First, yesterday’s sunrise rainbow, in case you missed it.
5:56 AM. Virga/RW– (very light rain shower) from Altocumulus opacus (‘thick”) leads to an early morning treat. The rainbow faintly extends all the way up to cloud base, indicating that the freezing level was at or above cloud base. The TUS morning sounding indicated that this layer was based at 14,000 feet and about 0 C. Some sprinkles did reach the ground, but shadows from terrain or other clouds prevented the bow from reaching the ground.
“Dumps of the Day”:
12:57 PM. North of Saddlebrooke, this cloudburst. With bases as low as they were, LTG, indicative of stronger updrafts in the storms yesterday, likely an inch or more fell in this one. If anyone drove under this with a gauge, I’d like to hear from you, get some ground truth. Also note how obscured this tremendous Cumulonimbus is by the layer of Altocumulus, showing that on really moist days, it doesn’t have to get real hot and sunny to generate big storms.
A little later, this masterpiece of a cloudburst, without doubt one of the most dramatic I have seen in five summers here, or anywhere really. Here’s the sequence:
1:57 PM. Nice looking shower, but kind of so-so at this point. Drifted away from the “action” for about 15 min, and came out, jaw dropped when I saw what had happened over there! You just cannot take you “eye off the ball” here in the summer for even that long without some “volcano” going off. Check out the next shot.2:13 PM, just 16 min later, we have a serious cloudburst over there somewhere near Railway Ranch mining operations next to the Tortolitas. Easily 1-2 inches in 15 minutes kind of rainrate1. Was losing control here and took a lot of shots, just in awe of how nicely shaped it was, the lighting, the lightning, lots of it, feeling lucky to be alive and living here in Catalina and seeing something like this, and on and on. But I had to remember that sights like this are only seconds in duration. So much water is falling out at this second, and smashing into the ground, that the air has to get out of the way, and this columns like these flare out on the sides, and, it can rain out in minutes if the updraft isn’t continued somewhere else. In this case it was on the right side, and new dumps kept falling out as it propagated north. Took some video to prove it, too.2:14 PM. One minute later. Look how the blast at the ground is spreading out already! Unbelievable sight! So pretty, too.2:35 PM. New splash-downs occurred as those dark bases in the earlier photos, representing the updraft portions feeding the storm, gave out, first with fine fibers, if you looked closely, then the whole dump. With each new smash down (does that expression come from wrestling vaudeville?) new updrafts are launched adjacent to the dump and the cycle is (usually) repeated. About this time gusty NW winds from this storm hit Saddlebrooke and Sutherland Heights, but, alas, no new Cumulus formed above it. Must have not been enough of an upward shove, and/or our air too cool.3:05 PM. Eventually, all of those dark Cumulus bases got rained out and no new ones formed, leaving this “debris” cloud to continue raining itself out. At this stage, little if any new precip is forming up there. If you flew in it, what you would find for precip is giant snow flakes, amid lots of other tiny ice crystals, and some residual small cloud droplets, all of which are disappearing. Those large snowflakes melt into normal-sized raindrops (not ones splashing 3 inches off the pavement as would be in the “dump”). The rain here is more and more beginning to resemble the rain that falls in our winter storms. Seeing an absence of new Cumulus near us made me kind of sad at this point after the euphoria and hope just two hours earlier when I thought maybe the outflow winds that roared through would launch new Cumulus over ME. But no, it was all over at this point, with no chance of appreciable rain in “The Heights” (of Sutherland). We did get a sprinkle from a similar dying gasp of a storm that crept over the Catalinas from the east a little later.
Looks like today, absent the latest mod runs and using older material, always a little risky, looks very similar to yesterday, except as yesterday compared to the tropical day before that, our cloud bases are heading upward overall as the level of moisture declines.
Also, like yesterday, there’s very little steering wind for our storms, and so they tend to sit and die, unless the outflow winds can launch new buildups that blow up into Cumulonimbus clouds. Those outflow winds are chaotic, and where that happens, well, you’ll have to be watching. Though Ms. Lemmon, our nearby friend, did not produce much of anything yesterday, you figure that’s going to change today.
The good news ahead is that there is no clear cut end to our summer rain season yet, though there will be greater and lesser days of activity, as usual . Eventually the westerlies aloft will sweep down into Arizona and clear it out once and for all, but that’s not in the cards yet over the next 15 days.
Being Saturday today, NCAA college football day in America, I hope you will be able to separate yourself at least once from the TEEVEE at least once during the day, preferably after 11 AM, to view our too soon-to-end summer clouds. Remember, you can watch football until February 2014, but you only have maybe two weeks more of big Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds and lightning spectacles. Think about it.
The End.
————————–
11-2 inches has been measured in hourly recording gauges in 15 minutes here in AZ. When that happens, you don’t have beads of water running off the roof, you have pretty much a solid waterfall.
Couldn’t be on “the perch” for that rain here in SH-Catalina late yesterday afternoon (0.14 inches) due to a social engagement, but, serendipitously drove under the 1-2 inch blast of rain, lightning, and 60 mph winds that deluged Oracle Road at Magee and points south. 1.7 inches was measured in 37 minutes at the Ina Road and CDO Wash! You can find more regional totals here. Arrived in that zone just as the bottom unloaded, the most exciting place you can be, as you and storm chasers know, of course. Restaurant, at Ina and Oracle, took quite a bit of water, too
4:43 PM. Updraft holding the flood aloft giving out, first in that brighter spot in the center. In only a few minutes, everything was “fogged out” in torrential , sideways-blowing rain, and vicious cloud-to-ground strikes, as I knew it would be, and you, too, within minutes looking at this cloud base. This is the kind of storm we get here that gets your attention, gets you off the couch and over to the window, if it hasn’t blown in yet.4:50 PM. Not even sure this was the worst of it, but it was reel bad here on Oracle near Magee. Wasn’t very imaginative, just repeating over and over, “This is amazing!”
4:37 PM. Gorgeous shafts of rain obscure parts of the Catalina Mountains next to Catalina State Park, Romero Falls area. Had to pull off and get SOMETHING of this sight. Didn’t see a flow in the CDO later though1. (Mini-harangue down below, way down, about walls.
You can see this stupendous sequence, too, from the U of AZ campus here.
A U of AZ mod from 11 PM last night foretells another active rain day today. This is great. Weeds getting crispy, as seen on yesterday’s horseback ride. Maybe some will get rejuvenated. Expert takes on mods will come out later by Bob and Mike, of course. The scene at White Dog Ranch, by the CDO wash and Lago del Oro as of yesterday:
But also saw some wildlfower stragglers
7:58 AM. Still some of these around, as well as some kind of yellow flowers, too; hangers on through the recent dry conditions.
And, to finish off here, the early signs of a likely good day ahead, Cu sprouting above Ms. Lemmon by mid morning, tops reaching “glaciation temperatures” not much later, and, of course, “thunder on the Lemmon before 1 PM.” Like all “signs”, there are exceptions but they usually work out, like yesterday’s downpours.
10:27 AM. A good sign for an active day, Cumulus beginning to form by mid-morning. Means the amount of moisture is pretty good, the shallow thermals rising off the mountains don’t have to go very far. Also, whitish haze implies high humidity (not pretty, though) because aerosols usually contain particles that respond to humidity and swell up (deliquesce), causing the sun’s light to be more scattered than small, dry particles would do. Big problem back East where sometimes there is no blue sky on the most humid days, just this white murk. Just awful because you can’t even see the clouds around you.11:12 AM. At left, a not very tall turret has left an icy residue, the whitish blur. You would have been getting happier seeing this happen, since things will only get bigger and better as the day wears on. Also, was musing about, “Could this be more ‘ice multiplication'”?, that phenomenon we who study clouds call those that have “too many” crystals for the temperature at the top. Recall that back in the 1950s and 1960s for the most part, scientists thought it took a cloud top temperature lower than -20 C (-4 F) (!) to produce many ice crystals due to cloud chamber measurements on the ground in which there were no, or very few crystals that formed at those cloud chamber temperatures. But, voila, when scientists flew airplanes into clouds looking for ice, they found Ma Nature forming a lot of ice at cloud top temperatures higher than -10 C (14 F) in many cases! This “discrepancy” has not been completely explained even today, and is STILL the focus of airborne research. Amazing.12:49 PM. First thunder on the Lemmon was about now. Excellent!
The End.
——————-
1The CDO wash is no longer visible at Oracle on the east side, thanks to an unnecessary, unbelievable 400 feet of sound wall monstrosity, extended past the neighborhood (Ramsfield Pass) it was supposed to shelter from a few extra decibels. One Catalina neighbor described it as only slightly better looking than the Berlin Wall. Our tax dollars at work, I guess, in some bizarre way. The wash did NOT need to be protected from a few decibals, and I miss seeing in as we used to!
Of course, the title refers to Dickens’ little known sequel (and frankly, a lightly regarded one) to his popular, “Great Expectations”. Dickens fully expected that by rushing out another novel similar to “Expectations” that a financial success similar to the one that “Expectations” had garnered for him would be easily acheived.
However, like most sequels, his effort was weak and appeared to be thrown together to merely take advantage of a gullible public. However, and much later, his sequel came to be regarded as a semi-clever, though lightly disguised, slam on the early English weather forecasting system, which was, of course in those days, was map-less, model-less, and mainly consisted of limericks and folk sayings:
“Birds flying low; beware the Low1.”
Forecasts were quite bad in those days in which Dickens lived, naturally, ships went down regularly due to unforecast storms, and Dickens wanted to dramatize this to his readers in his sequel; the various twists and turns in the plot of that sequel now thought represent ever changing, unreliable forecasts. He had hoped, with his satirical sequel, to provoke advances in weather forecasting, which he did. Isaac Newton, joined by Leibnitz, took wind of the Dickens sequel, and together they invented calculus, a tool which which allowed the calculation of the movement of air using the laws of fluid dynamics.
—-End of historical antedote2——————————
A surprising overnight rain
Well, even C-M and associated models like the Beowulf Cluster as of the 5 AM AST run on the 8th, did NOT see 0.38 inches from “Joe Cold Front”, who was supposed to pass by as a dry front, not a wet one. Still, it was fantastic surprise, one that could have only been made better by having forecasted it from this keyboard; going against the models big time. And THEN to hear Joe’s rains pounding on the roof as he went by between 10 PM and midnight. Oh, my, euphoria. BTW, the temperature dropped from 60 F to 43 F, too. Whatafront! Thank YOU, Joe.
You can see some rainfall totals from the Pima County ALERT gages (April 8th-9th rainfall). We “northenders” pretty much got the bulk of it, with Pig Spring, 1.1 miles northeast of Charoleau Gap leading the way with great 0.71 inches. Ms. Lemmon was not reporting at this time because it fell as snow. So look for a frosty Lemmon this morning. BTW, Sutherland Heights picked up 0.42 inches, and had “pre-rain” gusts to 58 mph! Whatastorm!
Continuing now at 7:21 AM after a “godaddy.com”/Wordpress meltdown an hour ago.
BTW, all the haze out there is dust under the clouds, not fog. Its pretty unusual to see something like this, especially after a good rain, so you’ll want to document it with photos and a little paragraph or two about it, and how it makes you feel. There was so much dust raised behind Joe throughout AZ and Cal that its rainband could only do away with that dust within it. This overcast situation should gradually breakup as the day goes on into more cumuliform clouds, ones with large breaks between them, the dust probably hanging on most of the day. With the -10 C level, the usual ice-forming level here at just around 11,000 feet above sea level. So it should be easy for the taller Cu to reach that and spit out some isolated precip later in the day.
Signs that the forecasts were going bad in a major way was when lines of clouds and some with precip formed in southwest Arizona late yesterday afternoon. Here’s a nice map of that development, one in which caused the tiny brain of C-M to think that it might rain, probably you, too, and anyone else that looked.
5:30 PM AST visible satellite image from the U of WA.5 PM AST 500 millibar map. You can just see that little line of clouds, and you can also see how the jet, wrapping around San Diego and headed this way, partitions the clouds. I think this is called a “teachable moment.”
Some scenes from yesterday’s dust, from the beginning. Save these for posterity:
8:21 AM. No sign of dust.1:47 PM. Dust haze becoming increasingly noticeable.2:00 PM sharp. Mr. Cloud Maven person’s cap blows off about 40 yards down the road in spite of having warned others about having this happen.2:04 PM. Dust increasing rapidly, wind peaking at 55-60 mph in the Sutherland Heights district. Twin Peaks no longer visible.3:02 PM. Small Cumulus (humilis and fractus) increase in coverage as dust limits visibility to around 10 miles.6:38 PM. The yellow sunset, indicative of large aerosol particles associated with dust.
————————–
Feeling good about rain here, feeling good about rain there
Not only can we exult over a surprise rain of some substance, but look what has been happening in the droughty central Plains States. Below, from WSI Intellicast’s 24 h radar-derived rainfall amounts for the US (april 8th, then April 9th at 5 AM AST. Especially take stock of the amounts over the past two days in those worst drought areas of Kansas and Nebraska. So great! And this is only the beginning of a huge rain/snow event in those drought areas!
24 h rainfall ending at 5 AM AST April 8th.
The End
—————————————————
1Hygroscopic insects adsorb water molecules and are weighed down in conditions of excess humidity, the kind that often precedes a storm. Birds then fly lower, too, to grab lower flying insects, or so the saying goes. (I am quite pleased by the kind of information I provide for you almost everyday.)
First, let’s look in on the NWS, Tucson, and see how excited they are. Wow, they just don’t get more excited than this! I am so happy for them. Happy for me and you, too, as we are about to experience a “storm.” ‘Bout time we had some weather to experience, though it will mostly consist of “lithometeors”, dust and grit.
Its been awful dull for awhile here, and, with the weather not doing much, our thoughts now days tend toward those of sequestration. Maybe weatherfolk shouldn’t be paid when the weather is just kind of dull and lifeless, with only a few CIrrus clouds to brighten (or dull, as the case may be) our lives. Just give them the day off, fight off some debt. Let the computers talk to us about the weather, using a Stephen Hawking voice computer-generated voice, or one like the one at Basha’s, or other major supermarket auto checkout stations, ones that tell you in that nice female voice, “Thank you for shopping at Basha’s! Now get the Hell out.” Well, maybe a “move along now” would be in a more western motif.
Heck, in LA, weather forecasters could be “sequestered” for six months and no one would notice! (Actually, sometimes there are important surf reports from time to time in southern California.) ((Just kidding, guys…hahahahaha, sort of)). (BTW, C-M practiced “self-sequestration” in Seattle during his forecast days there.)1
I think the NWS is actually heading in that direction, BTW. Kinda sad really.
Let’s look at the wind here in Catalina at 4:25 AM on a day with all kinds of wind warnings:
driveway weather station says average wind speed ZERO, from 233 degrees (from the southwest, if there can be a “from” when its calm. Shouldn’t it be “from” all directions?)
This is great, because “calm” will be a long forgotten memory with all the blowing and dusting ahead before “Joe Cold Front” barges in at (let’s see what the superlocal U of AZ mod sez: 7-9 PM local; be ready. Also, this prediction from the Beowulf Cluster at the U of AZ Weather Department2 likely to be just an hour or two fast, so plug that in, too. It seems to be a model thing.) Certainly by midnight, you’ll know “Joe” is here, and the wind will be calming down as it switches to the northwest for awhile. Also, the barometer will be “pumping mercury”, pushing it upward so-to-speak, as that colder, denser air piles on top of us. Hope you can get up in the morning.
5:13 AM update: average wind speed still zero…. but from 244 degrees now.
Clouds?
Well, we should have some Cumulus and Stratocumulus off to the northwest to northeast during the day, then they push into our area over night behind “Joe.” Definitely those clouds will be around tomorrow morning, probably with some virga, it will be that cold aloft and getting colder up there during the day.
Some patches of Cirrus likely during the day today, too, along with an occasional patch of Altocumulus. And with horrific winds aloft today, some lenticulars are likely to be visible to the north as well, and maybe also downwind of the Catalinas in the afternoon.
Sometimes on days like this with marginal moisture aloft and extreme winds, you get fantastically fine granulations/ patterns in briefly forming patches of Cirrocumulus lenticulars as well. Will have camera ready. Now these possibilites are what are exciting me today.
The End. Enjoy the wind and dust. Hope all the shingles are still on your roof tomorrow. Hmmph, now that I read this line, it could be saying in a Hallmark card about aging, about brains and hair. (Probably is already out there, I suppose.)
——————–
1A long aside… Some of you who lived in Seattle during the late 1980s and early 1990s may remember that C-M was a volunteer early morning weather forecaster on weekends for a number of years on KUOW-FM in Seattle, an NPR affiliate. But guess what? C-M didn’t come in to do his clock time forecasts for the day if the weather was nice. Rather (not Dan Rather), C-M only came in on weekends when it was cloudy and threatening, rain on the way, etc., which is most weekends in Seattle (hahahaha, just kidding). In summer I was gone quite a bit; “self-sequestered.” It was great being off on a sunny day!)
With this MO in mind, when it was announced on KUOW that C-M was coming on in a few minutes with a forecast, you could imagine the collective groan of the KUOW audience; something bad was probably going to happen in the weather that day. I was never replaced, that is, another volunteer guy or gal that would come in on his/her weekend early in the morning to detail the expected events of those precious weekend days in Seattle. Feeling sad again.
2It would be nice if you sent them a few $$$ someday. I just did, as I do also for my Washington Huskies Weather Department, and even Colo State U.! (And the latter wanted to sue me once! True–a story for another day; the entire edifice of CSU pitted against our own itty-bitty Catalina C-M.
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.
————————————–
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.
This is the best I could do, in examining the several model outputs over the past 24 h. Below is the very wettest forecast panel that popped out for southern Arizona during the past 24 h. The panel below is from yesterday’s 18 Z (11 AM AST) global data and is for the evening of December 15th, about two weeks. Nothing like what is shown in this panel showed up in model outputs afterward, dang. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, but its not a good sign. Still, I thought you should see it.
The 18 Z (11 AM AST) model run doesn’t ingest as much global data as ones at 12 Z and 00 Z, 5 AM AST and 5 PM AST, respectively. That means that the 18 Z run is not as reliable as those other two, is more susceptible to having goofy outputs (outliers) than the other ones. “Less data, more filling”, of rain gauges anyway.
We ARE on the brink of a major change in the flow pattern, that is, where the troughs/jet stream will be positioned. We have been well to the south of the jet stream and all the storms carried with it. That will change in about a week. We will have recurring troughs here in the Southwest after that, meaning less warm days, along with occasional chances of rain. The signal for this to happen is pretty strong in the spaghetti plots.
The question is now how strong will those the persistent troughs be as they sporadically drop by in the weeks ahead. The strong ones for now, like the one shown below that causes rain here, are outliers for the time being. Stay tuned. Gut feeling here is that we’re headed for a wet regime, finally. Its due.
Valid 11 PM AST December 15th. Greens are lighter rains, blues over half an inch. These are rains foretold to fall sometime during the 12 h ending at map time.The 500 mb pattern (about 18,000 feet above sea level) associated with all that rain in the first panel. As you can see by the yellowish and brown colored regions for wind velocity at this level, the strongest winds at this level are well to the south of AZ-Catalina, pretty much a requirement for rain here in the wintertime. This pattern is similar to the many lows that cut off last fall and winter, ones that gave us those good early rains. So, if nothing else, this map is a prototype of what we need for some good rains here in Catalina.
The model outputs from last evening do have a little rain here on the 10th, and NOTHING on the 15th as shown above, so I am not going to show those disappointing outputs. You’ll have to go to IPS MeteoStar to see those renderings.
Today’s clouds
Cirrus moving in today, the remnants of one of those monster rainy fronts that bashed northern and central Cal for the past week or so. Should be a great sunrise display; get camera ready.
From the U of A Wildcats Weather Department, this loop of those approaching Cirrus clouds.
How much rain in the past seven days in northern Cal?
They needed it. The arrow shows where the author would like to have been during those seven days, filing daily reports of stupefying amounts of rain.
I mention these rains because this episode of heavy rains was pretty well indicated in the NOAA spaghetti factory plots back in mid-November. This flooding event is a great example of those occasional situations where a forecast two weeks out can be inferred to be pretty reliable by examining those spaghetti plots. Those likely heavy norcal rains were expeculated on here based on spaghetti in a November 14th blog. I really think that you could’ve done this, too, by now!
First, the rain report: 1.73 inches on Samaniego Ridge in the 24 h ending at 3 AM this morning; 0.42 inches here! Fantastic. We’ll keep those watery, glistening rocks on the sides of the Catalinas for a few more days. How nice is that for mid-September? Some rain 24 h totals til 3 AM, catches the early yesterday storm period from some of the Pima County ALERT rain gages (a bit chopped up, sorry):
Today? Lots of incoming stuff, should be another day of major rains! (Maybe our last of the summer season. Enjoy.)
Reviewing yesterday…..
Looks like afternoon but its not; yesterday morning just after dawn:
6:33 AM. Unusual early morning thunderstorm rakes Catalinas. What a great scene for dawn.6:39 AM.
Later that afternoon, after the morning Altocumulus clouds thinned and skies became sunny, there was explosive cloud growth over the Catalinas as the temperature recovered from our pre-dawn rains and clouds. Below, a few shots, the first three showing the transition from Cumulus congestus clouds lacking in ?????? (Answer: ice), to ones just starting to show ice in their tops (which means snow and then rain formation).
Now I am going to transition to tiny thumbnails, so you’ll have to work harder to see what I am talking about. But if you work hard, you might remember it better. Also, to help you, I have added an arrow in one shot, really going that extra mile for you today since usually I am too lazy to do that.
The Cumulus congestus clouds you see in the first couple of photos, though quite pretty, are oriented ALONG the Catalinas, not trailing over us from Mt. Ms. Lemmon. This tells you that should rain develop in these clouds over the Catalinas later on will stay ALONG the Catalinas, and not dribble over this way as it often does. That means incoming storms for us here in Catalina will be to the south, toward Pusch Ridge. Still pretty much the same today, except a bit more toward the right of Pusch Ridge, and toward Twin Peaks.
Below, another example of a cloud photo diary, pretty much like the one you should be keeping:
2:07 PM. After a weak shower around noon, Cumulus congestus rebuild over the Catalinas and kind of just mill around for awhile not doing much, being less than they could be.2:15 PM. Its EIGHT minutes later, and I am getting pretty impatient with these clouds. Sure, they’re looking pretty, but they have nothing in them so far (except droplets).2:24 PM. FINALLY, after being bored by pretty but empty Cumulus congestus clouds with nothing much up top, ICE forms (arrow)!
2:34 PM. Had to wait another TEN minutes for some “content” to show up below this cloud, that fine haze of rain just appearing at the top of Sam Ridge in this photo. Note all the ice/rain trails just above the bottom. Time to think about lightning, too, some real content!2:46 PM. First transition to a Cumulonimbus and a thunderstorm, now maybe two rumbles old, is a weak one, shown by the weak shaft on the left. But what’s that coming out of that base to the right?! Now that’s more like! That far denser shaft on the right shows that the upwind turret has powered upward FAR higher than the one topping the weak thunderstorm. This is gonna be good!4:06 PM. And so it was good. This, one of several outstanding rainshafts that affected Sam Ridge and helped that 1.73 inches total along. No doubt something even a bit higher went unrecorded. Here you can also see the end of the heaviest rain blob about halfway down from the cloud base indicating the original turret up top has dropped all it can and will be dissipating.
Dewpoints above dry ground yesterday of about 70 F at 3000 feet elelvation? Yep, that’s just like Florida air if you could be in it at 3,000 feet. And we had Florida-like clouds yesterday, too, with their warm bases, around 15 C (59 F) in the morning–remember how important warm bottoms are for a big rain dump. Warmer cloud bases mean more water up top.
After a couple of grizzily, grudgingly humid days with no rain very close by, we finally got that explosive, much greater coverage of huge Cumulonimbus clouds and some rain yesterday. Only 0.06 inches here though. Oh, well. Lets be happy for well-watered others, if grudgingly.
The cloud signs that the day was going to be very different from the previous two humid “dry” days were there early. The first thunder was heard at 11:45 AM, as one cloud piled into the upper troposphere on top of Mt. Ms. Lemmon just an hour after the first photo below. Those Lemmon drops produced 1.38 inches at the Pima County ALERT gage there, but a Summerhaven private gage reported 2.46 inches after several storms in the afternoon!
10:48 AM. The day ahead is laid out before you. No need to ponder whether giant storms will abound. Very tall, thin clouds like these tell you that the atmosphere is like a stick of dynamite; only the sunny fuse needs to be lit, and that fuse is beginning to be lit. I was beside myself with excitement when several clouds like this jetted upward off the Catalinas yesterday morning, their “warm” bases topping the mountains. As a cloud maven junior, you should have at least mentioned something to a neighbor: “Man, there are going to be some doozies today!”, and he knows you haven’t even checked with the NWS yet.
Pima County rainfall table Most: Avra Valley area, Michigan and Calgary Streets, 2.13 inches.
Later yesterday day, these, a collection of my favorite moments, ones I hope you caught, too. In case you forgot to log these events, I have filled in some appropriate “novella-sized” captions for you. I don’t mind if you copy them down as though you had written them yourself… Also, don’t forget to review the awesome U of AZ time lapse movie here, to fill in any other gaps you might have. Now these photos are going to be kind of scattered around but in that sense, reflect the writer’s eccentricities, and because he hasn’t got time to straighten them out.
11:20 AM. Your log book entry: “First cloud to reach glaciation level, 11:20 AM above Mt Lemmon. I am so excited. This is going to be a fantastic day for clouds.”11:46 AM. Your log book entry: “First thunder now. The earlier Cumulonimbus capillatus cloud has been replaced by this larger one. I bet Lemmon/Summerhaven are getting pounded. Wish I could be there.”12:31 PM. “Mt. Lemmon still getting pounded, but sky brightening, looks like the base has been eroded and is not being replaced, not good. Some rain working its way off Lemmon and Samaniego Ridge, but not making it very far. Maybe it won’t even get to me. Feeling sad.”12:32 PM. “What that over there! I had not seen that while focusing on Ms. Lemmon. That cloud is huge. Look at that base, so firm, so fully packed! This is gonna be a great dump. I wonder if I can get over there in time. Nah, it goes too fast. Looks likes its gonna land on RailX Ranch over.”12:38 PM six minutes later. “Oh yeah, baby, here it comes! Drops and hail as big as cataloupes! Well, I guess in Arizona, we would say, “as big as gourds!”, figuratively speaking.12:41 PM, just THREE minutes later! “Feeling sad again that I am not there under this cloud with my raingauge. Maybe a cloud maven junior is there measuring it, keeping track of the time after getting his gage out in it, maybe see if some record for AZ is going to be set, like more than 2 inches in 15 minutes. I guess I can be happy thinking that someone is over there having a good time in the rain.”12:54 PM. “Rain dump sweeping air out of the way like a big broom. Feeling a little exhausted now as storm reaches peak, likely to fade soon.”
In the meantime, more Cumulonimbus clouds form quickly over the Catalinas, but just as quickly fade, the rain getting closer, but only sprinkles have gotten to Catalina by late afternoon. Then another surprise!
3:13 PM. “Yikes! What’s this coming around Pusch Ridge and out of Tucson? This is incredible-looking! Will set up video, charge camera batteries. No telling how much weather excitement might get to Catalina.”3:33 PM. “Starting to look ‘biblical.’ That’s always good–‘the end is at hand’, at least of the disappointing dry days.’ I can only imagine how excited the cloud maven juniors are getting seeing this scene.”3:40 PM. “The cool outflow wind has struck Sutherland Heights, those lower scud clouds riding on top of it. But where is the solid base needed for a regeneration of a huge dump of rain? I want really want to cuss and say, ‘dammitall’, but I will refrain from doing that. And its looking more stratiformy toward the south, like its dying out. What is happening? Is the main development going to propagate out toward Avra Valley again? Am really starting to feel awful now, that kind of disappointment you feel when your team has a 24 point lead at half time and loses by 12. Still looking ‘biblical’ but with your cloud maven junior skills you know its not looking ‘right’ for a big rain on you.”4:05 PM “It is finished. ‘Biblical’ sky raced by, one associated with outflow winds of that really good storm somewhere else down to the south, and not on me, and it couldn’t push up some new fat bases of clouds that would grow into giant Cumulonimbus clouds as so often happens with the outflow winds. Going home now, kind of dejected. Hoping now we just get any measurable rain. Grasses fading in color now after our dry spell, and suggestion that a new season will soon be here, no more big clouds, adds to dejection and feelings of worthlessness. That’s what a disappointing day can do to you. But as Scarlet said, and we must remember those words, ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ And, we are having some lightning to the west of us here at 4-5 AM. Cool! Getting excited!”
Today?
OK, have spent some silly time here, now, looking out window, bases low on the Catalinas again. Dewpoints very high. Seems like it should erupt again IF the atmos structure above these clouds is anywhere close to yesterday. Let’s see what the best, Bob, has to say here. Oops, he’s not up yet, but he is the true guru of Cumulonimbus and such that we have here. Be sure to check back soon!
Sounding from TUS this morning makes it look like its a “go” for giant clouds again, bases as warm as yesterday, if not a little warmer. Egad, flash flood size.
Finally, U of AZ late night model here also says there’ll be a big day. Charge camera batteries.
Now THAT was a monsoon-like day yesterday, one right out of the western state of Kerala, India; the thick rain of mid-morning, seemingly thicker than most here, the clothes-gripping humidity outside, the strip of fog on the side of the western Ghats, oops, Catalina Mountains, the relatively gentle breezes in the rain, the subdued green hues under the overcast of light rain at the end of the unusual morning drencher, aspects that, en toto, made the morining seem so India-like to me (and I’ve been there in those Kerala rains). Take a look at our green state and State.
10:37 AM, after 0.76 inches of thick rain with occasional thunder. Nimbostratus up top, Stratus fractus along the Samaniego Ridge.10:53 AM. Looking toward Charoleau Gap.
In the Ghats, India, 1975, in case you didn’t believe that I have been in ACTUAL monsoon rains.
And while the rest of the day was sunny, humid and cool for us, the rain wasn’t over with another thunderbludgeoning last night after 9 PM that brought 0.25 inches and the day’s Catalina rain total to 1.02 inches. Drink up, desert!
We also had a nice Altocumulus lenticularis at sunset, suggesting some wind aloft. Seemed almost fall-like seeing this because they are more common with our winter troughs.
6:53 PM.
Another Big Day ahead
3 AM, Arizona obs. Several stations have dewpoints in the low 70s, with TUS reporting, along with light rain, a shockingly high dewpoint of 72 F, really extraordinary.
Get ready! A disturbance over southern California will help organize our storms into ones like those that occur in central Florida today, grouping them into large clusters, with some eye-popping rain amounts likely somewhere in the State (“eye-popping”, 3 plus inches). Don’t be too surprised if you hear about a “tube” somewhere as well. Tubes happen in conditions like these.
After today, its “mostly” dry through the end of September, with the best chance of rain on the 27th-28th.
Just about. Ended up taking more than 300 photos yesterday (!), first 100 plus of the greenery next to the CDO wash (“its a jungle out there”) during a horseback ride, and of those spindily Cumulus clouds that were rising off Ms. Mt. Lemmon so early in the day (and oddly, with a lower, scattered layer of Stratus fractus clouds along the side of Sam Ridge). Those early skinny towers were full of portent about the day ahead, and those lower St fra, told about the unusually high humidity if you didn’t go outside!
A couple of photos from along the CDO wash and an example of those “stalagmite”-like Cumulus:
Along the CDO near Spirit Dog Ranch.Along the CDO. With the new wetter climate, perhaps new life forms are already arising inside this jungle.Morning glory blossom along the trail, almost a “Husky purple” I thought as the college football season nears and the summer sports malaise ends (hahahah, sort of). In that regard, former Washington Husky pitcher, little Timmy Lincecum, SFO Giants, can’t find himself–we thought for a time he would win the prestigious Cy Young Award every year– but has been a real disappointment this season for those of us who used to watch him throw at Husky Ballpark on Friday nights, so who cares about him or baseball anymore?
The spindily early Cumulus
These were an incredible sight on that early morning ride, truly, because of what they suggested for later on.
You can really get an appreciation for these guys puffing off “Smokestack Lemmon” from the U of AZ time lapse movie, as well as the power that was unleashed in those gorgeous, if volcanic, Cumulonimbus clouds later in the afternoon. I don’t believe I have seen as strong a convection day as we had yesterday before.
One measure of horrific convection, horrific updrafts in clouds is that little or nothing comes out of them. These kinds of Cumulonimbus are well known in the Plains States where giant clouds can form spewing anvils out that can cover much of a whole state. But, then, there is no rainshaft, or its very tiny.
Here’s an example from South Dakota of what is called a weak radar echo, or “echo-free vault” (the Cb seems to be “hollow” with no echo to great heights. sometimes in the middle of it).
The updraft in these severe storms is so strong that almost nothing can fall out, well maybe softball-sized hail; instead the all the water is transported high into the troposphere where only tiny ice crystals form at very low temperatures (liquid drops can be transported to temperatures below -30 C!) in updrafts of 50-60 mph or more in these situations (the measured record is about 100 mph). When this happens, too many ice crystals form and none can grow large enough to fall out until many minutes later, but then are 40,000 feet and can never reach the ground. That appeared to have happened here yesterday.
The South Dakota Cumulonimbus cloud shown was memorable because, like yesterday’s severe thunderstorm west of Catalina in the late afternoon and evening (shown below in its early stage), there was continuous lightning and thunder from overhead, high anvil; no cloud-to-ground strokes anywhere nearby in both situations. Those were likely occurring far off in and near the shafts on the horizons.
Parkston, South Dakota, 1976. This gigantic anvil was rumbling continuously from overhead and to the southwest. Note the tiny rainshaft from the parent Cb on the horizon. Yep, I took this photo WAY back then. I loved South Dakota…in the summertime!5:36 PM. By the time of this shot of this vertical giant, toward the Tortolita Mountaintas, had been thundering continuously from the upper half for over half an hour before this tiny rainshaft FINALLY emerged. It was remarkable, something I had not seen happen here before. It was a measure of how strong the updrafts were in this cloud and many others yesterday. Don’t know for sure whether it had an “echo-free vault.”
Rain amounts
The ALERT precip reports are here. White Tail, by Palisades Ranger Station on Catalina Highway, got another 1.50 inches yesterday and last night. It received 2.44 inches last Friday, and had another 1.25 inches on Sunday for a few day total over 5 inches now. Other local data can be found here and here.
Here in Catalina, we only received 0.08 inches, and that from some steady light rain overnight. Maybe today….
Today?
Well, no surprises for any met man, another strong day of convection. It will be interesting to see if there are more “low echo” Cumulonimbus clouds, ones with lots of high lightning, and a delayed emergence of a shaft, an emergence long after ice has proliferated aloft.
