More possibly illusory water on a hot Arizona desert highway in the 12-14 day range. Massive events are predicted, really; thought you like to see these mid to late April blows, even though they’re likely as phony as a two dollar bill1.
1. Major April rainstorm exits Cal, brings generous rains to AZ. From IPS MeteoStar, these:
Valid (or invalid, probably) for 5 PM AST, April 21st.
2. Second in sequence, shown off Orygon, moves in position for a followup Cal blast.
For April 22nd, 5 PM AST.
3. “Jumbotron 2” marches toward the Cal coast. For mid-April, southern California and Arizona folks would be wondering about “climate change” should this happen, which it probably won’t, but we can dream. Truly, a map like this is really exceptional for the 20th of April due to how strong and deep that low is off ‘Frisco, and the strength of the jet stream at the latitude of Baja below.
For April 23rd, at 5 PM AST. A storm in this configuration, being out of the main jet stream, would take a long time to go by. Might rain for two or three days, so it COULD be a real drought denter. In any event, spaghetti is strongly suggesting “troughiness” in our area over the next couple of weeks, and that will lead to some real rain chances. However, April marks the real beginning of our dry season, averaging only about half an inch here in Catalinaland, compared with over an inch and three quarters in March.
For April 20th, 5 PM AST. Looks very promising for storms during the second decade and beyond in April, as you would know, of course. BTW, we still have some of the Dry Fittm Tees of “I Heart Spaghetti” available for $12 plus $62 shipping.
To help you further understand a perspective on the “gigantism” of the predicted late April storms that came out in yesterday’s 5 PM AST global data crunch, as they are seen in the eyes of meteorologists, let us compare dinosaurs of the Mesozoic as a metaphor:
Valid 65 to 250 million years ago. Humans back then had to be especially careful; death by trampling was quite common.
Speaking of the Mesozoic, I think you would like to hear some birdsongs of the Mesozoic. Its quite good.
About clouds
Been having some fairly nice ones lately. Miscellaneous array from yesterday below:
The End
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1Recall spaghetti has been keeping a trough, i.e., a dip in the winds to lower latitudes, here and in the eastern Pacific for some time; these maps are likely an exaggeration of the REAL troughs that happen in ten days to two weeks, since in these eyes, this series of two storms shown above would likely break April rainfall records in some southern California locations before reaching Arizona with generous rains. So, the more extreme the weather prediction in the 10-15 day period, the more reason to treat it as a knee-slapper. Still, it COULD happen….
Haven’t had much weather/clouds to gab about; maybe I’ll help reader with some extra material today, not usually associated with a site about clouds; kind of go outside the lines a little.
Miscellaneous item 1
The Oracle Road report. Thought you’d like to see that.
Yesterday afternoon’s report. Seem to be some people working. That’s good. You can see some curbing going in, too. Kind of reminds me of how high pressure has been “curbing” our storms lately, to introduce a weather theme. Photo not taken while driving, of course.
Miscellaneous item 2
This. Its quite good. You’ll see people really liking it, too. It may raise the question in your mind, “How many other people are “‘question marks'”? Cloud Maven person?
Clouds?
Well, we had some nice Cirrus yesterday, and for the past few days. Lots more to come, too, but that’s about it for awhile.
3:19 PM. Pretty CIrrus uncinus.3:20 PM. If you on Mt. Everest this would quite a little passing snow shower of tiny crystals, quite fun, because it would only last a minute or so. Well maybe since the wind would be 100 mph, maybe it wouldn’t be THAT fun because the little crystals, likely bullet rosettes, as you would know, would sting your face if it wasn’t protected.
There’ll be a lot of Cirrus over the next two weeks, we hope with some rain underneath, with the best chance being
For yesterday afternoon, 5 PM AST. The green areas represent moist conditions at Cirrus levels, here for about 300 mb or 30,000 feet. Streamers of Cirrus are coming at us for awhile from the sub-tropics. You can see a lot more green in this two week forecast from IPS MeteoStar.
Regime change?
Yep, mostly for Cal, though, as far as rain and snow go. Folks in Cal are quite excited about the drought they’re having, but this April will put a damper on that excitement as the storms roar in from the Pac like they should have all winter. It won’t end the drought, but it won’t be quite as dire, either. You can read about direness here from the LA Times. You’ll read that Governor Brown1 has declared a water emergency in California. Of course, most of the water use is in sometimes inappropriate agricultural practices, like growing rice around Bakersfield in the San Joaquin desert, that kind of thing, not by home owners.
California can be very wet in April. For example, in 1926, and in 1965, Los Angeles got over seven inches, and five inches, respectively. So, “It ain’t over til its over”, the Cal rain season that is, as they say. It will be interest to look back as May arrives, and see how much the drought was alleviated.
How does Cloud Maven know for sure there is a regime change taking place that will help Cal? From a helping of spaghetti. Lets look at spaghetti two weeks out, way more longer than weather models can be considered reliable. Cloud Maven person was VERY excited when he saw this, as you will be as well!
Valid on April 17th, 5 PM AST. Note how the red lines (contour number 576 dm) are squished in the Great SW, drooping southward into Mexico! This is tremendous, since it virtually guarantees a trough in the SW. The other plots are similar. You just don;’t see this much in squished contours very often this far out in the model run in our area. Usually these contours are like the ones off Africa. I hope you know where Africa is…. Those blue lines (number 552 dm contours) are in the heart of the jet stream, really on the poleward side, and notice how some of them dip into the SW. This is good, too. Now, for California, olden studies have shown that its the contour BETWEEN these (564 decameters) that delineates where rain falls when a trough hits the Cal coast. That contour is between the red and blue lines, and so there would be plenty of rain falling in Cal during these first two weeks, with no sign of let up here at the end of the model run. SO, in conlcusion, that’s why CMP is sticking his neck out about a wet, drought-denting April in Cal.
What will our Catalina weather be like in April?
Under this new regime, whether it rains or not, you can expect windier conditions than normal during the month since storms exiting Cal will be close enough to excite not only meteorologists, but a “Tonopah Low” in the lee of the Sierras, something that helps generate wind here as they progress into the Great Basin after forming.
Wow, this is really too much detail for an entire month to come2! Oh, well. Remember our motto here at C-M:
“Right or wrong; you heard it here first!”
The End.
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1Remember how we used to call him, “Governor Moonbeam” when he was governor of Cal the first time around in the 1970s due to his quirky, ascetic lifestyle? That was fun. Lots of quirky people in the Haight-Asbury district then, too. How many question marks were among those folks…and where are they now?
2We’ll be looking back at April come the beginning of May, by which time you will have forgotten anything that was written here, and I could almost anything.
The author has made two claims. Let us look at the evidence, the first of which was obtained yesterday morning in support of one of those. A hiker/walker, the author met, we will call him, “Bob”, though it seems doubtful that’s his real name since he had quite a strong northern European accent, said there was no running water in the Sutherland Wash, “only dampness.”
This proved to be an incorrect statement. I wonder how many other people I have corrected just now?
The wash has now been running without interruption for about six weeks. Below, two photos with dogs in them taken yesterday of the flowing Sutherland Wash at the Baby Jesus trail head, aka, “The Cottonwoods”:
8:42 AM. The Sutherland Wash in flow near the Baby Jesus trail head.8:42 AM. Dog ponders a drink from the FLOWING Sutherland Wash at the Baby Jesus trail head.
Q. E. D.
2) Can it rain again in March in the Sutherland Heights (epicenter of the above titular forecast)?
It could, but the assertion by the author is stronger than “could.” Let us again look at the evidence for such a claim.
There are several opportunities for rain here during the remainder of March.
1) the upper low that goes over tomorrow and Friday will produce scattered mountain showers in the area; a sure thing, but light ones.
2) then that SAME low, after nesting in the Tropics for a couple of days comes back over us with an even greater chance of rain next week since its had a chance to scoop up some tropical air (think Altocumulus castellanus, unstable clouds that can become little Cumulonimbus clouds).
3) In the longer term, “troughiness” (“cyclonicity”) is indicated to reside in our Great Southwest by spaghetti maps. Some individual model runs have even had big rains in the area in 12-15 days from now. Below, an example from IPS MeteoStar, which for some reason did not follow through on the “fee-for-service” they had been announcing was coming for about three months so’s that we would have to pay to look at their nice renderings of government model stuff1:
Boffo trough bops Arizona on…ooops, annotated version below to help you locate Arizona on this map.Forecast map valid on March 25th at 5 PM AST.
Another example of the wettest model run I could find, trillions and trillions of galloons of water released in storms in the SW:
Forecast map valid on Saturday, March 21st at 11 AM AST.
So, at LEAST three or four days in the remaining days of March with a chance of measurable rain, and THAT equals 100 % chance of rain falling within a 10 mile radius of the Sutherland Heights housing district between now and, and pushing the forecasting frontier even farther, say, the end of March! Going that far with such high confidence (100%) forecast is inappropriate for professional forecasting, but not here. So, this is a forecast for measurable rain on or VERY near us covering an amazing 19 days!
BTW, spaghetti thinks a trough of the magnitude above is goofy; see below. HOWEVER, there is a pretty strong tendency for cyclonic action here, just not as strong as the one above. The one above is likely goofy, an outlier model run….at this time. But, just like that New England win over the Seahawks in the last second when the Seahawks were about to run it in, but goofily passed the ball instead for an interception, outliers do occur.
Will keep an eye on this fun forecast from this keyboard, and get back to you from time to time IF it rains in the area. Otherwise, you will not hear from me again on this matter.
Below, some morning spaghetti for you.
Valid at 5 PM AST, March 26th. No sign of bluish lines, representing the heart of the jet stream penetrating the SW US as shown in that model run above. However, red lines, southern portion of jet stream, do dip southward over the SE and northern Mexico, indicating a good chance of lower latitude troughs here at the time of this map. Note that the blue and red lines suggest an “out of phase” jet stream pattern, highs in the far north, disturbances leaking into the SW US underneath them.
So hope for additional rain before the end of March is not dead, as it seems today, but has much life, in fact, to repeat, “100%” life.
1) Let yesterday morning’s color show speak for itself, just incredible, speaking for it anyway.
2) Please review the U of AZ time lapse film here to understand why it takes the biggest computer Fujitsu can build to calculate what the atmosphere is doing. Also reviewing this let’s you escape from the tedium about to be presented below.
3) Expect a similarly photogenic day today.
6:42 AM. First light, this incredible scene. Altoculumulus lenticularis downstream from Catalinas. Thought I would misspell Altocumulus to see if anyone is reading this. Sun seems to be coming up earlier and earlier….6:42 AM. Looking to the left or north of the lenticular….6:44 AM. That lenticular again, the bottom structure now highlighted.6:49 AM. What can you say? So pretty all around. Another lenticular was in progress to the main one.6:53 AM. If the scene wasn’t spectacular enough, a display of iridescence (rainbow colored area) then enhanced the original Ac len even more. It doesn’t get better than this and I hope you saw it “live.” I was just beside myself, taking too many photos, losing control, rationality.8:28 AM. Both lenticulars still in place, but now augmented by a layer of Altocumulus perlucidus (honey-combed look) and a scruff of low clouds that topped the Catalinas marking the invasion of a low level moist air. The feel of rain was in the air then, too.8:28 AM, the same time as the prior photo, but looking upwind over Oro Valley, toward Marana and beyond at a line of Stratocumulus, with Altocumulus perlucidus and patchy thin Cirrus above those. Even here, the scene seemed exceptional.9:41 AM. That Altocumulus deck began arriving overhead and you could see the little “heads” trailing ice crystals like comets with long tails. When the heads are gone, you’d call it Cirrus and never know how it got those fine strands. In the meantime, the Stratocumulus and Cumulus clouds were slowly getting deeper.1:19 PM. Looking over Catalinaville1: Stratocumulus was becoming the dominant cloud form. No ice, no precip, too warm at top; also, largest droplets in them below the Hocking-Jonas Threshold (30-40 microns in diameter) for collisions with coalescence to occur, if you care to learn things.3:42 PM. One of the many pretty scenes yesterday, these Altocu perlucidus, no ice. So, much warmer and lower than those trailing ice in the earlier photo.4:19 PM. Then, as the Stratocumulus filled in again, we got our late afternoon “light show”, those drifting spots of sun illuminating our mountains, though here our own Sutherland Heights subdivision, if that is what it is. So pretty.5:19 PM. Can’t be inside when these scenes are happening…. Have problem.6:13 PM. That sunset glow we see on our mountains every day, except a little more dramatic when dark clouds are overhead.6:19 PM. The day finished as gorgeous as it began as a clearing to the far west allowed the sun to light the bases of the overhead Stratocumulus layer.
The rain just ahead
Rain masses will be forming to west of Catalina today and will pound eastern Cal and western AZ for about 24 h before roaring in here tomorrow morning. Staying the course, best guess, from extremes of at least 0.33 to a max of 1.50 here, is 0.915 inches (the average of the worst and best case scenarios) here in “Catalinaville” as the total amount from this “hit” tomorrow and the showers afterwards into later Tuesday, as a second storm part comes by. Thunder tomorrow seems likely from this keyboard as the big rainband goes over.
During the passage of the rainband tomorrow, rainrates are likely to get up to an inch an hour, at least briefly, (this is the rate, NOT the duration) and typically, with several hours of moderate (0.1 to 0.3 inches per hour) to heavy rain (greater than 0.3 inches per hour) we should get a nice drenching.
The weather way ahead, 10 days or more
After a long dry spell following this upcoming rain, spaghetti is strongly indicating we have more troughiness in our future after the temporary dry spell!
Check it out, spaghetti connoisseurs2:
Valid at 5 PM AST, Saturday, March 11th. Note clustering of red and blue lines in trough off Cal.Valid at 5 PM, Sunday, March 15th. Southward bulging red lines, so many of them, indicate a very good chance of a trough here at that time. Blue lines, for a colder part of the jet stream, also tend in this direction, a good sign.
The spaghetti plots, taken together, indicate to the present Arthur that the chance of rain twixt spaghetti 1 and spaghetti 2 shown above is about 70%. It will be extremely FUN to see if this interpretation works out for rain between March 11-15th, at least one event anyway, to continue overusing that word.
The End, finally.
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1Didn’t Jimmy Buffet do a song about Catalinaville? Has a nice ring to it. Maybe we should think about it… Or maybe, in a vein similar to Carmel-by-the-Sea, “Catalina-by-the-Catalinas.”
2Remember, spaghetti is better than the model in the medium range forecasts that are presented based on the global data. Spaghetti is there to help you decide whether that model output is from the WRF-GFS looney bin or not. Here’s how:
Spaghetti is the result of DELIBERATE little errors put into the model when they start crunching the data to see how the forecast that you see on the maps could go wrong if there are errors in the data.
Of course, there are ALWAYS errors in the data! So, when the Fujitsu Computer DIvision made gigantically capable computers for us that were better than the ones we could make, ones that could do teraflops per second, we in the weather community could then run many permutations of the same model with itty-bitty errors in the initial data to see how the results changed (diverged) in the longer term.
Remember, too, in weather itty-bitty differences can add up to large ones in the longer term. So, when the model permutations with little errors cluster and DON’T diverge, it provides more confidence that the forecast storm, for example, is more likely to happen in that fuzzy forecast range of beyond 10 days or so. End of giant footnote.
Here it is. You may need an optical enhancement tool to see the radar echo speck nearest Catalina, and its not the one nearest the arrowhead below, but continue in that direction:
Satellite and radar imagery for midnight last night. Notice cloud blob and radar echoes over and near Catalina, Arizona. I really thought there’d be some drops here as this went over!
You can also check on all the rain that fell overnight in the region here, courtesy of Pima County ALERT rain gauges. BTW, they aren’t capable of reporting traces, so if you see bunches of zeroes, it doesn’t mean some drops didn’t fall somewhere in the network.
Non-verification of this rain can also be found via our fine TUS NWS “storm total” view, 10:30 PM to 4:30 AM this morning:
Regional radar-derived storm total from “rainy cloud blob.” Arrow almost reaches Catalina; didn’t want to cover up a pixel of rain, if there. THAT radar did not pick up the rain I feel must have fallen, so we have quite a conundrum. If you would like to see for yourself how much rain fell last night, go here. Will be looking for drop images in the dust as soon as it gets light, too!
In the meantime, all those rainy cloud blobs to our NW right now (first image) look like they will be able to just make it to Catalinaland after all.
In our last chapter, it looked like the strong cold front would move through tomorrow as just a dry cold one, but now the chances of having a little rain (a wet cold one) have been zooming up. The models have readjusted their thinking and now that critical ingredient, the core of the jet stream (at 500 mb) passing over us ahead of the trough core itself is being predicted.
And with that configuration as the front goes by Catalina, and believe me you’ll know by the 10-15 degree temperature drop, a tiny amount of rain might fall. Also, look for a pronounced lowering of cloud bases to the W-N of Catalina as it gets close, something in the way of an “arcus cloud”, marking the leading edge of the windshift to the N. Could be nice and dramatic looking tomorrow. Those cloud base lowerings are pretty common with fronts here.
How much rain?
Oh, possibilities range between 0 (a complete bust is still possible) to only about 0.25 inches, tops in the “best” of circumstances. But, this keyboard would like to see ANYTHING measurable; that would bring happiness.
There are some more rain blobs showing up in regular intervals in the days ahead for you to think about, as rendered by IPS MeteoStar. Arrows have been added to show you where you are, if you are in SE Arizona:
Valid tomorrow morning at 11 AM AST. Colored areas denote regions where the model has calculated precipitation during the preceding 6 h.
In the storm below, which is pretty much going to happen now, the range of amounts as seen from here, at least 0.15 inches, top, 0.50 inches, best guess, therefore, 0.33 inches (from averaging the two.)
Val at 11 PM, March 1st. Colored areas are those in which the model has calculated that precip has fallen during the prior 6 h.
There’s great uncertainly in whether this last storm will actually occur, so range of amounts are zero to 1 inch. :} See reasons for uncertainty below, besides being too far in advance or our models to be reliable anyway.
Valid Friday, March 5th, at 5 PM AST. Colored regions NOW denote areas of precipitation that have fallen during the prior TWELVE hours. (Mod resolution degrades after about 192 h, and so a coarser view of precip areas is used.)
While a significant storm on the 1st is virtually assured according to spaghetti, this last major event in the panel above is doubtful. See below, in another lesson on consuming weather spaghetti:
Ensemble spaghetti valid for the same time as the panel above, 5 PM AST Friday, March 5th. Not much support for a storm, low confidence is indicated by the LACK of bunching red and blue lines, unlike those off the East Coast, and over there east of Asia. So, while a great storm is predicted in last evening’s model run, prepare for sadness and disappointment as a hedge.
Yesterday’s fine clouds
7:10 AM. A couple of shafts of big virga. Likely a drop or two reached the ground. Could have been caused by aircraft penetrations, or, taller Altocumulus castellanus-like turrets that reached lower temperatures, produced more ice. They look suspiciously like an aircraft artifact due to their very small size.7:41 AM. Nice stack of lenticular pancakes in the lee of the Catalinas. You can see some great lenticular occurrences in the U of AZ Time Laps movie for yesterday. There are also a lot other fascinating things that go on in yesterday’s clouds, too.8:05 AM. Clearly natural virga approaches Catalina. Looked for a drop as it went over, but saw none.8:22 AM. Pancakes downstream from Ms. Mt. Lemmon.8:44 AM. Fairy dusters in bloom!9:07 AM. Doggies, Emma, and little Banjo, sample and inspect water STILL running in the Sutherland Wash!1:46 PM. After a brief sunny period, banks of Altocumulus invade the sky.2:46 PM. Altocumulus opacus clouds continue to fill in, darken.5:40 PM. Muliple layers of clouds stream ahead of sprinkle-producing cloud blob just upwind at this time. Note how the Altocumulus opacus clouds disappeared, leaving lenticular like formations, with a thin ice cloud (Cirrostratus) above.
The End, though I COULD go on and on and on, and then on some more. Its who I am….
There are more “panels” with rain for Arizona than there are for Seattle over the next 15 days1, this as seen in last evening’s 5 PM AST crunch of global weather data by our best model (rendered here by IPS MeteoStar).
Hmmmm2.
Let us review the NOAA spaghetti factory output to see if this long run of intermittent rains in Arizona has any veracity at all:
Valid at 5 PM AST, February 9th, 15 days from now, or is it? This was based on the same global data as the many rain panels.
So, there you have it.
The End, sans all but one sunrise photo3
7:10 AM. Under lit Altostratus with virga.
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1This includes today’s late afternoon through tomorrow morning’s sprinkles or light rain.
2Recall the NOAA Climate Prediction Center’s experimental long range forecast of 4 inches of rain in TUS in January, and SIX inches in February made in early December? Could it possibly have any veracity?
Hmmmmmmmm.
3Compulsive-neurotic cloud photo documentation of the day being blunted presently by social engagements with out-of-state visitors and having to do things indoors, and not able to run outside without causing inexplicable voids in ongoing colloquies. My apologies.
It doesn’t get much better than this plot below for our Catalina weather 10-13 days ahead, which is always pretty fuzzy-looking as a rule. “Better” means for rain chances here, which is not everyone’s “better.”
Here’s the excitement:
Note blank area, that is, an area free of lines area centered on the gambling and other mischief-permitting State of Nevada1.
Note how the red lines dip down into Mexico, whilst the blue lines bulge northward into Canada along the West Coast.
This error-filled plot2 tells us that it is almost certain that a trough will be in the lower middle latitudes where we are on January 22nd or so. Just about guaranteed.
In the meantime, those blue lines indicated that a ridge of high pressure is going to divert northern storms into Canada and southeast Alaska. Sometimes we refer to situations like this as “split flow”; the southern portions of storms in the Pacific move ESE toward southern California and the Southwest, while the northern portions split off to the NE, as is happening now. Weak upper level disturbances pass overhead, the next one tomorrow, and with it, a little more rain, the models say.
U of AZ mod has rain moving in toward dawn tomorrow with totals here amounting to about like that last rain, 0.10 to 0. 25 inches. Given model vagaries, probably the lower and upper limits here are likely to be 0.05 (worst case scenario) and 0.50 inches (best case scenario), so a best guess would be the middle of those, 0.275 inches, not too much different from the AZ mod. This is the sports-like part of weather forecasting. What’s your estimate, fantasy or otherwise?
BTW, there were quite a few stations reporting over an inch of rain in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties during the past 24 h, and so while weak, this system is pretty juicy, lots of liquid water as measured by dewpoints which should rise into the upper 40s to low 50s here during the next day. Also, there have been some embedded weak Cumulonimbus clouds and that’s a possibility here tomorrow, too, as the rainband goes by. You’ll be able to tell that by strong shafting below the clouds. As always, hoping we here in Catalina get shafted tomorrow.
But the ones these days are weak, while the split ahead in 10-13 days is likely to contain much stronger disturbances, well, at least ONE before it gives out.
Yesterday’s clouds
7:22 AM. Sunrise Altocumulus.
11:42 AM. Another very summer-like looking day with clouds beginning to pile ever higher over the Catalinas.
12:51 PM. Small Cumulus are developing over the Catalinas while far above them are, two crossing contrails, about the same age suggesting that aircraft crossed paths simultaneously. The FAA flight separation rules now allows for 1,000 feet of separation instead of the 2,000 feet in years past, and so if you’ve flown recently, you may have noticed planes that appeared to be a lot closer to you than ones a few years ago. This has been permitted due to improvements in aircraft GPS accuracy, and was deemed needed due to the vast increases in air traffic in the decades ahead. Still, there were times when opposite flying aircraft were so CLOSE, passing by like bullets, that you wanted to scream to the pilot, “Hey, wake up and smell the air space!!!!”
1:44 PM. Probably had a little ice in that smooth section, but overall really looked like a miniature summer Cumulonimbus cloud. Did not see if it had an echo, and never was it clear that there was ice.2:02 PM. As Altocumulus castellanus overspread the sky, lenticular clouds were still visible beyond the Catalinas. Some lenticulars began to sprout turrets, an odditity, but one driven by the condensation of water, something that releases a little heat (in this case) to the atmosphere causing the cloud to be more buoyant.
5:32 PM. A sunset of Cirrus and Altocumulus. Not bad.
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1What a great and honest state motto that would be! “Nevada: That US State where gambling and other social mischief is OK with us!”
2Don’t forget that due to growth in computer capabilities, we can now have many model runs from the same data and be done with them in a timely way. These “spaghetti”, “ensemble” or better yet, “Lorenz” plots are computer model runs with deliberate (!) slight errors introduced to see how the model forecasts of high and low pressure centers changes, given a few slight errors. This is because there are ALWAYS errors in the data anyway, there are always error bars on measurements, etc. By doing this, only the strongest signals in the forecasts remain, indicated by grouping of lines these two colors of lines, red and bluish. So, the forecast of the jet stream coming out of Asia is very, very reliable. Things go to HELL, downstream (toward the east), but some likely patterns can still be seen, such as the one over the Southwest US where a trough/low is almost certain in our area then. Will it bring us rain in Catalina? Hell, I don’t know because if the trough is a little too far to the east of us, we might only get cooler. However, since Cloud Maven person has a postive rain bias, he will say, “Absolutely. There will be rain in the Catalina area on January 22nd or so”–the actual timing might be off by a day or so.
Like scientific opinion1, climate change happens. You may not know this, but only 15,000 to 20,000 years or so ago, a blink of an eye in light years, the earth was gripped by an Ice Age. No “hockey stick” handle back then! Snow and ice piled up over a kilometer deep on top of the Space Needle in Seattle. And the polar ice cap extended to places like Cahoga Falls, Ohio, while burying the Great Lakes, which didn’t exist.
NOW, of course, we’re in an “Interglacial” period called the Holocene, where its nice and toasty, for the most part, the way we like it as a people. Really, human beans do not like Ice Ages; they can really die off in a hurry2 and have to repopulate themselves afterwards! Well, I suppose that part might be fun.
The forecast models are foretelling something in the way of a flashback in the way of a pressure pattern over nearly ALL of North America that might well have been the average pressure pattern day after day during an Ice Age (there have been many), the last one, at its peak, not surprisingly, was called, “the Last Glacial Maximum.” I’d call it that, too.
Here are a coupla panels from the venerable Enviro Can computer model with its FOUR panels of weather. Take a look at the pressure patterns in the right side panels, you may have to use a magnifying glass, both showing the predicted sea level pressure pattern. These forecast maps are astounding to C-M and will, therefore, be likewise to you, too: a high pressure area so expansive with cold dense air that it covers millions of square miles, even more in square kilometers, maybe billions, since the kilometer is a smaller Euro unit of measurement that makes everything seem farther away when you’re driving to someplace and the distance is in Euros. (hahaha, just kidding folks).
Valid Monday, December 29th at 5 AM AST. Giant high pressure cell has formed in the Canadian Northwest Territories, and its leading edge is affecting the US from COAST TO COAST! I am pumped, don’t high pressure regions this big this too often in NA. In eastern Asia, e,g, China, where all our stuff is made, and Siberia, this big a high is SOS in the wintertime. So, we’re seeing a bit of eastern Asia wintertime conditons, too.
Valid just 24 h later, 5 AM AST, Tuesday, December 30th. Temperatures in some mountain valley locations in MT could be as low as -60 F. NE flow aloft, behind the upper low, will provide exceptionally dry air above the surface layer, and that will allow whatever “heat”, and we use this word, advisedly, to efficiently escape from the surface after nightfall. So, clear skies, dry above you, no wind (as in a valley) down, down, down plummets the temperature.
So, we have an historical treat coming when the average temperatures every day in the US were 15-20 F lower during the Last Glacial Maximum! (Ugh.) The oceans were at lot smaller then, too, because a lot that water was piled up on top of the Space Needle, etc.
You might have noticed in these panels that the Ice Age-like conditions are plummeting rapidly southward, and big trough is starting to curl over the interior of the Pac NW. Yes, since we are still in the Trough Bowl, that curling air pattern, containing frigid air is headed toward Arizona, and will be here or not in early January.
Why a bifurcated statement?
Models are confused. Two model runs, only 6 h apart (5 PM and 11 PM AST last evening have the low center aloft for the SAME time, January 1st at 5 AM AST over a) Pebble Beach Golf Course, Carmel, CA; b) over Gallup, NM! How funny, outrageous, and frustrating is that? See below:
Valid at 5 AM AST, January 1st, New Year’s Bowl Day. With the amount of cold air with this system it would likely be snowing in lower elevation places north of SFO. Also, it would rain on the Duck-Seminole bowl game in Pasadena, CA.Also Valid for January 1st at 5 AM AST. But which one will be right?
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But, we are “gifted” with an opportunity to learn about chaos in the atmosphere, aren’t we, that is, those times when little errors can lead to huge differences in future states.
So, to resolve this weather conflict, and lose a few more readers, we go to the NOAA spaghetti factory, and examine the “Lorenz plot” for this time period and see which one is looney:
Valid 12 h before the maps above, New Year’s Eve, December 31st at 5 PM AST.
Well its pretty obvious that the goofy one is the one having the low over SFO and vicinity. Most of the circulation pattern has a center in Arizona somewhere. But this interpertation means that extremely cold air is likely to invade at least the northern half of Arizona as January begins. The good side is that there would be substantial, and later, reservoir filling snows in the mountains, and a good chance of substantial rain here in Catalina as the year begins.
The end of maybe solving a prognostic conundrum.
Today’s weather
Well, its all “out there” by your favorite weathercaster, and they all do a pretty darn good job, and so no use hacking over what’s already known by everybody except to say that the jet streak at 18,000 feet (500 mb), that core that circumscribes precip from no precip areas during our winters, passes over Catalina (our area) around 5 PM AST according the latest model run.
And that’s, too, when the models expect the first rain around Catalina to arrive. As before, this ain’t gonna be too much unless we get real lucky, top amount likely below a quarter on an inch between 5 PM today and the end of possible showers later tomorrow afternoon.
And of course, there’ll be lots of wind, maybe gusts to 40 mph today, a windshift to the NW here when front goes by overnight, with a temperature drop of about 10 degrees almost simultaneously. Expect a frosty Lemmon on Friday morning when the clouds part.
The interesting part is that echoes and clouds will appear out of nowhere as that big trough expands southward, cooling the air aloft, allowing cloud tops to rise to ice-forming levels. Also, if you go there now, you will see giant clear slots between those middle and high clouds that passed over last evening until right now (Ac castellanus visible to SSW now), and a tiny band in west central Arizona, and the echo-producing clouds in the NW part of the State. Those unstable-loooking clouds will be gone soon.; they’re more from tropical locations.
Keep an eye on that little band in the middle; it may turn into a bona fide rainband as clouds add onto it, widens and thickens. That’s probably what’s going to bop us this evening with rain.
Expecting to see a nice lenticular cloud downstream from the Catalinas today. They’re common AHEAD of the jet core since the air is much more stable then, resists lifting and so you get cloud pancakes that hover over the same spot. How you log them if you see any.
Will we see our usual, “clearing before the storm”? This is when middle and high clouds depart, there’s a big clearing followed by an inrush of low, precipitating clouds. Not sure, but will look for it if that little band of middle clouds ends up as only that as it passes by today. The invasion of low clouds would follow that. Too much speculating today!
Yesterday’s clouds
3:42 PM. Cirrus fibratus thickening to Altostratus toward the horizon, invade sky as big trough approaches, upper ridge skiddadles.3:50 PM. Looking at Cirrus and CIrrostratus advancing over the Catalinas.5:20 PM. Your yesterday’s sunset. Heavy ice cloud shield advances on southern Arizona, Cirrostratus with Altostratus in the distance, the thickening NOT due to perspective. Hope you caught that.
Finally, the End. I’m sure you’re glad, too, if you got this far!
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1Remmeber back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when it was widely believed that a new ice age may be at hand because the earth had been cooling off for a coupla decades? It was also being pointed out that an ice age could onset in a hundred to a few hundred years from past ice age onsets! Yikes. Scary times on earth then when the Beatles were popular.
2Of course, if you were to die in an Ice Age, you might end up being well-preserved and then people would see what you looked like, the hair style you had, tattoos, etc, as we’ve seen with a few dead people that have been found from those glacial times. I guess that’s something positive to say about cold times.
Well, fountains spray water, and storms spray water (and snow) on the ground, so quite an unexpected confluence in descriptions, comparing fountains and storms.
That’s right, three storms are shown in the model run from last night. They been kind of coming and going, the model generally clueless about what’s really going to happen here, especially with California gully washing rains from the lower latitudes, that then affect Arizona.
However, they’re BACK, those gully washing rains in southern Cal, beginning around the 6-7th of Jan. They used to be exceptionally ferocious and floody in the WRF-GFS and came in on Rose Bowl day, that day when we were all dreaming of Ducks floating around in Pasadena. California Dreamin’, as it turned out. The floods now showing up would only be ordinary ones, at least to start.
But, “hey.” enough said about California! What about us?
A little snow overnight or the following morning after the day after Christmas. That would be the 26th. Precip amounts have to be light, since the trajectory of this cold storm is completely over land, but then that helps keep it cold, though I am not in favor of cold.
Amounts, again; Since its marginal to begin with; 0 to 0.25 inches max in melted snow water, if it snows.
Then what?
Next, on New Year’s Eve, the model, as rendered by IPS MeteoStar, erupted with this Arizona “fountain” number 2:
Valid at 5 AM AST. Jet core is already south of us, brown and reddish area, so it on the verge of raining here at that time.
But, as you know, when a low is predicted to be by itself, as in this case, the prediction is “iffy”. But, lows like this one, should it verify, bring the longest duration of rains and snows to Arizona, i. e,. are fabulous drought-denting storms because they move very slowly when out of the main flow. In fact this one would take more than 24 h to go by! You’d be looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of a half inch to an inch of precip here in the Catalina area.
Below, “fountain” number 3 “in preparation” as we say about our manuscripts, sometimes ones that never materialize in a journal, as it is with some of these storms the model predicts.
Truly, I say to you1, this is what dreams are made of for a southern California precipophile; get the sandbags out! Years of below normal rain, rectified! Drought busted! Let’s see what drought bustin’, mutton bustin’, cow-punchin’, drought stompin’, calf ropin’, hornswaglin’, storm herdin’ map really looks like:
Valid at 5 PM AST, January 5th. Drought bustin’ portent all over this map!
Don’t even need to show what happens after this, “Juicy” out there mixes it up with some Arctic air and is slammed into southern Cal with Hawaiian-like dewpoints and rain. Just like calf ropin’. That cold air and upper jet extruding offshore will “rope” Juicy in. Lotta “warm rain” involved, too, that type of rain that forms without the need for ice.
While Juicy loses some water and some punch after southern Cal, it would still be a big rain producer in Arizona, particularly the northern half. We would likely be just inside the edge of the southern edge of this. Still, we have to be glad for the State as a whole as our water situation would vastly improve with these storms, especially storm fountains 2 and 3.
Valid at 5 PM AST, Jan 5th. Looks pretty damn good for breakthrough flow to “the other side”, from the central Pacific to the West Coast and Great Southwest, wouldn’t you say? Note the bunching of red lines from the east Pac into Arizony. Chances better than average that we’ll see this break on through to the other side, Doors, 1967.
Standing by for snow and rain…. Sincerely, standing by for rain, C-M.
Yesterday’s day in contrails
Pretty upset yesterday as contrail after contrail formed and floated over Catalina. I don’t mind contrails when I’m flying somewhere, never even think of them, but when they foul the natural sky, I am livid.
Fortunately, the air got drier up there and contrails were rare after 10 AM. I can hardly stand to post this, but will for the sake of documentation so that you may be outraged as well. NIMB!
9:21 AM AST. Barrage of contrails fouls natural sky. Hope you’re mad now.
We hope this barrage was mainly due to those exceptional jet streams winds rushing down from Canada into the interior of the Southwest toward New Mexico causing airway contrails to shift over us.
Exceptional?
Some winds between 30,000 and 35,000 feet were clocked at over 200 mph! Great if you’re going from Seattle to Albuquerqueque, but not so great if you’re going the other way.
The End.
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1I had a sudden urge to say, “hypocrites!” just then for some reason. Crazy.
2″Spaghetti tasters”…. Made me wonder what happened to that great underground/alternative music band, The Oil Tasters… Remember their big hit, “Slit Chapped Lips“? Great example of what the 80s underground music scene was all about, that raw, exploration of different sounds, the overall contempt for “pop” music, the kind that makes a lot of money, like that produced by the Four Aces, etc.
(Can’t find that song about chapped lips on YouTube, its that good!) ((Later, found it!!))
((Can’t believe that I have touched the entire extrema of music in one blog, from the Four Aces on the left, to the Oil Tasters on the right, and everything in between; i.e., The Doors, 1967!)) (((Just shows you how deep your music knowledge can go; can it get any broader3?)))
3I remind the reader that if humor like this is not your cup of tea, nor the personality I effect here is also not, that my offer to stop blogging for a million dollars is still on the table.
Due to some kind of server meltdown, the NOAA spaghetti plots, better, “Lorenz plots” in honor of “Dr. Chaos”, Edward N. Lorenz, the ones my fans1 like so much, have not been available.
But they’re back today!
But what are they telling us? Gander this for Christmas Day:
Valid at 5 PM AST Christmas Day, December 25th. I’ve annotated it especially for you. The view is one where your looking down at where Santa lives from a big tower. Not all annotations are accurate.
Don’t need to tell you that the weather looks like there’s a good chance of cold and threatening weather for Christmas Day. Big trough implanting itself in the West around then. Maybe those easterners who hogged all the cold air last winter will share some of it this winter. The warmth we had last winter made it bad for horsey with all the fly larvae that survived.
Kind of bored now with the rain immeidately ahead, but only because everybody else is talking about it, too. Its no fun when you don’t have a scoop and you’re just saying things that other people are already saying. Even my brother in North Carolina, who knows nothing about weather, told ME that it was going to rain here on Thursday! How lame is that? Of course, it is true that you won’t here anywhere else that the chance of measurable rain is more than 100% this week in Catalina ; at least I still have that. Tell your friends.
When does it fall? Sometime, maybe multiple times, between Tuesday afternoon and Friday morning. Hahaha, sort of.
Looks like the first trough and weather system will go over on Tuesday through Wednesday, chances of rain then, and yet another colder one on Wednesday night into Thursday. So, 100% chance of measurable rain falling sometime between Tuesday afternoon and Friday morning, probably in several periods of rain. Look for a frosty Lemmon Friday morning.
Predicted amounts from this keyboard? Think the bottom of this several day period of individual rain events will be only a quarter of an inch. Top, could be an inch, if everything falls into place. Canadian mod from 5 PM AST global data yesterday, for now has dried up one of the storms, that on Thursday, the day the USA! model thinks is our best chance for good rains based on the virtually same global data! Of note, the USA model based on 11 PM AST data, has begun to lessen our Thursday storm that bit.
This is the reason that the certainty of measurable rain here in Catalina is spread over such a several day period.
Your cloud day yesterday
Just various forms of Cirrus, most seemingly from old contrails that produced exceptional parhelias (sun dogs, mock suns).
Very contrail-ee sunset, too, as contrail lines advanced from the west. They were likely more than an hour old when they passed over Catalina yesterday.
10:56 AM. Glistening rocks after the rain. Very nice. Cu fractus at moutain tops.
2:36 PM. Nice example of the rare seen Cirrostratus fibratus (has lines in it). Hope you logged it.
3:42 PM. Looks like old contrails to this old eye, resembling CIrrus radiatus. The “radiating” aspect may be due to perspective.
3:50 PM. Parhelia lights up in CIrrus. These, due to the high speed of Cirrus movement, only last seconds in thin streamers like these. To get really spectacular optics the crystals up there have to be especially simple, like plates and stubby columns, maybe prisms as well. When aircraft create contrails, there is an excess of ice crystals, far more than occur in natural Cirrus as a rule, and due to that high concentration, can’t grow much and usually stay as simple crystals, not develop complicated forms like bullet rosettes, crystals with stems sticking out every which way.5:23 PM. Contrail-ee sunset. Pretty, but awful at the same time, since it shows how the natural sky can be impacted by us in our modern lives. You wonder how much of us the earth can take?
The End
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1Why just recently C-M had a comment from a fan in Lebanon3, that country near Israel, not the one in Ohio2! Said it was warm there now, but normally it rains for days at time in the winter, and gets real cold. You see, the eastern Mediterranean is, climatologically speaking, a trough bowl. Troughs just hang out there a lot, creating something called the “Cypress Low.” Though it only rains in the cool season, October through May, as in Israel, places in Lebanon get 25 -40 inches of rain during that time, and its exciting rain because it almost all falls from Cumulonimbus clouds, many with lightning! C-M is getting pretty excited, since he’s on record as wanting to go Lebanon to study the clouds there! See Lingua Franca article from 1997! He loves those Mediterranean wintertime Cu. Hell, you probably threw it out, so here it is: Lingua Franca _1997. See last sentence. last page. Thanks.
2Speaking of Ohio, who can forget that great 1980s rant against urban sprawl in Ohio by Chrissie Hinds and the Pretenders! Will it happen to Catalina after the road project? An insurance agent told me that Catalina was to be absorbed by Oro Valley after it was completed. Oro Valley says they know nothing about that.
