All I can say about this plot is, “wow” here and then once more in the caption:
Valid at 5 PM AST, April 28th. Wow. The periodic storm threats will continue for AZ for the foreseeable future, which is about two weeks. Temperatures should be moderate, too, for April. Patterns like this also lead to tremendous storms in the Plains States. It might be time to get out there.
In the meantime, step aside; a cold front is upon us, a dry one, unfortunately. Should arrive by noon, bringing some small Cu here and there, some Stratocu piling up against the Catalinas, and maybe some lingering Altocumulus lenticular clouds which we got right now (4 AM) downwind of the Catalinas.
As of 4 AM AST, the 24 h temperature change. The blue blob shows the encroaching cold air.
Barometer will rise, too, as the cooler, denser air piles on top of it. There’ll likely be a brief windshift to the NW, followed by backing to the SW again.
Over the next couple of days, the deep cold air in the interior of a lingering, massive trough will settle over us, dry up top, but enough moisture in the lower layers below to produce eventually deeper Cumulus, though not today, ones likely to reach up to the “glaciation” level, which will be close to -12° C to -15° C in this situation beginning later tomorrow through the April 1st. The bases of the clouds will be near the freezing level.
Glaciation means that ice will form in those Cumulus clouds, and some (snow) virga will drop out the bottom. So, some snow showers or just light rain showers are likely on the Catalinas, maybe a trace or hundredth here, too, beginning later tomorrow through April 1st.
Should be some really pretty deep blue skies, too, cloud shadows producing quilt-like patterns on the mountains, that sort of thing we are so lucky to enjoy here.
As you know, this end of month March “lion” (at least in wind, anyway) was long foretold in the NOAA spaghetti. Remember how we could laugh at model outputs that didn’t have a big trough here at the end of the month?
But now we wait and see if we can drain a cloud or two of a hundredth. Overall rain chances not looking so “strong” now out of this whole several day situation. Dang.
Clouds will be around today, especially after the cold front goes by, but its unlikely they’ll have anything drop out the bottom.
Why?
“2warm4ice”, to be that bit textual.
Model says today’s cloud tops won’t reach -10° Ç, our magic temperature where we can usually start to thinking about ice forming in AZ clouds, those with our usual cool bottoms.
Of course, if you’re really sophisticated, you know that the temperature at which onsets in “continental” Cumulus clouds like we have here in old Arizony, is related to cloud base temperature:
The warmer the cloud bottom, the higher the onset temperature for ice1, “strangely believe it”, as we like to say here after Jimmy Hatlo the cartooonist thought of it first when he was making fun of RIpley’s “Believe It Or Not.”
Now onto the forecasting frontier, forecasting weather patterns way ahead, to far in advance and too specific to be truly professional
Let’s start with something easy. Its gonna warm up real good after this big trough goes by– see spaghetti below, where a big ridge moves over us for a couple of days. It won’t last.
Valid at 5 PM AST, April 3rd. Notice, too, that unlike most of the spaghetti pe degree of chaos introduced by the deliberate errors input at the start, have little effect (as usual). The blue and red contours are bunched really well. So the positions of the ridges and troughs are normally well predicted out to this time.
Then, uh-oh, as Robert Ellis Orrall used to sing, in 192 h, predictability begins to fall apart, but not real bad, and it shows a trough is moving in over us.
Valid at 5 PM AST, April 5th. Red contours are bunched enough so that a nice sized trough in the SW is pretty guaranteed.
Finally, at the extreme end of the medium range forecasting frontier, this:
Valid at 5 PM AST, April 12th. Stormfest Southwest!
Hence, the conclusion that we share that April, will in fact, have measurable rain. Of course, we only average about half an inch in April, as the overall climatology begins a serious a battle against rain heading into the ovenly days of May and June.
The End
————————-
1The old English cloud scientist, Frank Ludlow (1952, Quart J. Roy. (haha, “Royal”, oh my) Meteor. Soc.) noticed this first, then that great Soviet Communist cloud scientist, A. M. Borovikov and his companions did (1961, Israeli Translations). Finally, Rangno and Hobbs woke up and noticed this tendency in 1988, (Atmos. Res.) and then again in 1995 (J. Appl. Meteor.–you’ll have to go quite a ways to find the relevant diagram) in their cloud studies and in comparisons with other ice onset reports.
Imagine, rain! Yep, that’s right. You heard it first here, right or wrong, as we like to say, over and over again because we can’t think of anything else.
After a couple of minutes of intense scrutiny, cloud maven person has decided to wake up and go blogulent that the computer prog showing a huge upper trough over the SW in 13-15 days, March 29-32nd is accurate. Will be cold, too. Little crybaby snow birds might be heading back to Wisconsin or Michigan when this cold spell hits. Just kidding, flat landers! (Actually, they’ll be leaving us due to being little crybabies when the temperature hits the 90s-100s every day, temperatures we true Arizonans laugh at.)
Adding to the pile of “credibility” here is that this March came in like a “lamb” I think. Has to go out as a “lion.” Or so the saying goes. Science and folk lore, that’s what you get here.
Here’s the actual computer forecast of the trough from last evening’s global data as rendered by IPS MeteoStar:
Valid at 5 PM AST, March 29th. Potent trough takes over the whole of the western US. Note the critical wind jet at this height (500 millibars) is over and south of Tucson, a nearly mandatory requirement for cool season rain here. (Unpublished study, Rangno, 1974; covered the whole US, that study, too.
Pretty exciting isn’t it, jet stream way to the south like that?
And this after our too-long-dry-spell pretty much since the first week in January, the dry spell associated with the strong “El-None-yo”, to be sarcastic after ALL the high expectations for copious rains, the incredible wildflower bloom that would be our pleasure to experience this spring following the pounding rains due to the Big Niño meteorologists and media got so excited about.
Poppy hills, down Bowman Road here in Catalina. Yes, we have some poppies, but they’re stunted looking, as are the other wildflowers around, struggling to survive in all the dry air since the fall and early winter rains.
But, no. Moving ahead after draining some emotion…. Thanks for listening.
So’s why CMP going out of what seems to be a long, thin limb here, that other forecasters are afraid of doing, that is forecasting with confidence something so far in advance?
Well, of course its because we got us a pretty darn strong signal again in the NOAA “Lorenz” or spaghetti or “ensemble” plots, where errors1 are deliberately put in the data to see how wildly the outcomes vary. If the outputs don’t vary a lot, then confidence can be high about a forecast. “Varying” is seen in how wildly the lines (contours) on these plots are. Below, an example where there’s not a lot of confidence….
Valid 5 PM, Saturday, March 26th. Really can’t have too much confidence here. Arizona is in there somewhere. This came out a few days ago. Quite a knee-slapper.
(Below we discuss, in contrast, the one from last evening and how we used one of these crazy plots before):
Rememeber, first, how to spell “remember”, and then that’s how we knew for sure a big trough would be over us even 10-two weeks ahead back whenever it was when we got a little rain and it was damn cold for a few days this March.
Valid at 5 PM AST March 29th. Relative bunching of red contours of the 500 millibar height contours indicates forecast confidence can be high for a trough in Arizona and the West in the last couple of days of March. So, I’m going for it.
Since this forecast of a good chance of rain late in the month is likely to be quite accurate, there’ll be no need to update you after today.
The MAIN thing to remember, in a teaching moment, is to not be afraid when a model run comes out with something vastly different than what I just wrote about 5 minutes after I posted this, to wit, this VASTLY different model output based on data just 6 h after the model outputs above. I laughed at it, since spaghetti rules, not a single model output. That’s the teachable moment, I think.
Valid at 11 PM AST March 29th, almost the same time as the model output showing the giant trough in the West. Not here though. From a spaghetti frame of mind, a real laugher, this one. (I think.)
The End
———————————
1 Hahah, as though we don’t make enough of them when we vote and stuff; remember that saying about why there’s an eraser on the top of a pencil? Very profound. And, “hey” look at the state of this planet? We need an awfully big “eraser” these days.
People were wearing jackets as temperatures got locked down below 80° F the past few days, the wind blew once in a while, sometime lifting baseball caps off “gray hairs”, and gray skies hovered over Sutherland Heights for TWO and a half days!
A surprise, few-minute gusher in the early afternoon yesterday was enough to tip the old Davis tipping bucket rain gauge once1, too, to add another 0.02 inches to the 0.08 inches we were drenched with the night before.
What’s ahead. I dunno.
Really thought THIS storm was gonna be a doozie here, not in Mexico as it is now, for Pete’s Sake. Some weeks ago it was read by my reader (s?) here that we had only a 10% chance of LESS than 0.20 inches. In fact, we had a 100% chance of 0.10 inches.
I did not see that coming. But at least March 2016 has recorded SOME rain. Some insects benefited I’m sure.
Climate folks (Climate Prediction Center) are still predicting a wet March-May for us, at least as of mid-Feb. Unfortunately, its only a little more than two inches that makes that three month period wetter than normal here in Catalinaland as we begin to dry out, and heat up.
Time for another, “I love this map so much”, so fully packed with portent:
“Valid” (what a joke) in two weeks, March 24th, 5 PM AST. Giant low moves SEWD toward the Cal coast. Strongest winds on the back side tells you its shifting southeastward. Look how big it is!
Frankly, now as the jet stream in the northern hemisphere goes to HELL in the spring, the “Lorenz plots” or “spaghetti” are pretty clueless. As an example of “clueless” look at the spaghetti plot that goes with the map above:
For March 23 at 5 PM AST. No real clustering of lines anywhere so forecasts will be wild for this far in advance. That low could really be anywhere. There’s not quite so much chaos in the heart of winter when the jet is strongest and geographic jet stream anchors are strongest, like Asia.
Bottom line: NO rain days ahead, maybe a close call over the next TWO friggin’ weeks. Expect to see 90s on a day or two, as well. “Dang”, as we say in the Great Southwest.
Some clouds of yore, including yesterday.
As a cloud maven junior person, you should compare the shots below and try to chronologically unscramble them using your photos. Also, I would like you to name these clouds. Please keep your answers to yourself. hahaha (ACtually I am being lazy and just threw these in “willy-nilly” (huh, what’s that from? Will have to look it up some day.)
Am working on a true science story-book talk, something I wanted to write up before “tipping the bucket” as we meteorologists say about death. Its kindle-sized, maybe would take 3 h to present if it was an actual talk, having more than 250 ppt slide-pages! I won’t be at the TUS book fair, however, this year….
The End.
—————————-
1FYI, when a meteorologist dies, we meteorologists say that he has “tipped the bucket”, NOT “kicked the bucket.” Its an especially reverent phrase for us.
Looks like it will be on March 7th. Pretty sure thing at this point, maybe 75%-99% chance of rain here in Catalina, combining “spaghetti1” with other forms of forecasting.
7 AM AST Addendum: Hell, why not go for some amounts due to extra confidence:
Min in The Heights: 0.20 inches (10% chance of less); max, 1.00 inches (10% chance of more). The average of these “mental ensemble2” extrema, 0.60 inches, which is usually closer to the actual value.
This best guess estimate for the total between midnight March 7th and the evening of the 8th, or over about a 42 h period. Weather gaming is fun.
What’s your prediction?
—————-T. I. P.————————————
Remember, too, as a “truth in packaging” disclosure statement, that this forecast is being made by the SAME person who forecast about 12 days ago or so, rain here in the last week of February which didn’t happen, along with large Cal and AZ blasting storms in early March.
In fact, here and in southern Cal, we had “anti-rain” in the last week of February! This in the form of high temperatures, dry air, and that combination resulting in unusually high evapotranspiration rates with those high temperatures (anti-rain, since whatever surface water, soil moisture, plant moisture is disappearing into the air). In other words, that forecast could hardly have been more incorrect.
Hell, to cuss some more, almost as bad as those forecasts for a drier than normal winter (DJF) for the Pac NW by big forecasting authorities like the Oregon State Climatologist among many others.
In fact, when they were making those forecasts, they were staring at record wetness in the Pac NW! Incredible! Both SEA and PDX have set DJF records for the amount of rain this winter! Wow. It doesn’t get much worse than that, except maybe here sometimes.
People are mad, too, in southern Cal where they were advised to buy sandbags due to the excessive flooding and rains foretold for their winter. Well, we’ll see if March can bring back some of the lost credibility, though, frankly, its hard to do.
Think of all those global warming forecasts of a steady rise in global temps made back in the early part of this century which didn’t happen. Wow. Lost some credibility there, and those forecasters had to move to a new expression, “climate change” to cover up the bad forecast.
Temps on the rise now, so watch out! “Global warming” rising from the ashes more and more now, too.
Changing the subject quickly, the Washington Huskies softball team had a pretty great weekend at the Mary Nutter Classic Tournament in Cathedral City, CA, where it was real hot (90 F), too. The University of Washington was the writer’s former employer.
Whistling here: where are you Niño? Com’ere! Hmmmph, nice name for a dog I think, which is what it has been so far for the Southwest.
The End
———————————————
1 Formally, called “Lorenz plots” by yours truly, and should be by others.
Valid at 5 PM AST on March 7th. All the red lines are WAY down there in Baja California central. Means a pretty sure thing that the jet stream will be south of us when this incoming trough goes by and as you know well by now, when the jet at THIS level is south of us, you almost always get rain. Some 95% of the Nov-Apr rain that falls in Tucson falls with the jet at this level to the south of us.
I dropped everything I was working on, a kindle-sized science piece, after I saw what is being presented to us today. Wanted to generate some happiness out there; its just who I am, except maybe when I am talking about cloud seeding. Then I get mad about all the shenanigans that have happened in that field, and I want you to be mad, too. (Kidding, sort of).
Check this out in the annotated spaghetti if you don’t believe me:
Valid in 14 days, 5 PM AST, February 28th I can’t wait! Its finally happening, that wet Niño period we’ve been waiting for all year, and have only seen sputtering in starts and stops.
Next, look at this behemoth, Mothra-sized jet street, oozing into the southern portion of the West Coast, the kind of thing we’ve been waiting for with the Godzilla-sized Niño, to allude to more monster movies, ones you probably went to, as a matter of fact. From IPS MeteoStar, these delicious progs valid in about two weeks:
Valid Monday, February 29th, 11 AM.Valid Monday February 29th 11 PM AST.Valid at 11 AM AST, Tuesday, March 1st.Valid 11 PM AST, Tuesday, March 1st. Oh, my, this is incredible how far south this powerful jet is, scooping loads of moisture toward Baja, southern Cal and Arizona. This would be something if it materializes….
Now let us recalll that the models had almost exactly these kinds of forecasts back in early January, as Catalinans enjoyed some beneficial rains associated with storms looking like those expected with Niño winters.
Recall, too, that in an overzealous blog, your cloud maven person announced the destruction of California in a couple of weeks due to those incredible progs; “FEMA get ready!” Homes to fall in ocean, couple feet to foot and a half of rain in the last two weeks or so alone. Well, there was only a little less than two feet of rain in that predicted time, and it was WAY up in the northern fringes of Cal. Homes, are falling into the ocean, though, due to the big surf that’s been occurring with big storms, too far off to make it rain much in Cal south of Frisco, though. Still going on, too.
Now about what’s ahead, way ahead.
Once again I announce the destruction of portions of California due to exceptional storms now on the horizon in the models. And, its not too late for those kinds of storms–remember what happened at the tail of February into the first few days in March 1938 in southern California and Arizona.
Why possibly make the SAME mistake again?
Because we got us such a BIG Niño, and….I can’t remember what else. Oh, yeah, I think it can’t be held off forever as far as generous SW rains go and I have been looking for this to happen.
Besides, let us, too, remember the 97-98 giant Niño. Remember how it appeared that not so much was happening into JANUARY except north of ‘Frisco in Cal, then the colossus hit all of the State and AZ in late January through February ’98?
Well, we’ve seen the northern portion of Cal get slammed, along with the Pac NW so far.
What if the transition to the blasters farther down the coast is a month late, in late February into March instead of late January into February as in ’98? Could be.
That’s what I am thinking/kind of hoping for, too.
These “outlier” model predictions from the 06Z (11 PM AST global data) that just came in a couple of hours ago–there’s been NOTHING like them in ALL of the prior model runs, so that’s why they’re outliers at this point I think–represent the “REAL DEAL.” This is it.
The Cal calamity expected in January begins with these model runs, that is, occurs at the end of February into March. And who knows how long after that? Remember, the best of the Niños is in late winter and SPRING!
Disclaimer. Cloud Maven Person is overly worked up here, and credibility naturally goes downward if being worked up is going up.
This lowered credibility is due to subjective internal influences such as looking for a return of those astounding progs that came out in early January ever since.
But, I am SURE this time (like a compulsive gambler would say), the above progs have got it right now. That Niño storms we have been looking for all this time will start to arrive before much longer.
“Yep, rain’s on the way; yay”, to burst out with a little poetry there. But, it will be awhile before it gets here. See caption below.
Valid at 5 PM AST, February 21st. Pretty clear that undercutting flow from the lower latitudes will slip into Arizona bringing much needed rain to Catalina beginning around this time.12:55 PM. Wavy Cirrus showing waves in the atmosphere. Kind of reminds you of driving down the old Tangerine Road before they ruined it by filling in all the dips and rises that made it a fun drive at 50-60 mph, if you could drive that fast on it! I remind the reader that the speed limit is 45 mph on Tangerine Road. So, this is only a fantasy description of how much fun it would have been if you COULD drive that fast.
——————————
Non-meteorological entry:
Gas now down to 21 cents a gallon in 1967 dollars (that’s what that $1.53 a gal here in Catalina now converts to in ’67 dollars). Here’s a history of gas prices, FYI.
As of February 6, 2016. This seems a little crazy.
Been working on a talk for Feb 23, 1990…..at the U of WA, so not blogging too much. Will likely post “back to the future” talk in a few days. Its a science story, really, not quite a “talk.”
But enough of my blabbing, as Rob Reiner might say, lets move along to some INTERESTING spaghetti.
First of all, things rolling along pretty much as foretold in spaghetti at our last meeting, a week or so ago. Storms are rolling in on schedule now. Had 0.50 inches in the first one, here in Sutherland Heights.
Below, is the five day from now spaghetti or Lorenz plot. You may recall, though I doubt it, that spaghetti was foretelling a big ridge that would break off into the Arctic and help shunt storms into Cal and the West Coast.
Well, that was spot on because it is going to happen after a little break from the current storms. Of those, the rainiest one for us is tomorrow and the next day. Likely to see an inch or more here in Sutherland Heights from that one storm! Looks like a quarter of an inch will be the total for the current one.
All this is so great for the spring bloom, too, that time of year we all love.
But enough of my blabbing #2, as Rob Reiner might say again, lets move along to some INTERESTING spaghetti.
The weather pattern way ahead
But the real news I wanted to inform you about through excessive speculation is the spaghetti plots for about two weeks out, shown below. This ios amazing in my view.
I wonder if my one reader can detect the amazing part?
Its the grouping of the blue and red lines in the eastern Pacific that seems extraoardinary in a plot like this where “chaos” usually rules in this sector THAT far away in time.
Here, the grouping of red and blue, a coming together which can never happen in the political color realm, means there is a very strong signal in the measurements. The slight errors input at the beginning of the model runs leads to close to the same forecast even 15 days out!
So, what does it all mean?
This is no doubt in CMP’s mind that this strength in a medium range forecast is due to the constraining of weather patterns by the Big Niño now in progress. That feature is keeping the jet stream constrained to bash the West Coast and Cal, and that’s what you get out of this plot above. Very strong storms are now setting up to bash the West Coast, ones associated constrained to do so by the powerful El Niño.
The current storms, as you likely know from media weather folk, are classic in their El Niño appearance, streaming into Cal and AZ at lower latitudes out of the Pacific. So far this winter, in Cal and AZ, we haven’t seen much effects of a Big Niño until now.
That 15 day spaghetti plot is not one that we here can pin confidence on about a lot precip, but hang on in Cal, especially beginning about a week from now when this pattern really sets up and then crescendoes.
Below, just decided to add the 10 day spaghetti, kind of out of control due to excitement. The bunching of red and blue contours is astounding to me in this one, that in the east Pac resembling that of the geographically-forced bunching we see all the time in the extreme western Pacific off China. This bunching, with a dip to the south (trough) off the West Coast indicates a very reliable forecast of a huge trough bashing the West Coast about then (Friday, 5 PM AST, Jan 15th). Maybe, just MAYBE, those Cal reservoirs WILL be filled up in a single winter!
Its never too early to talk about rain and storms in old AZy.
A couple are already on the move and will arrive here between the 3rd and 5th of January. Confidence is quite high, more so that on the last failed medium range forecast, which I think says something1.
However, its after those first couple of storms that it gets really interesting, given the Big Niño in progress. Scrutinize this hint of future weather below, valid some two weeks from now:
Valid January 12th at 5 PM AST. Red lines represent tracks of the “subtropical jet stream. Blue lines more or less the Polar jet stream. Notice that the red lines are nearly ALL far south of the SW US, while the blue lines bulge northward into AK and the Bering Sea. This would be a strong split flow pattern, where storms coming out of the western and central Pacific are forced to stay at lower latitudes rather than move north. Yippee!
Cloud maven person admits that this is his very favorite pattern since he was a kid, the one that’s being suggested above, so subjectivity,, the enemy of science, could be creeping in.
The Big Fat Ridge (representing a blob of deep, relatively warmer air compared to the air hundreds of miles around it) has overextended itself into the Gulf of Alaska and Arctic. It looks like too much of it has extruded into the Arctic areas.
What always happens when the BFR extends to the north over thousands of miles is that the westerlies, with their series of storms moving along in them, “break on through to the other side”, as Jim Morrison might say if he had been a meteorologist. But they are shunted by the BFR “underneath” and travel at relatively low latitudes north of Hawai’i toward the West Coast.
That means those low pressure centers carried along in the westerlies travel over warmer water than usual, arriving along the Cal and Baja coasts with Hawaiian style wetter clouds. Some of the great rainfalls in Cal and AZ occur in these situations.
How much can it rain from storms like those, should they materialize with vigor? Check this 24 h rain table out for Cal for January 21-23, 1943. These are all just 24 h amounts for a storm that gradually shifted southward along the West Coast. Broke 24 h precip records from Cal to Colorado:
The storm that produced these prodigious totals originated near the Hawaiian Islands a few days before the rivers of atmo water struck the West Coast. The above table was typed by the writer (hah, “typed”, then “writer”2) on a Hermes 3000 typewriter in about 1962 or ’63. Only those amounts over 10 inches in a day are shown. Shows you what can happen when storms barge in from warmer waters, and when they are strong (have deep low centers with them that produce strong winds against the mountains.)
So, while the first coupla storms are pretty much (he sez, in the bag, will be watching to see if the above “Lorenz plot” (aka, spaghetti plot) has seen something two weeks out. Usually only the strongest signals show up that far out, and what is shown above is darn strong for a ridge, trough underneath in the eastern Pac.
Add a pinch of veracity, too, due to the Big Niño we have now. Niños are phenomena that enhance the southern portion of the jet stream/westerlies in the eastern Pacific and SW, and that means stronger lows out there, too.
Exciting days ahead in old AZy!
The End.
———————-
1In a sense it was quite accurate for so many days ahead. While there was NO precip, it WAS, in fact, quite a storm of cold air.
2Another silly-ism. There’s a real quarry of them here in this blog. But I hope to indulge listeners not only with an occasional “silly-isms”, but I also hope to educate the listener with one or two facts, one of which is often correct. Are you listening?
Well, let us define “cool”….that is, cool for Catalina in May; that is #2, below normal temperatures.
What led to this thought?
I was gasping when I saw this from last night’s NOAA spaghetti factory, as you will as well, and decided I would have to say something about it.
Valid on the 17th of May, 5 PM AST. Wow! And with a persistent pattern like this (red lines dipping so far toward the Equator (which is that dashed line that goes through Hawaii and Mexico1), which we now seem to be in following our little warm up, now in gradual retreat, big flooding will occur in the central and southern Plains States, the kind that makes the 5 o’clock news (or is it 6 o’clock?). Wow.
Pretty unbelievable.
What does it mean for Catalinans: a personal view?
Oh, big windy episodes from time to time during the month, good chance for above normal rain for Catalina, and probably most interesting, the late spring ovenly weather that we like to brag about how we get through wherein so many of our Catalinans and “Tucsonians” flee to the high country, or to Michigan, is held at bay by recurring puddles of cold air up top.
That’s my prediction for May, which has already been ludicrously posted in a prior post many days ago. We might look back at May some day to see how this incredibly unprofessional forecast for a whole month based on one spaghetti run worked out.
If you want professionalism in medium range weather forecasting, then get the hell off this site now! Maybe you’re the kind of person that would rather see a forecast from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center for Catalina and environs. If so, you don’t belong here.
But lets see what they say, anyway for May, then for the whole of mid-April through July…..to add that bit of uncharacteristic professionalism to this site. See maps below:
Looks like they’re pretty clueless about what the temperature’s going to be like here for May–“EC” means equal chances for below normal OR above normal. So, they could be right no matter WHAT happens! But not me. I think Cal is goona be wrong, too; below normal, not above normal temps. Its great when you can just type things like that!
The Big Boys don’t really know what’s going to happen with the May rain here, either, since we are also in an “EC” area. But boy, look at the May rain foretold for the Plains! Looks like a great place to spend May! OKC, maybe. WCWS begins at the end of May, amateurism at its best.
But, at the same time, for the whole of mid-April through the end of July, the Big Boys at the CPC are expecting the drought in areas of the central southern Plains States to persist or intensify–see dark brown areas below.
It will be interesting, being serious for the moment, to see how these predictions, seemingly in some conflict, work out. Note that in the longer view below, Catalina is in an area where drought “persists or intensifies”, even through JULY! Egad.
Nice clouds yesterday….
6:00 AM. Mamma to the S, pretty big mamma. Indicates unstable conditions aloft, maybe some showers will reach the ground.10:01 AM. Heavy vIrga pummels air above Catalina/Saddlebrooke.4:20 PM. High-based Cumulonimbus clouds approached from the south promising blasts of wind, maybe a few drops. No drops here, though.6:47 PM. Cumulonimbus and rain reaching the ground passed to the W-NW of Catalina. Darn.7:04 PM. The moon AND pink virga in the SAME photo! Yours today for $900. Trying to follow through on an Atlantic Mag article, “Blogging for Dollars.” That would be great, but it hasn’t happened yet.7:09 PM. Your Catalina sunset, May 2nd, 2015, Altocumulus castellanus with Cumulonimbus capillatus, along with a Cal palm silhouette.
—————-
Yeah, I saw that report that America’s kids don’t know much about geography, so we’re just checking here to see how bad it really is by suggesting that the Equator goes over the Hawaian Islands (hahaha). But, maybe, they’re really the Galapagos Islands… Am I being too subtle? Sam Cook once pointed out about himself, “Don’t know much about geography”…in his song, “What a wonderful world it would be“. it was a movement that apparently caught on.
