Stratocumulus clouds – Page 7

Rain piling up; total 0.35 inches at 3 AM! Now its 0.48 inches at 6 AM!

Sounds more exciting if you title like that…and that’s what I’m here for, excitement, weather and cloud excitement!

Pima County ALERT 24 h precip totals, some around here below, as of 6 AM:

Gauge             15         1           3          6            24         Name                        Location
    ID#      minutes    hour        hours      hours        hours
    —-     —-       —-        —-       —-         —-       —————–            ———————
Catalina Area
    1010     0.00       0.04       0.08        0.08         0.43      Golder Ranch                 Horseshoe Bend Road in Saddlebrooke
    1020     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.08         0.43      Oracle Ranger Stati          approximately 0.5 mile southwest of Oracle
    1040     0.04       0.08       0.12        0.12         0.47      Dodge Tank                   Edwin Road 1.3 miles east of Lago Del Oro Parkway
    1050     0.04       0.04       0.08        0.08         0.47      Cherry Spring                approximately 1.5 miles west of Charouleau Gap
    1060     0.00       0.04       0.08        0.16         0.71      Pig Spring                   approximately 1.1 miles northeast of Charouleau Gap
    1070     0.00       0.00       0.08        0.08         0.35      Cargodera Canyon             northeast corner of Catalina State Park
    1080     0.00       0.04       0.08        0.12         0.51      CDO @ Rancho Solano          Cañada Del Oro Wash northeast of Saddlebrooke
    1100     0.00       0.04       0.04        0.08         0.28      CDO @ Golder Rd              Cañada Del Oro Wash at Golder Ranch Road

Santa Catalina Mountains
    1030     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.04         0.20      Oracle Ridge                 Oracle Ridge, approximately 1.5 miles north of Rice Peak
    1090     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.00      Mt. Lemmon                   Mount Lemmon
    1110     0.00       0.04       0.12        0.24         0.71      CDO @ Coronado Camp          Cañada Del Oro Wash 0.3 miles south of Coronado Camp
    1130     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.04      Samaniego Peak               Samaniego Peak on Samaniego Ridge
    1140     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.04         0.24      Dan Saddle                   Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge
    2150     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.04      White Tail                   Catalina Highway 0.8 miles west of Palisade Ranger Station
    2280     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.31      Green Mountain               Green Mountain
    2290     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.24      Marshall Gulch               Sabino Creek 0.6 miles south southeast of Marshall Gulch

As you can see, a couple of stations in the Catalina Mountains were virtually missed by the storm (ZERO total, for example, at Ms. Mt. Lemmon) or it snowed on those low total precip gauges and the snow has not melted and is sitting in the gauge’s funnel. Select choice number 2. Mountains just becoming visible; looks like snow down to 6,000 foot level.

Didn’t see any precip/virga before dark yesterday, started raining just before 10 PM, nicely, and continued through midnight when it quit. However, the main event, lasting about 6-8 h is supposed to start happening about now, but rain mostly lighting up in TUS. That means we should see some clearing around mid-day, but leaving enough low clouds stacking up around the Catalinas for some nice quilted sun and shadows on those mountains, one of our prettiest sights I think, along with our now snow-capped mountains.

FROPA, or “frontal passage” in weather text speak, occurred late yesterday afternoon. I wonder if you noticed the wind shift and dropping temperatures? However, was a very shallow depth of wind that shifted, and temperature took about 3 h to drop 10 F, (58 F to 48 F) not exactly as sharp a FROPA as was anticipated from this microphone yesterday. Also, a bit unusual, the rain band was displaced far behind the wind shift that occurred around 4:30 PM.

Yesterday’s clouds

I thought yesterday was quite an interesting day for you. Lots of cloud types to log in your weather and cloud diary. Let us begin our retrospective with Sunrise on the Equestrian:

7:17 AM. Splayed Cirrus display, racing at you at over 100 mph.

7:52 AM. Orographic Stratocumulus top the Catalinas, a very good sign that the incoming front will produce rain. Indicates reasonable lower level humidity. — 7:52 AM. Orographic Stratocumulus top the Catalinas, a very good sign that the incoming front will produce rain. Indicates reasonable lower level humidity already in place.

9:34 AM. Small Cumulus form over the Oro, Cirrus above. So pretty a sight, I thought.

12:17 PM. Micro-snowstorm (Cirrus uncinus) passes past the Catalinas. You can see this cloud from the U of A here in their time lapse movie.

12:58 PM. Seattle-style Stratocumulus overcast. Got a little homesick there for a second. — 12:58 PM. Seattle-style Stratocumulus overcast. Got a little homesick there for a minute.

DSCN6773 — 3:38 PM. Atop horsey Jake now, looking for signs, knowing that front is getting closer. Here those darker, lower line of clouds were atop the windshift that was about to occur, marking the leading edge of the front. This colder air has lifted and chilled the moist air from the southwest to help create that lower base, the sure sign of a wind shift. Looking north toward Saddlebrooke from near The Chutes on the 50-year trail .

toward

4:27 PM. Cloud bases lower significanty as the cooler air rushed in. But look, no precip in spite of the heavy cloud cover? What's up with that? No ice, cloud tops still too warm in FROPA area. — 4:27 PM. Cloud bases lower significantly as the cooler air rushed in. But look, no precip in spite of the heavy cloud cover. What’s up with that? No ice present in them; cloud tops still too warm in even FROPA area¹.

Your next storm: due in Sunday morning. Likely just something around a tenth of an inch. Nothing showing up beyond that, but lots of mod fluctuations re storms. I suspect the one that showed up a few days ago for the 20th or so will arise again in some future run. Just a gut feeling since there’s no evidence in the spaghetti plots yet to support that hunch.

The End.

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¹The TUS balloon sounding yesterday afternoon about the time of the next to last photo. Shows tops WERE warmer than -10 C, in case you didn’t believe me because the clouds looked so dark yesterday afternoon. They were pretty dark because there was a higher ice cloud overcast (Altostratus) and when droplet concentrations are high, clouds are darker on the bottom. We usually have pretty high droplet concentrations here in old Arizony.

2013120500.72274.skewt — Note that the temperature of the air (blue) lines slope upward to the right.

Final storm total here 2.31 inches

0.48 inches fell after 7 AM yesterday, a nice addition to the 1.83 inches already “in the (raingauge) can”, with a 0.01 inches dollop overnight here in Catalina/Sutherland Heights, slightly more and less here and there, with several inches in the local mountains. That addition brought our storm total to 2.31 inches, about 2.5 times normal for the month of November which averages only 0.96 inches.

Recall that at the beginning of the month, it was deemed by the Climate Prediction Center of NOAA that we in SE AZ would experience below normal precip. But this just shows how HARD it is to predict monthly precip anomalies in semi-arid and arid regions where ONE good storm of just a day or two, can blow the forecast (thank goodness!)

Much harder to blow a monthly forecast in places like Seattle where monthly totals are based on many rain days, and if you only had 25 days with rain in a month instead of 30 due to some storm deflecting pattern, then it might turn out to be a droughty one (hahahahaha, kidding my Seattle reader). Those CPC forecasts have a greater chance of verifying in wetter areas where one rogue storm won’t blow those forecasts up.

Also recall that this season we have no La Nina nor an El Nino to hang our climate forecasting hat on. Makes it tough as well.

If Carl Sagan was a meteorologist today, he would be describing our 2-day November drought bustin’ storm as one worth “billions and billions and billions” where nearly every corner of our drought-impacted State got substantial rains. Should help, too, with wildflower eco-tourism in the spring; at least some wildflower blooms now guaranteed.

Should be a gorgeous day today with deep blue skies punctuated by fluffy Cumulus clouds, some tall enough to form ice and produce virga and light showers here and there; not likely to measure here, though. Lots of Stratocumulus¹ around early before breaking up into Cu.

Next rain chance? As November closes out into the first coupla days of December.

Yours and mine; the weather and clouds of yesterday

7:31 AM. Doggie Zuma notes R- OCNLY R, decides to return to house. — 7:31 AM. Doggie Zuma notes R- OCNLY R (light rain occasionally moderate rain) forming puddles, decides to return to house. Dog photo likely to increase web traffic…..

DSCN6449 — 10:48 AM. Light to moderate rain continued for another few hours while the back edge of the band was just over the horizon to the west!

12:12 PM. Clouds beginning to lift above ground, Catalinas plainly visible. — 12:12 PM. Clouds (Nimbostratus) beginning to lift above ground, Catalinas plainly visible. SOmetimes this scene is described in aviation parlance as, “Ceiling ragged”, cloud bottoms becoming visible because not much precip is coming out anymore. So this is a horrible report to read, “CIG RGD”, often due to cloud tops descending in height, and/or much drier air moving in, both suggesting, as it did yesterday, that the worst of storm is over.

2:40 PM. One of the great sights after a storm are the sun glints due to water on the Catalina Rockies. Hope you caught some of this yesterday.

2:41 PM. "Standard issue" crevice cloud. You'll see this over and over again on Sam Ridge. And, as suggested, a great place to hike to, then go in and out of cloud, one that can remain there for hours. — 2:41 PM. “Standard issue” crevice cloud. You’ll see this over and over again on “Sam” (Samaniego) Ridge. And, as suggested, a great place to hike to, then go in and out of cloud, one that can remain there for hours. Remember how you used to play hide and seek in the fog when you were little? BTW, fogs are real dense when they’re full of pollution, more fog droplets to cut visibility down. So that’s the kind of fog you want to play in and see if you can run away in and disappear in it from your brother.

3:56 PM. And as the storm clears, we get these wonderful highlights on the Catalinas.

4:42 PM. As the sun set, our second band of showers approached, consisting of heavy Cumulus (i.e., congestsus) and small Cumulonimbus clouds with shafts of rain. — 4:42 PM. As the sun set, our second band of showers approached, consisting of heavy Cumulus (i.e., congestus) and small Cumulonimbus clouds with shafts of rain.

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¹ Stratocumulus: “flat Cumulus”, a cloud name oxymoron

Yesterday’s drizzle

Some rare drizzle precip¹ fell yesterday. Suggests clouds were pretty “clean”, that is, didn’t have much aerosol loading and the concentrations of droplets in them was low (likely less than 100 cm^-3) Also likely, in view of the recent strong winds, some of the aerosols in those clouds might have been large dust particles² rather than those due to just “smog” and other tiny natural aerosols. Large dust particles can not only influence the development of ice at higher temperatures than normal (above -10 C), but is also known to aid the formation of rain due to cloud drops bumping into each other and sticking together; collisions and coalescence because large dust particles can accelerate this process by forming large initial drops at the bottom of the cloud where drops first condense. Here, drops are nearly always too small to bump together and join up unless clouds are deep, like our summer ones, and ice is going to form anyway.

So, yesterday, was a bit of a novelty. Some photos and story telling:

SONY DSC — 1:34 PM. Drizzling from Stratocumulus!

The late Jack Russell, engineer, listening to Art tell another cloud investigation story. — The late Jack Russell, flight engineer, listening to Art tell another cloud investigation story.

2:43 PM. Cumulus humilis field over Saddlebrooke.

3:06 PM. Drizzle precip just a memory. These clouds too shallow to rain. — 3:06 PM. Drizzle precip just a memory. These clouds too shallow to rain via collisions, and too warm to form ice.

Looking ahead….

Mods paint dry weather for the next 15 days, and so yesterday’s disappointing “trace” (don’t recall here that Mr. Cloud Maven person had predicted at least 0.02 inches!) may be it for October. Phooey.

———————-

¹Drizzle: Fine (size range, 200-500 microns in diameter drops) close together, that nearly float in the air. Very difficult to bicycle in drizzle even with a cap or big hat. Fallspeeds, just a few mph. Smaller sizes can’t make it out of the cloud, or evaporate within a few feet almost if they do. Even true drizzle occurrences, you can’t be too far below the base of the clouds or those tiny drops won’t make it down to you.

²What is a “large” dust particle in a cloud? Oh, 1-10 microns in diameter, real rocks compared with the other stuff normally in them. So’s you get a drop that’s already pretty large as soon as condensation takes places. And, if the updrafts are weak at the bottom, then only them big ones might be activated, keeping the whole cloud’s droplet concentrations low! Happens even in places in the middle of huge land masses where in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, we saw this happen on a dusty, moist day in shallow Stratocumulus clouds. They developed some drizzle drops. I was with the National Center for Atmos. Research on a field project then.

³1988: Rain from Clouds with Tops Warmer than -10 C in Israel (Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc.)

Traced yesterday, BTW

I wonder if you caught it? Fell between 8:10 and 8:12 AM. Very isolated, and pretty small drops. If you weren’t driving in it, or outside, you would never have known this happened. But observing and reporting events like this is what makes us who we are, you reader of CM. We take pride in seeing and observing what others don’t.

8:12 AM. Documentation of the total rain event on a car window. — 8:12 AM. Photographic documentation of the total rain event on a car window, zoomed view. The largest raindrops are about 1 mm in size.

Before the rain hit, some two or three RW– (weather text version of “very light rainshowers”) began to fall to the SW of us from that deck of Stratocumulus clouds. Must have been where the tops were higher than anywhere else. Here’s the first sign, and upwind of Catalina, that you, as a CMJ (cloud maven junior) know to pull your car out of the garage. (BTW, thinking about having a CMJ cookie drive next month…so look around for your best recipes.)

7:42 AM. A full 30 minutes before the trace event in Catalina, a weak shaft of rain is observed by Twin Peaks. — 7:42 AM. A full 30 minutes before the trace event in Catalina, a weak shaft of rain is observed on Twin Peaks, part of a broken line of sprinkles-its-not-drizzle rain.

It may seem strange, a non-sequitor, for those blog passersby to be talking about taking your car out of the garage or carport if a slight amount of rain might occur, as was the case yesterday. Here’s the “skinny”, as we used to say in the last century when we were young and could do things: a “clean” car, one that been wiped of all evidence of prior rain drops, but one having a thin coating of dust (you don’t have to apply a thing dust layer, its goes with the territory here) is great as a “trace detector.” And for us, CMs and CMJs, observing a trace such as yesterdays, when ordinary observers miss it (fumble the ball), is like hitting a low outside slider from former Husky pitcher Tim Lincecum, for a game winning touchdown. Or Boise State beating Oklahoma in a bowl game.

Why not just use the radar instead of parking your car outside and if the 24 h depiction of precip shows an echo over you, just mark yourself down as having a “trace”?

That would be cheating! Besides, some echoes seen on radar are only aloft.

And what if you’re in a “data silent” zone, where the radar beam is blocked by terrain, or is too far away? You’re adding unique information with your trace. Sure, nobody around you really cares if you had a trace or not, but, what the HECK.

8:01 AM. Heavy looking cloud produces sprinkle on the Tortolitas. Looks so dark partly because of the time of day, and partly because there was a fair amount of aerosol in the air. When it gets into clouds, it causes the drops in them to be small, and when small, they reflect more light off their tops and the bottoms appear darker. — 8:01 AM. Heavy looking cloud produces sprinkle on the Tortolitas. Looks so dark partly because of the time of day, and partly because there was a fair amount of aerosol in the air. When higher aerosol concentrations get into clouds, it causes the drops in them to be small, and when small, they reflect more light off their tops and the bottoms appear darker. But it also indicates that the clouds are thicker than surrounding clouds, there’s a mound on the top. Still, among those higher droplet concentrations must have been drops large enough to collide and stick together and become small raindrops.

Did the tops reach -10 C or so to form ice and cause this shower? Nope. Capped out at 0 to -5 C, so almost impossible to have had ice form to cause our sprinkles. Check this sounding from the WY Cowboys, who are off to a good season BTW.

The Tucson sounding for 5 AM AST yesterday morning during our cloudy conditions.

In examining this TUS sounding closely, its good to remember that we are NOT Tucson, but in Catalina. We are 14 miles from the city limits; have a road sign that sez so. “Hey”, we aren’t even on the same side of the mountains as is “Tucson.” In fact, you have to go through the city limits of Oro Valley to get to Catalina! Only the Post Office thinks that Catalina is in “Tucson.” OK, got that in…

And, during the cooler season when troughs go by, as yesterday, the temperature profile from Tucson balloon is not accurate for us here in Catalina; its always that bit colder to the north and west of the balloon launch site for days like yesterday. So, like a chef, adding that bit more of butter or garlic, OUR sounding should be tweaked from the TUS one to show slightly higher and colder cloud tops, probably near – 5 C, not at ZERO or slightly cooler in overshooting Cumulus/Stratocumulus tops as would be expected from the Tucson sounding. Also, since it sprinkled at 8 AM, and not 5 AM, its also likely that clouds tops were going up some as the trough from the west approached yesterday. So there are lots of possibilities.

Sure wish we’d had a PIREP! (Texting form of, “Pilot report”). Any CMJ’s out there have an aircraft that we could take up and kind of poke around up there, see for sure what really happened instead of “hand waving”?

Absent aircraft reports, I am going to say that almost certainly yesterday’s sprinkle was a case of rain formed by “collisions with coalescence, or via the “warm rain” process (called that because it doesn’t have ice), sometimes called here, “coalision” rain. Very unusual in Arizona and, you can see that if you have to park your car outside to see how much came out of a cloud producing rain through “coalision”, it doesn’t amount to much.

You know, this is a great story for you. First, you observe rain that no one else did, or even cares about, until maybe you tell them it was almost certainly caused by collisions among cloud droplets, and then watch their eyes bug out!

Had some spectacular highlights again on the Catalinas, and also evidence of the aerosol loading as we say, in the crepuscular rays (colloq., crepsucular) shown below.

8:03 AM. Evidence of smog, maybe some dust, too, aerosols that were getting into our clouds yesterday. — 8:03 AM. Evidence of smog, maybe some dust, too, aka, aerosols that were getting into our clouds yesterday.

1:39 PM. Its all over. Only a field of small Cumulus ("humilis") are left. Photo taken from inside a horse corral to give it a western flavor, maybe make you feel more comfortable after a heavy dose of "science-hand waving." — 1:39 PM. Its all over. Only a field of small Cumulus (“humilis”) are left. Photo taken from inside a horse corral to give it a western flavor, make it more accessible to reader, maybe make you feel more comfortable after a heavy dose of “science-hand waving” today. Note rust on panel piping; adds artistic content. “Rusty corral and Cumulus humilis”; yours today only for $2,000.

Since there is STILL no rain indicated for the next 15 days in the models, just dry (for now) trough passages, I may have to discuss yesterday’s sprinkle again tomorrow. Thinking of a title even now: “That sprinkle; more insights on what happened.” Yeah, that should do it.

The End.

The little rogue Cb (sports format: Rogue Cb 1, CAPE, 0)

Later I noticed that the afternoon sounding from TUS had ZERO CAPE, a measure of how unstable the atmosphere is. With zero CAPE (no instability indicated), you don’t expect a Cb. Hence the title, a sciency humor.

With yesterday’s capped clouds, capped by a horrific inversion at 16,000 feet above sea level, you may have spotted this remarkable sight late yesterday; first the wide angle view, then the zoomed view:

6:08 PM. Zoomed view. Now you can just barely make out the little rain shaft, and the ice-ed out tops sticking up above the Stratocumulus clouds. Just amazing! How did that happen? — 6:08 PM. Zoomed view. Now you can just barely make out the little rain shaft, and the ice-ed out tops sticking up above the Stratocumulus clouds. Just amazing! How did this happen? Don’t know, unless it was REALLY hot over there.

The 5 PM AST Tucson sounding for yesterday. — The 5 PM AST Tucson sounding for yesterday from the University of Wyoming Cowboys, located in Laramie, Wyoming, the happiest state in the whole US. Really, there is hardly a jollier people than those in Wyoming!¹ According to our analysis software, there is no instabiity indicated that would support a Cumulonimbus cloud protruding to 25 or 30 Kft as the one in the photos above is doing. But, oops, there it is!

Still, even with mashed clouds, yesterday was often a very pretty one, in the 99 F heat here in SH, and ended with a great sunset. See below:

12:24 PM. Mounding Cumulus cloud adds a bit of interest here. Thought it was possible for some virga, but didn't happen. Not cold enough at mounding top. — 12:24 PM. Mounding Cumulus cloud adds a bit of interest here. Thought it was possible for some virga, but didn’t happen. Not cold enough for ice to form in mounding top, but you knew that already. Also, the high mountain horizon NW-NE was “silent” yesterday. No Cb tops seen.

3:31 PM. One of the greatest examples of Cumulus humilis (humble) you'll ever see. They're screaming at you; my head hurts; there's an inversion on it! — 3:31 PM. One of the greatest examples of Cumulus humilis (“humble”) you’ll ever see. They’re screaming at you; “my head hurts; there’s an inversion on it!”

6:32 PM. “All’s well that ends well”–Bill Gates. Yesterday’s heating and strong inversion kept the Cu hum forming and filling in so that they accumulated at the base of the inversion, eventually leading to almost overcast skies in the late afternoon and evening. And with clear skies farther west, resulted in this beauty as the sun sank below the horizon.

The weather ahead…

Seems like were destined to be on the edge of the summer rains for another week or so, meaning we might have to get telescopes out to see a big fat Cumulonimbus clouds. Canadian model from last night had some rain moving into southern AZ on the 23rd ahead of a big trough. We’ll see.

I also saw, in the “Moonlight Feels Right moonlight this morning (the singer of that song keeps laughing; must be from Wyoming….)”, some Altocu around. So, at least another scenic day, it a dry one today.

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¹OBJECTIVE HAPPINESS BY STATE. I’ve posted this before, but I felt it was good to remind my reader where the jolliest people are in case he/she’s thinking of a vacation and want to go to a happy place, not a grumpy ones like those in New York State.

Nice lighting

Clouds were so-so yesterday, didn’t deliver the big punch as one U of AZ mod foretold (Samaniego Ridge and vicinity only got a tenth of inch or so compared with the 1-2 inches that was predicted), but, the lighting yesterday morning, oh, my, that lighting on the mountains and elsewhere as little breaks in the overcast Altocumulus/Stratocumulus deck zipped by, were beyond description. Lost control and began snapping photos like a turtle or toad surrounded by little flying somethings that they thought would be great to eat. Here are SOME:

For the day in review go to the U of AZ time lapse movie. Its really pretty interesting, and if you thought it was a dull and disappointing day, at least it will go by fast.

At least we did receive another 0.04 inches here in SH-Catalina over the past 24 h, though it fell at an excruciatingly low rate; didn’t think that little tipping bucket would ever tip for that ONE hundredth amount. Seemed like drops fell for hours before it did. BTW, the forever reminder: it wasn’t drizzle precip, but rain, very light

RAIN!

(This is my legacy; that when I am done, folks say; “You know, I knew that guy. I don’t remember a thing that he said except that drizzle isn’t a few drops here and there, but rather a thick, misty kind of precipitation that floats under your umbrella if there’s much wind. Comes from the coalisions-with-coalescence rain formation process, one that doesn’t require ice, though I don’t know why I would want to remember something like that.”)

Today….

Another fun-filled cloudy day with rain here and there. “Take Me to the River“, as David Byrne wrote, and was covered by the Songs of Science by Bill Nye et al (which I can’t find online, dang), the tropical one. Well, its here, that tropical one, passing right over head and so the POTENTIAL for big rains continues for another day or so. Lots of rain predicted twixt now and midnight by that U of AZ WRF-GFS mod–you can go here and check it out. Of course, it wasn’t so great yesterday, but they’re just too good most of the time to discard and so maybe today and tonight, the errors won’t be so great and we’ll pick up an inch or so hereabouts.

The End.

Zzzzzzzz, zzzzzzz….reprise of a soporific summer day

Though the the castellanus twins dropped by yesterday:

10:24 AM. After a hazy start, this pair showed up, two perfect examples of Altocumulus castellanus, side by side. Have never see this before. — 10:24 AM. After a hazy start, this pair showed up; two perfect examples of Altocumulus castellanus, side by side. Have never see this before. Castellanus indicate a layer of the atmosphere where the temperature declines more rapidly than in other moist layers, allowing little baby turrets to extrude from the base that bit. Sometimes, though, they can reach high enough and get large enough to have virga. But not yesterday. You definitely should not have logged any virga from these clouds.

Altocumulus castellanus, that is. Suggests atmo in this layer ripe for convection, but unless there’s some humidity below these clouds, it can be kind of an old saw that doesn’t work out a lot of times, unless they themselves get overly enthusiastic and begin to shower and thunder. It happens.

While yesterday had these interesting clouds, and a couple of distant Cumulonimbus tops, the only real excitement was this dumpster NW of us shown below. Did any one drive over there to get under it and measure the rain it put out? I would dole out some extra credit if you did. Otherwise, we’re going to have to rely on radar to estimate how much came down over there.

1:50 PM. Surprisingly dense rain shaft off the NW from a rogue Cumulonimbus. Nothing much else really all afternoon. Boring! Remember how we used to yell, BORING!!!!" in that movie when that guy was talking? You don't find people/whole audiences yelling at the movie screen anymore because something is going on they don't like and feel motivated to comment on. People are more reserved now days. — 1:50 PM. Surprisingly dense rain shaft to the NW from a rogue Cumulonimbus. Nothing much else really all afternoon. Boring! Remember how we used to yell, BORING!!!!” in that movie when that guy was talking¹? You don’t find people/whole audiences yelling at the movie screen anymore because something is going on they don’t like and feel motivated to erupt with a comment. People are more reserved now days and hold in feelings at movies, probably not the best thing.

4:46 PM. The Lemmon cloud factory was on strike most of the day, and here, that dark blue sky made you think of college football. — 4:46 PM. The Lemmon cloud factory was “on strike” most of the day, and here, that dark blue sky made you think of college football.

6:15 PM. Evening clump of Stratocumulus trails a little snow from its bottom. Lately we've had "blooms" energized convection, growth of Cumulus, but yesterday was, well, BORING!!!!! — 6:15 PM. Evening clump of Stratocumulus trails a little snow from its bottom. Lately we’ve had “blooms” energized convection, growth of Cumulus, but yesterday was, well, BORING!!!!! Nice little flourish of Cirrus, though.

The week in rain

Since most of Arizona is unpopulated, and even when there are people, not everyone reports rain, so we have to rely on radar-derived rainfall amounts to “fill in the blanks” Are you a “blank”? Think about it. Now looking back at this past 7-days, ending yesterday, and using radar for any sense of what happened all over the State here’s what we get, from WSI Intellicast. We had an amazing 7 days of rainfall, rains that did so much to dent the NW AZ drought with many inches of rain. Need more, of course, but here it is:

Radar-derived rainfall for the week ending August 27th, 2013. Look at those 4-8 inch totals W of Prescott! And indications of over 8 inches a tad west of Needles!

The weather ahead

U of WA mod, and his one , crunching last afternoon’s global data, have the size of clouds picking up today and over the next couple of days. Yay. Need more rain.

The End.

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¹Furthermore, it was supposed to be a horror movie, and instead it had SINGING! Unbelievable. No wonder people were upset when they saw it!

Clouds larger than expected; and a travelogue about areas where historic July rains fell

First, yesterday’s sunset:

7:14 PM. Residual Cumulus and Stratocumulus supply targets for fading sunlight. — 7:14 PM. Residual Stratocumulus clouds supply targets for fading sunlight.

Some pie, H-pie: Whereas a modest push of moisture into Tucson and central Pima County was deemed insufficient to produce rain here yesterday, some drops DID fall here producing a trace late yesterday afternoon.

But some areas of the Catalinas got clobbered with White Tail, over there around Sabino Canyon, collecting 2.17 inches (!) and Samaniego Ridge over thisaway, 0.47 inches, the latter from a pile of Cumulus congestus clouds that blossomed into a Cb with a dense rain shaft right before the writer’s eyes. This after he had opined to his wife that he doubted those dark clouds would rain on the western side of the Catalinas…. Hmmmm.

They thundered and rained a plenty, and the wind that came out of that shaft dropped the temperature some 15 degrees here in Sutherland Heights with wind gusts to more than 35 mph. Furthermore, that outflow, spreading out across Oro Valley and parts NW, and went on to launch one new thunderstorm north of Saddlebrooke, which was very nice, of course. Didn’t think that would happen either as very dry air was working its way in already from the SW.

As the clouds massed over Catalina-Sutherland Heights, was returning from a fabulous tour “investigating” the results of 8-12 inches of rain in Jul of the area around Sierra Vista-Fort Huachuca along HWYs 90 and 92 then through Coronado National Memorial Park (about 10 inches fell at Visitor’s Center in July), then over Montezuma Pass (6575 ft) and on to Sonoita.

Holy Smokes was that gorgeous; highly recommended. Traveling down HWY 90, With Stratocumulus topping the green, forested Huachuca Mountains, and the green in the foreground, one thought of Hawaii. Some photos from that trip FYI. It’ll be a LONG time before this happens again! Also, some summer wildflowers are in display as well.

10:20 AM, Sierra Vista. Some kind of flower. I am a cloud maven, not a flower maven.

11:13 AM. Entrance sign to the Park, in case you didn't believe that I went there to see the effects of a lot of rain. — 11:13 AM. Entrance sign to the Park, in case you didn’t believe that I went there to see the effects of a lot of rain.

11:13 AM. Another view going in, one from the viewpoint of driving on the wrong side of the road for the purpose of startling you, getting your attention here.

11:22 AM. Raingauge at the CNP Vistior's Center. I thought you would like to see that. Looks a little too enclosed by vegetation unless the rain is falling straight down. — 11:22 AM. Rain gauge at the CNMP Vistior’s Center. I thought you would like to see that. Looks a little too enclosed by vegetation, and unless the rain is falling straight down. If its windy, its likely to under catch the precip. Should be in an opening twice the distance as the nearest high thing, something like that, quite an opening.

11:55 AM. View of small Cumulus from the top of Montezuma Pass in the CNMP. — 11:55 AM. View of small Cumulus from the top of Montezuma Pass (elev. 6575 ft) in the CNMP. Temp was 81 F is all.

12:07 PM. A view of the Pass environs, with moderate-sized Cumulus clouds. So green.

12:24 PM. Another flower of some kind, who knows what? There were a lot of these things on the way down toward the west. — 12:24 PM. Another flower of some kind, who knows what? There were a lot of these things on the way down the Pass toward the west.

12:56 PM. Hell, its beginning to look like KS here. What is with that? Also, it was disheartening not to see any cars for long stretches, cars containing people looking at the effects of an historic July rainfall. — 12:56 PM. Hell, its beginning to look like KS here. What is with that? Also, it was disheartening not to see any cars for long stretches, cars likely containing people looking at the effects of historic July rains.

4:52 PM. Blast of wind came about ten minutes later. — 4:52 PM. Got back just in time to see this thunderstorm develop. The blast of wind came about ten minutes later. A day doesn’t get better than this one.

5:45 PM. So pretty! — 5:45 PM. So pretty, this Cumulonimbus northwest of Saddlebrooke resulting from the outflow from the rain shaft shown above.

Hot dry days ahead for awhile, as you know. May have to generate some filler material….

The End.

Tracy day; OK sunset, too

BTW, finally got a “submission” in late yesterday about our neat storm after what was deemed a power outage of some type affecting the hosting service yesterday. After re-reading it, perhaps I had too much time to think about it… Oh, well, onward.

First, from yesterday, a day with occasional sprinkles, dessert:

6:48 PM. Residual Stratocumulus and Cirrus from our nice storm provide a finishing touch to an unusually cool day. — 6:48 PM. Residual Stratocumulus and Altostratus translucidus from a cloudy, unusually cool April day.

The remarkable thing about yesterday, and you might have thought it was fog, was the amount of dust in the air after the rain and after the winds calmed down from those 50-60 mph blasts from yesterday. Well, it was plenty windy in the deserts behind the rainy frontal band and that dust-laden air moved in right after the front went by. At first glance, and since it had rained, I thought it might be fog! But a quick check of my senses and the relative humidity, which needs to be near 100%, showed that it was only around 60%, the measurement that demonstrated it could not POSSIBLY be fog. There you have it. Problem solving for you by C-M.
Here’s an example of that dust:

7:12 AM. The unusual sight of thick dust below Stratocumulus clouds and only hours after a substantial rain.

With cloud tops yesterday only having to reach to 11,000 feet above sea level to surpass the magical -10 C (14 F) temperature level, hardly much above Ms. Lemmon, ice and virga from these clouds was virtually guaranteed. And, if you were watching, there was plenty, including from those clouds we couldn’t really see so well due to dust, ones that produced those several morning and early afternoon sprinkles (“its not drizzle”, a continuing theme here. Only a meteorological ignoramus would call a fall of isolated drops, “drizzle” (or snow and rain mixed together “sleet”). Perhaps I am too strong here, but it is important to get it right since REAL drizzle and sleet (raindrops that freeze on their way down through a shallow cold layer) tell you important things about the clouds and layering of the air overhead. Here are some of yesterday’s clouds as the dust thinned (both due to mixing upward into a greater depth, and due to clearer air moving in):

9:09 AM. The dust remains, but the Stratocu is mostly gone. Twin Peaks still not visible from Catalina.

10:13 AM. Dust lifts as Cumulus arise on the Catalina Mountains. Nice view of "Catalina Heights" manufactured home country, too. — 10:13 AM. Dust lifts as Cumulus arise on the Catalina Mountains. Nice view of “Catalina Heights” manufactured home country, too, where C-M lives.

12:20 PM. By mid-day, quite a few of the highest tops of the Cumulus-Stratocumulus complexes had likely surpassed the -10 C level, probably much lower, to -15 C or lower temperatures, and scattered virga and snowshowers were aplenty in the afternoon.

3:20 PM. By this time cloud tops had descended, weren't so cold, and those Cumulus and Stratocumulus clouds just kind of sat around not doing much but making pretty shadows on the Catalinas. — 3:20 PM. By this time cloud tops had descended, weren’t so cold, and those Cumulus and Stratocumulus clouds just kind of sat around not doing much but making pretty shadows on the Catalinas.

By mid-afternoon, most of the deeper clouds with substantial virga were gone. You can see what happened in the mid-afternoon here in the U of AZ time lapse movie (as well as the thinning of the dust haze we had yesterday) here.

The weather ahead

No rain has popped now in the mods for some time regarding the passage of a trough on the 17th, just some wind with it, though not anywhere like what we just had. In the drought relief department, it was another great day yesterday for portions of KS and NE as shown in the WSI Intellicast radar-derived precip map:

The 24 h precip totals for the US ending at 5 AM AST this morning.

The End

One of the greatest Seattle days in the history of Catalina, Arizona

Yesterday, that is. It felt like I never left. Only 49 F here; was 55 F in Seattle yesterday.

But the main thing that made it seem “so Seattle” was the persistent low Stratocumulus overcast, almost no sun whatsoever, and a little rain. We picked up another 0.03 inches in a couple of morning episodes of R– (an old weather texting¹ shorthand for “very light rain”) to bring the storm total here to 0.55 inches. Of course, the best part of that overcast was that it allowed the ground to be damp for another day, helping the spring grasses and wildflowers by keeping the soil moisture in the soil and not flying away under a hot sun. The worst part of the overcast that lasted almost all day, was that Mr. Cloud Maven person had the day completely wrong–thought it would break open in the afternoon to “partly cloudy” and so he was as gloomy as the sky. You see, as a weather forecaster, you can’t even really enjoy a nice day if you didn’t predict it. Had some sad 75 F days in Seattle when I only predicted 69 F; everybody having summer fun but me.

Enough nostalgia, here are the clouds, even if you have no interest in seeing such boring clouds again:

6:56 AM. Interesting little punctuated lenticular. Mr. CMP has finsihed his blog and thinks the sky will break open in the afternoon. Hah! — 6:56 AM. Interesting little punctuated lenticular. Mr. “CMP” has just finished his long blog and thinks the sky will break open in the afternoon. Hah!

8:00 AM. Stratocumulus tops Samaniego Ridge--with the turrets, you might lean toward adding the descriptor, "castellanus." Note blue sky here, if you didn't see any at all yesterday. — 8:00 AM. Stratocumulus tops Samaniego Ridge–with the turrets, you might lean toward adding the descriptor, “castellanus.” Note blue sky here, if you didn’t see any at all yesterday. No precip evident.

8:02 AM. Looking north toward S-Brooke. Fine shafts of precip emit from Stratocumulus clouds indicating those regions in the cloud where there was more liquid water at one time, where these clouds are humped up like those Sc clouds on Samaniego Ridge. But, was the precip due to ice or the colliding drops process? I wasn't sure at this point. You see, after a storm, the clouds can be real clean, almost oceanic-like meaning they have LOW droplet concentrations, and when the droplet concentrations are low, the drops are usually larger and can get to sizes where they stick together when they collide (think 30-40 micron diameters). You probably have a clue about that size, but it sounds great if you see this and tell a neighbor that, "those clouds might have drops larger than 30-40 micron near cloud tops." Instant expert! — 8:02 AM. Looking north toward S-Brooke. Fine shafts of precip emit from Stratocumulus clouds indicating those regions in the cloud where there was more liquid water at one time, that is, where these clouds are humped up like those Sc clouds on Samaniego Ridge in the prior photo (the precip from those clouds may have been out of sight). But, was the precip shown here due to ice or the colliding drops process? I wasn’t sure at this point. You see, after a storm, the clouds can be real clean, almost oceanic-like meaning they have LOW droplet concentrations, and when the droplet concentrations are low, the drops are usually larger and can get to sizes where they can stick together when they collide (think 30-40 micron droplet diameters). You probably don’t have a clue about those sizes, but it sounds great if you see rain like this and tell a neighbor that, “those clouds might have drops larger than 30-40 microns in diameter near cloud tops.” Instant neighborhood expert!

8:06 AM. Then the clouds to the west of Oro Valley and Catalina began to produce fine precipitation, definitely looking like a true drizzle event (caused by colliding drop rain formation process), at least to me at this point. This is a rare event when very light rain or true misty drizzle (tiny drops, close together) occurs in Arizona. Usually our clouds have too many droplets from natural and anthropogenic sources and the cloud droplets stay too small to collide and stick together, instead bumping around like marbles with all the surface tension they got. — 8:06 AM. Then the clouds to the west of Oro Valley and Catalina began to produce fine precipitation and advance on Catalina. How nice. Definitely was looking like a true drizzle event (caused by colliding drop rain formation process), at least to me at this point. That process is a rare event in AZ when very light rain or true misty drizzle (tiny drops, close together) forms like that. Usually our clouds have too many droplets from natural and anthropogenic sources and the cloud droplets stay too small to collide and stick together, instead bumping around like marbles with all the surface tension they got. And then because they’re all tiny, they don’t have much impact when they hit, there’s not a lot of velocity difference like there would be in a cloud with a broad droplet spectrum, the kind of spectrum we see in “clean” clouds where drops bigger than 30 microns are a plenty. Note trails of precip coming down in center. BTW, to go way off topic, to distract from how bad my forecast was, in “hygroscopic” seeding, particles like salt are introduced at cloud base to encourage the formation of rain through this process in polluted Cumulus clouds. Worked in Saudi, based out of Riyadh, winter of 2006-07, flying in a Lear jet, helping to select Cu for random seeding using that methodology². Our office at the government met building, I recall, was cleaned by the “Bin Laden” group. Hmmmm. Maybe its a common name there, to go even farther off topic.

10:09 AM. So Seattle! (Have to make up for that last bloated caption.)

4:49 PM. And that's your entire day. — 4:49 PM. And that’s your entire day.

6:27 PM. Sunset tried to do something. But, like the day, it was like that sugar icing on a stale cinnamon roll, just didn't quite make it, though cinnamon rolls are quite good as a rule. — 6:27 PM. Sunset tried to do something. But, like the day, it was like that sugar icing on a stale dried out cinnamon roll, just didn’t quite make it, though cinnamon rolls are quite good as a rule.

Today’s clouds

Some residual small Cumulus, maybe clumping into a larger group this morning for a bit, which you would then refer to as Stratocumulus. Should gradually diminish in size and coverage until almost completely clear in the afternoon. Expect a north wind in the afternoon, too.

The weather ahead

There isn’t any, well, not right away, but WAY ahead….

Chances for rain begin to pick up after the 19th as we enter the “zone of curl”, “cyclonic curls” in the upper atmosphere with a lot of “vorticity” in them again, with temperatures falling back to normal values. Pretty tough to have warm weather for long at this time of year in AZ. You see, its troughs like to “nest in the West” in March, April, and May, even when they’re not strong and far enough south to bring rain, maybe only wind. Its a climo thing, and it causes many areas of the West to see an increase in precipitation in March from February, and also halts the rapid rise in spring temperatures (especially in Seattle, hahahaha, sort of).

This because the global circulation pattern, responding to the climb of the sun in the sky and warming continents in the northern hemisphere, those forces acting on the position of the jet stream, and weakening it here in the NH (northern hemisphere), is changing the jet stream pattern so that storms begin to move southeastward from the north Pacific across the Pac NW into the Great Basin area in the spring, bringing cold north Pacific air into the West. There was a great report about this phenomenon by old man Bjerknes out of UCLA with his Ph. D. grad student, Chuck Pyke, back in the mid-1960s. Pyke was a UCLA sports nut, BTW, to add some color to this account.

We won’t see that “trough in the West” pattern for awhile here in our “oasis of warmth” now about to begin, but count on it returning, as it appears to do late in the model runs from last night. Climo is forcing it.

The End, except for footnotes.

——————————————-
¹Yeah, that’s right. Weathermen, as we would say it then, were way ahead of their time, “texting” each other long before kids thought of “texting.” You might write a weather friend, if you could find one: “We had a TSTM to the S with FQTLTGCCCG ALQDS last night for a few H. MVD N.” PIREPS, SIGMETS, too, were all “texted” and texted by teletype! Tell your kids.

²Was under the aegis of Research Applications Program (RAP) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO. Money was good…though not nearly as much as you would make as a TEEVEE weather presenter (hahaha). I was a post retiree guest scientist for RAP NCAR. Clouds could be real bumpy there in Saudi, thought I was gonna die once as bottom dropped out of the Lear going into Cumulonimbus at night that one time. Pilot liked to cut it close between the hail shafts and the rising parts of the Cu with little or no precip, using his aircraft radar. But sometimes, it was a little too close…and we got into the shear zone between a strong updraft and the downdraft.