowing this whole evening was! — 7:32 PM. Though “pinkie” in the prior photo did fade, new turrets kept bubbling upward, and in disbelief, this one reached up beyond the ice-forming temperature threshhold (is probably topping out between 25-30 kft, not huge) and a strong rain shaft emerged on the Catalinas. After a little while longer, lightining began to flash to the east as the Reddington Pass area started to get hammered. Eventually in the early nighttime hours. these cells propagated to the west, giving us that bit of rain here in The Heights of Sutherland. How nice, and how mind-blowing this whole evening was!

Today

Got some Stratocu (castellanus in some parts) topping Sam (Samaniego Ridge) this morning, an outstanding indication of a lot of moisture in the air, moisture that’s not just at the surface. U of AZ has thunderstorms moving toward Catalina during the late morning (!) and afternoon from the SW, not the usual direction we’re accustomed to. So, keep eyeball out toward Twin Peaks or so for exciting weather today! Oh, my, towering Cu top converted to ice, must be 25-30 kft up there right now at 7:06 AM! Also, notice nice shadow on lower Ac clouds.

The End

————————————-

¹“Truth-in-packaging” portion of web blog statement.

¹Its chaos in the models due to errors in them we don’t always know about, chaos that we try to get a handle on with plots from the NOAA spaghetti factory. But you know all that already, so my apologies for repeating myself again and again. I thought I would see what would happen if I put TWO “1” footnotes….

²Of course, in those days, we had little knowledge about how many hurricanes there were down there due to the lack of satellite data and ship reports. But when the “Weather Bureau”, as it was called in those days did know, there was always good surf on the south facing beaches, like Zuma Beach. So going to the beach, unlike now where wave forecasting is so good, was a real crap shoot. You’d come over that first viewpoint of the ocean on Malibu Canyon Road, on your way to Zuma. one that over looked the ocean a little offshore from Malibu, and either go, “Holy Crap!”, or hope for the best. It was a swell time for lightly employed youth. Below, the best “Holy Crap!” view coming around to that viewpoint, early September 1963 (never saw anything like it before or afterwards; swells were never visible so far offshore from this spot, meaning Zuma would be gigantic). Still remember those Zuma waves, so far out to sea, as the height of small telephones…

Nearly drowned that day at Zuma, me and my pal ignoring lifequard's advice not to go in. HELL, we'd been body surfing the biggest ones we could there for years by then. Fortunately, he didn't have to come and get me, which saved a lot of face. — Nearly drowned that day at Zuma, me and my pal ignoring lifequard’s advice not to go in. HELL, we’d been body surfing the biggest ones we could there for years by then. Fortunately, he didn’t have to come and get me, which saved a lot of face.

Climate issues, Something about baseball, Sunsets, The weather WAY ahead (10 days or more)

In case you missed it, and a note about missing cold air reports

April 25, 2013 Art Rangno

SONY DSC — 7:01 PM Virga from Altostratus clouds is illuminated by the setting sun.

Took time out from a bazillion chores concerned with moving to a new house here, and other doings for a U of WA archive project to savor another great sunset here in Catalina:

The weather way ahead

Before looking ahead, look outside now (6:20 AM) There are some gorgeous patterns in Altocu and Cirrocu!

The models have gone real bad on us, taking away rain that was once predicted here in early May. Sure, its unusual, but it could have happened. Now its pretty much gone (for now).

In the meantime, sometime very unusual is forecast for the central and southeast US. Can’t remember seeing a pattern like this so late in the winter where in really cold upper low center just goes down to Natchez, MS as in this loop. Lots of low temperature records likely to be set for early May if this pattern comes to pass.

: Valid for mid-day, Tuesday, May 7th.

This continues a trend, too, this spring of well below normal temperatures in the Plains States in the middle portion of this forecast loop. They had one of the coldest springs ever in the northern Plains, and the latest measurable snowfall ever just happened in Wichita, KS. Just yesterday, the latest freeze date in the 91 years of records was established at Wichita Falls, TX, when the temperature dipped to 29 F, nine days later than any prior freeze day.

Here are some additional details, as provided by climate issues troublemaker Mark Albright, former Washington State Climatologist, and friend, who has been complaining lately that if these were high temperature records, they’d be all over the news, but low ones get swept under the media rug.

Here’s Mark’s statement from a few days ago:

“The coldest baseball game in major league history was played yesterday in Denver where the game time temperature was 23 F. It breaks the record set just last week in Denver. You can watch the video here to see the conditions at Coors Field.

“This story echoes my thoughts exactly. Why aren’t we hearing from the news outlets about the historic spring cold wave gripping the US and Canada in 2013. When it was warm last year we heard all about it.

In Fargo ND 45 consecutive days (10 March – 23 April) have passed without a single day of above normal temperature. In fact, they have yet to record a temperature warmer than 43 F this year through the 23rd of April. March 2013 averaged -10.5 F below normal and April 2013 is even colder at -12.6 F below normal so far in Fargo ND. This sets up a major risk of severe flooding in a week or two when the Spring thaw finally arrives.

To the north of Fargo, Saskatchewan is reporting their coldest spring in over 100 years:

Unusual cold has also been seen in interior Alaska where Fairbanks is running -14.9 F below normal in April 2013.”

While it will likely be getting warmer over the next 100 years, we seem to be afraid of reporting low temperatures and cold; that is, while it gets gradually warmer, we seem to be afraid or mentioning that weather will be pretty much doing what its always done, being abnormal a lot of the time, too. Even I get worked up if I think there is a news bias against reporting cold air! It ain’t right.

Cirrus clouds, Cloud seeding, Definitions, India, Science background, Something about baseball, South Dakota, Spaghetti plots, Stories from the field, Stupendous storms, Sunsets, The weather ahead

Seeing red

March 1, 2013 Art Rangno

Well, here it is, the NOAA Catalina spaghetti output for March 8th, 5 PM AST, hold the sauce:

The 564 decameter height contours for 500 millibars over Catalina and environs (in the center) on March 8th at 5 PM. The yellow line is the 5 PM AST model prediction, and the gray pixel in the lower left corner is what’s left of the same contour (after I cut and pasted) yesterday’s 5 AM AST prediction. They were pretty much showing the same thing.

The plot at left, with likely a Guinness record for a long, thin caption, pretty much guarantees a big trough of cold air here by then, another door opens into winter, which seems to be gone right this moment, and, being March, you might be thinking, “la-dee-dah, no more winter here in southeast Arizona.” But as I often point out to my reader, and while trying to be a bit delicate about it, “You’d be so WRONG! I can’t even describe how WRONG you would be!” So keep that balloon-like parka ready, heck, there could even be some snowflakes with this.

And, of course, I am a be little disappointed, well, royally, because you should have seen this coming in the red dot-plot at left for Catalina on March 8th already, and I wouldn’t have to admonish you again. Oh, well.

BTW, the “red dot” is a baseball term used to describe the appearance of a slider coming at the batter–there’s a red dot in the center of the ball caused by the spin and where most of the red lacings appear to be concentrated because the pitcher had to grip the ball a certain way. Seen’em, at one time. Of course, you wouldn’t remember the great pitchers like Lee Goldammer of Canova, SD, or Dave Gassman; the latter amassing over 4,000 strikeouts in South Dakota summer baseball league play. It was a big story in the Mitchell Republic–they keep track of that stuff there (amazing and charming). Lee Goldammer pitched a DOUBLE header and his team won the SD State Tournament back in the late 1960s. (All true!) You see, Lee Goldammer struck me out on three pitches in 1972¹. Man he was good! I had hardly gotten to the plate, and I was walking back again!

Had a nice sunset a couple of days ago, some pretty Cirrus clouds again. Where I’m from (Seattle), Cirrus and sunsets are generally obscured by Stratus, Stratocumulus, and every other kind of cloud imaginable so that you don’t see them often because those clouds extend for thousands of miles to the west where the sun is setting.

————————————–

¹I was working that summer for North American Weather Consultants as a “radar meteorologist” in Mitchell, SD, directing up to four cloud seeding aircraft around thunderstorms. But when it wasn’t raining, I could play baseball for the Mitchell Commercial Bank team. The project was under the aegis of the South Dakota School of Mines, was statewide in 1972. Unfortunately, for the people on the ground, one of the aircraft was seeding a storm in June of that year hat dropped 14 inches of rain in the Black Hills, and the ensuing flash flood took over 200 lives. “Hey”, it wasn’t one of my aircraft. Ours were in the other end of the State.

Cloud seeding was absolved in the disaster, which was correct; the weather set up that day did it. No puny aircraft releasing stuff could have had any effect whatsoever. However, had that 14 inches filled a dry reservoir to the top and saved a city from a water famine, what would the seeding company have claimed in that case?

I know. It happened when I worked a project in India, the water famine there making the cover of Time magazine in 1975. The reservoirs in Madras (now, “Chennai”), India, where I was assigned by Atmospherics, Inc., as a “radar meteorologist” whose job again was to direct a seeding aircraft around storms, were at the bottom, just about nothing left, when I arrived on July 14th, 1975.

But on the third day I was there, July 16th, 1975, a colossal group of thunderstorms developed over the catchment area of the Madras reservoirs and, naturally, our one twin-engined Cessna was up seeding it. It was my job to see that we had a plane up around the thunderstorms.

Five to 10 inches fell in that complex of thunderstorms with tops over 50,000 feet, and there was a flow into the Madras reservoir (oh, really?) for the first time in the month of July in about 14 years. July is normally a pretty dry month in the eastern part of India, with Madras averaging just over 4 inches, only a little more than we do here in Catalina in July. The main rainy season in Madras is October and November, during the “northeast” monsoon. This is what those giants looked like:

Looking west-northwest from the Madras Internation AP at Meenambakkam, India — Looking west-northwest from the Madras International AP at Meenambakkam, India, 1975.

But as a meteorologist, I saw that a low center had formed aloft over southern India, weakening the normally dry westerly flow of the “southwest monsoon” across southern India after it goes over the western Ghats. This weakening allowed the moist air of the Bay of Bengal to rush westward and collide with that drier westerly flow and set up a “convergence zone” where the two winds clashed and the air was forced upward forming huge, quasi-stationary Cumulonimbus clouds.

Below, what I look like when I am in India and starting to be skeptical about this whole thing, “Is this going to be another cloud seeding chapter like the one in the Colorado Rockies, to graze the subject of baseball again?”

First row, 2nd from left. Our pilot sits next to me.

As before in Rapid City, the weather set up the deluge; no aircraft releases could have made the least difference in such powerful thunderstorms. While the leader of the seeding project did not take credit for the odd flow into the reservoir that July, it was pointed out to the media, without further comment that, “yes, we were up seeding it.”

The odd storm with that comment, sans a description of the weather set up that did it, made it too obvious to the uninformed that seeding had done it. The Indian met service was, of course, outraged, and did their best to “fill in the blanks”, but the sponsor of the project, the Tamil Nadu state government, was unconvinced because it was obvious to them what had happened, and, after all, it was what they paid for!

I had already been disillusioned while working as a forecaster for a big, randomized cloud seeding project in Durango, Colorado by 1975, and this project was to add more “fuel to the reanalysis fire” that I was later to be known for. (hahaha, “known for”; I was despised in some quarters for checking their work after they had published it and it was being cited by big scientists, and I mean huge, like the ones in the National Academies, but like you when you thought summer was here NOW and there would be no more cold weather, THEY were so WRONG! I can’t even describe how WRONG those national academy scientists were, like the ones in Malone et al 1974 in their “Climate and Weather Modification; Progress and Problems” tome.) ((I knew they were wrong because they talked about clouds and weather associated with cloud seeding experiments in the Rockies, and I was seeing how at odds those clouds and weather was with the way it had been portrayed in the journal literature by the scientists who conducted the precursor experiments to the one I was working on in Durango.)) (((Wow, this is quite a footnote, if it is still one.))) ((((Still worked up about that 1974 National Academy of Sciences report, but don’t get me going on the 2003 updated one, which they botched royally, including not even citing the work I did correctly! How bad is that??????)))) As the title of today states, “seeing red.”

The reason for going to India in the first place was that it had been indicated in our peer-reviewed journals that randomized seeding in Florida, that clouds like ones in India, had responded to cloud seeding. Besides, I had an ovwerwhelming desire to see giant, tropical Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds up close! BTW, the Florida results fizzled out in a second randomized phase.

End of footnote I think….