…and maybe points north, too. Lately models have been foretelling rain in Catalina on the 17th or 18th. In case you don’t believe me, here’s the precip forecast from last evening’s (00 Zulu) WRF-GOOFUS1 model run for the morning of the 18th as rendered by IPS MeteoStar:
Valid for Monday morning at 5 AM November 18th. The colored areas are those in which the model has foretold rain during the previous 12 h. As usual, the heaviest amount is foretold for my house here in Catalina/Sutherland Heights.
What are the chances this will really happen so many days ahead? Pretty good. Let’s check out the “Lorenz map2” below:
The Lorenz map, a name I made up but he deserves it since he came up with the Chaos Theory due to which such maps like these are produced by our computer models; where little, itty bitty things can feed into the system and alter the whole thing, like the cliche of a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil and affecting a tornado in Texas later, as a friend said in a SEA Times article a few years ago, a friend, BTW, that I played softball with on the Dept team and could really hit the long ball3… Oops, where was I? Oh, yeah, this map is valid for 5 AM, Monday, November 18th.
Cold air in Catalina? Having to put your jacket on for a few days? Its in the bag.
Rain? No doubt showers in the area with a pretty low snow level on the 17th-18th, but, with the long overland trajectory as presently indicated, not much, maybe a tenth of an inch or so, kind of marginal.
Yesterday’s clouds, high ones
There was some iridescence in a patch of Cirrocumulus about mid-morning, and then what might have been a bit of a parhelic circle in a patch Cirrus. That was it. More interesting clouds today as streamers of moist air at high levels sporadically invade Arizona, and today should be one of those. Get cameras ready!
10:56 AM. Sublte bright, slightly curved line in the upper part of this photo of a Cirrus cloud patch may have been a “parhelic arc.”
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1 As the Global Forecast System is affectionately known.
2I think E. N. Lorenz deserves it, a map with his name on it that we currently call “spaghetti plots”, or by the uppity “model ensembles” name. You put little errors in at the beginning of the model run and see how different the end results are. Not too much effect at the beginning because the errors are so small, but usually end up producing a ball of yarn after kitty played with it, as one reader wrote, after a couple of weeks, meaning that the reliability of any specific prediction at that time is nil. You see, all instrumentation has some error factor, so we never really measure the exact state of the atmosphere. This is a technique of adding little errors is to see how much they can affect the outcome. Sometimes, when something really POWERFUL is out there somewhere, those little errors don’t have much of an effect, and that’s when we can make a pretty good prediction for more than a week out.
3In case you don’t believe me again, this time that I actually played on a softball team with someone that might be asked his opinion on something by a newspaper reporter from the Seattle Times, here is a picture of Dr. Nick “Blaster” Bond, my teammate. I took this picture him because I really liked him, and we both liked to play on teams with girls who could really play, too, then we would win co-rec titles because of how well THEY played. It was great! Nick always wore those ripped short-shorts no matter how cold it was, even if it was raining.
Famous scientist, quoted in newspapers, Blaster Bond, looking askance at some lollipop softball pitcher, about 25 years ago. Not the same Bond responsible for “Bond Cycles” in paleoclimate proxies, though I wish he was because then I would be more important as a person having more important friends I could mention.
While waiting for measurable rain to begin piling up in November, let’s look at no rain so far for the current water year which began October 1st:
The observed monthly rainfall is shown by an adjacent column in yellow on the right… (hahaha, trick or treat, there isn’t any yet)
In fact, speaking of piling up, here’s some rain in this forecast from the Canadian GEM model already for the night of November 4th-5th, and, of course, windy on the 4th before the cold front with this barges in. And, I am happy to report that the USA WRF-GFS model is ALSO showing rain during this time, after being rather reluctant until the run from last night at 11 PM AST, seen here. This is lookin’ good now for our first measurable rain in over a month.
Valid at 5 AM AST November 5th. Colored regions in the lower RIGHT panel are those in which the model thinks it has rained during the prior 12 h (overnight, Nov-4-5). You might have to use binoculars to see it.
But wait, there’s more!
Amajor precip episode has shown up in the 11 PM AST WRF-GRS run from last evening! Check out these renderings from that model run from a site I like, IPS MeteoStar:
Valid for Thursday, November 14th at 11 PM AST. Colored regions indicate where rain should have fallen in the prior 12 h. Note heavier blob over us, indicated by darker green! Valid for 11 AM November 15th. Precip for the prior 12 h ending at this time shown by colored regions. Note bull’s eye in this area (likely associated with mountains around here). So, the mod thinks it could be raining over a 12-24 h period.
In the past we have seen numerous examples of “fantasy rain” produced for us here, often involving decaying tropical storms, that turned out to be completely bogus in this time range, that beyond 8-9 days. Its pretty normal for goofy things to show up in these models beyond that time. Just too much chaos going on and using measurements with their inevitable errors, even if fairly slight ones, not to mention that we don’t really have all the answers to how the atmosphere works.
So, what do we do? We deliberately input errors into a few model runs at the very beginning and see what happens, how crazy the key contours and isobars get. “Pretty cool, huh?”, as Bill Nye the science guy might say if he were writing this. Where they remain pretty steady, that’s where a prediction, even one ten or more days out, is going to be very reliable. Here’s is a sample of one of those crazy results from NOAA:
Valid at 5 PM November 10th
The plot above indicates that there is a very strong signal for a big trough and storms along the West Coast 10 days out. The red lines show that there is a strong signal for the jet stream from the subtropics to be a bit south of us.
The main point here is to point out that while the DAY OF THE RAIN on those forecast maps might change in the models, there are still going to be a number of days where troughs and fronts threaten to bring rain yo Catalina over the next two weeks, and one’s likely to make it as a rainy one.
Thinking now, having a rain bias (“truth-in-packaging” note here), that November’s rain will be near or above normal.
Today’s clouds
Look for a few Cirrus and maybe Altocumulus to appear late in the day with the likelihood of a nice sunset shot.
That’s it. Its a kind of news release, best released on the 1st. Its news, of course, you won’t find on other weather sites because maybe they’re chicken, or prudent. Check back on November 30th, and if its rainless again, there will be no mention of this forecast.
But, after the rainless October (we average about an inch here in Catalina), you probably won’t believe me. Check this out from the NOAA spaghetti factory. I got pretty excited when I saw it. I think, you will, too, maybe mention it to your neighbors over coffee this morning, having been pretty convinced yourself after seeing this that storms are a brewin’ for Catalina and vicinity (all of Arizona) in November:
Valid for November 10th at 5 PM AST. Originates with global data obs made at 5 PM AST last evening, and represents a few key 500 millibar height contours after DELIBERATE little errors have been put in and the computer model rerun with them in it.
Thank E. N. Lorenz, a meteorologist for Chaos Theory and maps like the above that show how little tweaks in the original data can change stuff a lot if things are fragile, but not so much if the signal is robust, and things not so fragile. Here a deep trough along and off off the West Coast on November 10th is virtually guaranteed by the blue and red lines that plunge so far to the south off the West Coast. A trough out there, as you know, gives us the best chance for rain as it progresses to the east. The bunching of lines indicates where the forecast, with baby errors, is strongest, like off Asia, and hereabouts, off Baja. Those red lines are pretty much where the south edge of the jet stream will be at this time of year. As you know, we have to be on the north side of the jet during the winter here in old Arizony to get precip, so it looks good for that to happen as we move forward in the month.
BTW, here’s your official forecast for the whole month of November from the Climate Prediction Center (CPC). As you can see, this November is a tough month for them, no real signals showing up for the month as a whole as indicated by the HUGE areas of “EC”, i.e., “equal chances” of above or below normal precip. We’re kind of on the edge of “we don’t know what’s going to happen” (in the popular lexicon, “clueless”) which is good. The signal for continued drought here is not so strong, though it is there. Poor New Mexico, though.
November precip forecast for North America made on Halloween by the CPC.
Cloud photo op coming up
A weak trough ejects from the Pacific and over us beginning tomorrow, and it should bring some great photogenic Cirrus and Altocumulus clouds tomorrow afternoon and evening, likely some “castellanus” if you care. Likely to be some virga (snow falling from the Ac) too, so could be a great sunset shot coming up. With the virga, always a slight chance of a sprinkle-its-not drizzle.
The summer high pressure sitting on top of Catalina in the middle and upper atmosphere, squashing our Cumulonimbus clouds with its extra warm air, is destined to relocate to Dubuque, Iowa over the next five days. Along with the return of better showers, more bigger ones, as this happens, this movement will also allow a river of tropical air to flood into Arizona with the remains of Hurricane “Xxxxx” (hasn’t formed yet, but will shortly way down off Mexico way).
Before placing much confidence in such a wild scenario, let us examine the NOAA “Ball of Yarn After Kitty Played with It“, as my one blog reader once termed it, or, AKA, the “ensembles of spaghetti”:
NOAA “Ensembles of spaghetti”, valid for 5 PM AST, Sunday, August 25th. Pretty cool, huh? Big trough off West Coast; big fat high over Plains States, tropical river flows between them into Cal and AZ. Really, this is as good as it gets for summer rain deluges, ones that deserts are always in need of in parts of those areas. I am pumped because the clustering of the red and bluish lines, as you know, mean that this model forecast pattern is just about a foregone conclusion.
So,after DELIBERATELY putting little errors in the data that the model crunches to see if there are tipping points, little errors that make a big difference, then running the model over and over again to see how different the results are, we can see that everything looks pretty much the same even after little errors are put in. That means the tropical river forecast is robust. In plain language, “Count on it!”
These forecasts also include the remnant of a tropical storm or hurricane that has yet to form, being swept along into western Arizona and SE Cal. Some of our greatest floods in Arizona have occurred with these kinds of storms, as you know. Presently, the bulk of the tropical river will impinge more over the western lowlands of Arizona rather than here, but we should be in great position to accumulate appreciable rains anyway, if not the heaviest.
BTW, interested in tropical storms impacted, say, Yuma? Go here, type in the name and you will see, oh, names like Nora (1997), Kathleen, 1976, and so forth. It happens. Pretty damn exciting for those folks. So maybe it will happen again. Atmo is set up to do this, or come close.
Now for the little cloud news for yesterday, not as good a day as hoped for, just hot with run of the mill, isolated storms. Can hardly find rain in the past 24 h in the Pima County ALERT gauges.
12:18 PM. Already 100 F here but only modest clouds have formed over the Catalinas. Look at how confused the top is, one leaning one way, and the other another way. Shows how still the atmosphere was at that level, almost calm.2:05 PM. You gotta love this little guy, trying so hard to be something. I just wanted to fly up there and hug it, all puffed up the way it was but so little. Kinda reminded me of the antics of my very little brother when he was, trying to be more.
Below, the human metaphor for that little cloud shown above; my little bro. He was so cute, too. Went on to be a tough guy, as well, a young LA policeman working the Watts area during the riots, you know, guns pointed at, death threats from Black Panthers1, ambushes, etc.
Thanks, bro, for all you’ve done.
Circa 1953,5:34 PM. Squashed Cumulonimbus over west Tucson just after a spectacular cloud to ground stroke. Didn’t think it had it in it to produce LTG.6:49 PM. While it didn’t rain, we did have our usual sunset glory, lighting on the mountains.7:11 PM. Sunset colors with “Cirrus spissatus cumulonimbogenitus” in the foreground (debris from dissipated thunderheads, of course).
Finishing up with a quick look at the 11 PM U of AZ model runs…. Has some more showers around here than yesterday, which isn’t hard to do. But yesterday, this same model was foretelling a down day today. Hmmmm.
Well, gotta go with the latest, or just have a great day; lay back and enjoy whatever happens. Oh, yeah!
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1Across from the Watts police precinct was a Black Panther headquarters which at one point had a sign, “Off the pig Rango.” My brother went over and told them he was upset that they had misspelled his name. The next day the sign read, “Off the pig Ragno”, also misspelled.
Worn out from yesterday, which resembled the day before with the late “bloom” of fabulously photogenic Cumulonimbus clouds, much lightning, and an equally fabulous sunset. Took too many photos (200 plus I think) kind of out of control, due to excessive excitement again; hard drive filling up. Locating brain now in this cup of coffee.
First, before the cloud photo diary for yesterday, this wonderful, uplifting look at the weather way ahead from NOAA’s spaghetti forecasting machine last night, calculated from global data taken around the world, to be redundant, at 5 PM AST last evening, valid for 5 PM AST Friday, August 30th:
Isn’t this great?! One of the best maps I’ve seen this summer. Looks like the summer rain season1 hereabouts will be in pretty good force through the end of August now after abosrbing this NOAA check of chaos theory. Maybe Sutherland Heights will catch up to our average rainfall for July and August by the end of the month, 6-7 inches. Now sitting on only 3.2 inches since July 1st.
Yesterday’s clouds and storms
Here’s how it all started:
10:38 AM. Cumulus specks began to appear over Ms. Lemmon an hour or two earlier than the previous day, always a good trend.11:21 AM. Early sign of an aroused atmosphere, one ready to produce deep clouds. Thin, spindly clouds shooting upward rapidly, sometimes, as here, in the formation of an obscene gesture.12:57 PM. And before 1 PM, this early Cb (calvus) off the mountains to the NW! I was really preparing for giant storms ALL day in the area. But, that’s NOT what happened. They faded soon after this. Ms. Lemmon, never mind the raging heat, became devoid of clouds. It was nothing less than astonishing that it could be cloud free in the middle of the afternoon with such an “auspicious”, if rude, early start of Cumulus clouds.
3:08 PM. Its 106 F in Sutherland Heights. This view of piddly-pooh Cumlus clouds over the Catalinas didn’t seem possible, in a sense, an amazing sight. All the day’s early promise was somehow gone, drier air was moving in, and that thought made the heat even more intolerable, though I don’t mind it myself, adding a personal note here.3:25 PM. Its a 107 F; cloud drought over the Catalinas continues. May seem silly, but this was just an incredible sight I thought.5:51 PM. Within half an hour, the Cumulus began to perk up. Could the same thing happen, that sudden explosion of Cumulus into Cumulonimbus like yesterday occur AGAIN? Yes
5:51 PM. “Muffin” Cu congestus, center, has top high enough already to produce ice and precip!6:13 PM, 22 min later. “Muffin” Cu cong has grown into a small Cumulonimbus with this pretty rainshaft. But LOOK at how the clouds have filled in toward Sutherland H.!
6:53 PM. By this time more clouds were building upward, joining the fray, as here, and the whole sky was filling in. There was some stupendous cloud to ground lightning strikes with this one, but didn’t capture them.
7:05 PM. Hard to put into words how pretty a sight this was, and so dramatic, full of portent.
7:18 PM, 13 min later, the dump has come. This was the cell that produced almost continuous lightning toward the west into the early evening.
7:14 PM. In the meantime, this cloud base was expanding in the upwind direction toward Saddlebrooke-Charoleau Gap, eventually to be our rain-producer last evening just after 8 PM AST.
Today’s weather? You’ll want to see Bob’s view and, of course, that of the TUS NWS, or your favorite TEEVEE forecaster’s. U of AZ experts though today would be better than yesterday!
The End.
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1Sometimes confused with the “monsoon” of India and south Asia, which is really a MONSOON with a giant low center circulating air around it for millions and millions of square miles. Hey, Jabalpur had 17 centimeters of rain yesterday, 6.70 inches, and the rain is supposed to get heavier in the next couple of days!
Wasn’t going to blog, gets boring after a while with only dry conditions ahead, but then saw this and got pretty excited, as you will, too. Might not need that extra cup of joe to get going today.
Its valid for Wednesday, April 17th, at 5 PM AST. Pretty cool, huh?
Its unusual to see a strong signal 312 h from the model start time as here, but especially so as we get later into the spring when the jet stream is slowing down all over the northern hemi and the troughs in it smaller, spaced more closely together, slower moving, too. (Summer is really goofy in that regard.)
Here, both the 00 Z (yellow lines) and 12 Z (gray lines) model runs in the past 24 h are indicating a big fat trough in the Southwest, and the bunching together of the red lines suggest a lot of confidence in that forecast. It would mean another real chance for rain here near this time, plus or minus a day or so.
The weather just ahead, Monday
In the meantime, our very next big trough, cold slam, and stupefyingly large low center, one that explodes from a tiny “Tonopah Low1” early on Monday morning, to one whose circulation extends from southern California to Missouri, virtually covering the entire western US! In spite of its gigantic extent, it still looks dry here, any rain accumulation here very “iffy.”
On the other hand, a half inch of dust accumulation is quite likely since it’ll be darn windy that day, dramatically windy. Likely to see more than 40 mph here in Catalinaland and visibility noticeably reduced in dust later on Monday.
BTW, its quite normal for low centers that are weak over the ocean to erupt into deeper lows as they move inland, during the spring. Just the opposite happens during the deep winter period when ocean lows move inland and weaken or die over the cold continent because they lose the temperature contrast that drives them. In the spring, the warming continent is “food for lows”, like spinach for Popeye (you remember Popeye, don’t you?). Ok, then in more modern terms, like that Hulk guy that got so gigantic when he got mad or something. That’s what happens in the spring to little lows and their troughs when they move inland, especially into the warm Southwest from the Pac NW.
The great news here, and I am so pumped about it, is that this giant low will be a whopper in terms of precip for so many droughty areas of the mountainous West and the central and northern Plains States. Check out the Canadian model here as an example of what’s coming to the Plains States. Just what the weatherman ordered. I’m sure it will make the news.
For reference purposes, a before you, if you will, here is the awful drought situation from the drought monitor folks in Lincoln, NB, in the central and Southwest US as it stands today:
US drought status as of April 2, 2013. Ugh
Yes, this Monday’s low will be a billion dollar baby for some. And here’s where storm chasing is truly fun because of all the happy people you’ll meet in the rainy areas, not like those storm chasers who relish seeing tornadoes and destruction, as might happen farther to the south in Texas and across the South2.
Yesterday’s clouds
Cirrus, thickening into a dull, kind of lifeless layer of Altostratus by late afternoon and evening, the latter a deep all ice cloud; no opening in it to the west for a great big sunset, nope, just gray all the way. Staring with sunrise:
5:59 AM. Cirrus/Cirrostratus over Samaniego Ridge.10:41 AM. Cirrus fibratus (the thicker patches might also be termed spissatus, but who cares? :}) There also appears to be a high thin layer of Cirrostratus. There are definitely multiple layers where clouds are located.6:08 PM. Altostratus opacus. Note the mottled look due to virga, demonstrating that its a precipitating cloud (light snow); just doesn’t get to the ground
Today’s clouds
We’ll see the end of our pretty Cirrus and Altocumulus clouds that we have this morning by mid-day to early afternoon. Enjoy them now. Might get a good sunrise bloom here in a few minutes, too. Hope so.
————— 1Usually located on top of Tonopah, Nevada
2 “Truth-in-packaging”: Mr. Cloud Maven person chased Hurricane Carla in 1961, one of the 20th century’s greatest, ended up in Seabrook, Texas, near Galveston, and let us not forget the song about Galveston (has some wind in it) as a kind of distraction, so he’s being just that tiny bit hypocritical here.
This from Canada last night for April 8th at 5 PM AST: appropriate descriptor for AZ; “juicy.” This was such a great find early this morning!
Note deep upper low at 500 mb in eastern Cal (upper left panel) and gigantic surface low centered in Four Corners area (upper right panel). Would almost surely mean rain here in Catalina 24 h after these panels (the last one in the forecast series). If these maps verify this would be another billion-trillion dollar value storm in drought relief for the Southwest AND Plains States over the days following this map.
However, you will be as moribund as I was after looking at the USA WRF-GFS model output for the SAME moment in time, 5 PM AST April 8th below. I had hoped both models would show the same thing, which would build confidence on what’s going to happen on the 8th-9th, but they are vastly different! Take a look at THIS upper level pattern: no low in eastern Cal, just a strong jet pouring down from the Pac NW with cool air. No moisture of consequence here in Catlandia with a pattern like the one below.
Also valid at 5 PM AST April 8th, for the 500 millibar pressure level.
So who you gonna call when these kinds of things happen? Spaghetti!
Well, if you know anything at all about “spaghetti” you will only get more moribund, maybe start crying when you see it for the same time as these models. The Enviro Can mod is clearly an outlier “solution” even if though are dealing with different models. Inserting some “chaos” in form of “bad balloons” (bad data) at the start of the USA model run does not reveal a pattern with a low in eastern Cal in any of the “ensemble” model runs, but only results in a strong signal (line bunching) for a jet to whoosh down the interior of the West Coast that then loops back toward the northeast over and east of us–not good for precip here, just a rush of cool-cold air.
However, it WILL still be a pattern that’s great for Texas and the Plains States in general, so let us not be selfish in our dryness and begrudge others who get rain, but rejoice with those droughty others who will get so much relief beginning around the 8th as shown here–and that relief lasts for about three days, too. Just hope there aren’t too many tornadoes in Texas and eastward…
As an aside, it might be worth the drive to central Texas to see some of those Big Boys out there, get some perspective on Nature’s power.
Valid for 5 PM AST, April 8th.
Yesterday’s clouds, those small Cumulus, almost beyond the curvature of the earth to the north-northwest
Only the truly great cloud maven juniors of our time would have observed and logged in their weather diaries those tiny Cumulus clouds (humilis and fractus) that appeared momentarily off to the north-northwest horizon, barely visible, from Catalinaland around 5:12 PM. Since I had foretold some distant Cumulus to the north yesterday, I damn well was looking the whole afternoon, straining eyeballs, and was starting to feel sad until I saw this one cloud, and then I was SO happy, euphoric really. I think this one, and a couple of others needing a microscope to see, were there for about 15 minutes is all. Here is that photo-documentation of a small, distant Cumulus humilis. I’ve added some writing on this photo to help you find it, but you will have to blow it up.
Also, its OK to log things you missed in retrospect into your weather diary; it helps make it more complete. BTW, there were also a few little patches of Cirrus.
I don’t know. Got burned last time because of overconfidence in spaghetti assessment, so being more circumspect seeing the same strong signal ahead in that stuff today. Here’s NOAA’s best spaghetti from last night (leftovers) for you this morning:
Valid for 5 PM April 8th. Means it will be cold for April. Some rain? You would think so, but then again, we live in a desert and its hard to have rain in a desert, especially in April, May, and June. How will I make it? I need some motivational rain for blogging! See how the red lines dip halfway down Baja! Even a few blue ones in the Southwest indicating this could be a very cold event for April.
Cirrus to pass over Catalina today!
Its not like the space station, or Comet Panstarrs, but as a CMJ (cloud maven junior) you should pretend to be pretty excited anyway. That’s all we got for awhile. That exclamation mark should be treated as like a cup of coffee, should get you going, excited about anything.
An example of yesterday’s sunset Cirrus/Cirrostratus:
6:51 PM yesterday, in case you weren’t looking, though to me, that would be quite odious.
That title is so TEEVEE: “Stay tuned for ‘Jeff’s’ forecast at 11 PM (6 hours from the title announcement) to find out.” So silly. Yet, when I look deep inside myself, I find I wouldn’t mind saying things like that if was making a LOT of money to say things like that, like those TEEVEE people do. TEEVEE people making a LOT of money, its unbelievable really, how much they make, and pointing that out is kind of a theme here. Always has been, and its not just because I am not making any money myself, though it might be.
For vocational guidance purposes, for the reader considering a career in meteorology, I introduce the following graphic:
This graphic1 was based on a 1980s story in the San Francisco Chronicle about two TEEVEE meteorologists for KGO. The main guy made $400,000, and the weekend guy they had just pinched from another station for fill in and weekends, $225,000! It was forwarded to me by my mom who apparently wanted to make me feel bad about being in research at the University of Washington.
Oh, yeah, the answer to the title question?
Yes.
Let us begin and end our discussion with spaghetti:
Valid for 5 PM AST Sunday, March 31st
You can see a big trough is guaranteed here this day (and will be affecting us the day before, March 30th). Look at how the red lines cluster over northern Mexico. That means it a very confident forecast, say compared with that just east of the Hawaiian Islands.
Then, WAY out there…..
Another moderately confident rain from a trough is foretold for April 5-6th. This trough has a trajectory more or less straight out of the Pacific, and would have more tropical air in it compared with the one shown here in spaghetti.
The End.
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1Like all political cartoons, a certain liberty has been taken with the facts. Today you would likely have to have a DEGREE in meteorology to even work at a TEEVEE station in Pumpkin Corners, Nebraska.
An example of taking liberties with facts for humor is this classic insight into President Reagan’s brain from former University of Washington student, and Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist, David Horsey:
Mr. Reagan did not believe that California was that big in size, so we know that’s one thing wrong.
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.
6:28 PM, February 27th, not last night.
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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 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.
10:56 AM. Sublte bright, slightly curved line in the upper part of this photo of a Cirrus cloud patch may have been a “parhelic arc.”
