The clouds were somewhat of a disappointment yesterday, not the stupendous photogenic day CM was expecting.
Maybe CM is total fraud, gets Big Oil funding and should be investigated by Rep. Grijalva as other weather folk are, like the great Prof. and National Academy of Sciences Fellow, Dr. Judy Curry, a friend, and about whom I say on a link to her blog here, and from this blog’s very beginning, “The only link you will need.” I said that because Judy2 is a top scientist, and is eminently fair in this polarized issue.
I am in real trouble! Will remove that link immediately1 before our very own “climate thought enforcer”, Demo Rep. Grijalva, AZ, finds it using a spy bot! No telling how far down the influence chain it will go, maybe all the way down to here, where there is virtually no influence!
Back to clouds…….
Only late in the day did the delicate patterns expected to happen ALL DAY appear, again, with iridescence, always nice to see.
The media, Bob, and our good NWS, of course, are all over the incoming rain in great detail. In fact, it will take you half a day to read all the warnings on this storm issued by our Tucson NWS.
So why duplicate existing information that might be only slightly different than the prevailing general consensus on the storm amounts, and then maybe be investigated for going against a consensus? No, not worth it. Best to be safe, not say things against The Machine. (OK, maybe overdoing it here.)
In the meantime, the upper low off southern Cal and Baja has fomented an extremely strong band of rain, now lying across SE Cal and the Colorado River Valley where dry locations like Blythe are getting more than an inch over the past 24 h. Same for northern Baja where some places are approaching 2-3 inches, great for them. You can see how the rain is piling up in those locations here. In sum, this is a fabulous storm for northern Mexico and the SW US, whether WE get our 0.915 inches, as foretold here, or not! Rejoice in the joy of others. Looking for an arcus cloud fronting the main rainband, too, that low hanging cloud in a line that tells you a windshift is coming. Still expecting, hoping, for thunder today to add to the wind and rain drama.
Also, the present cloud cover, as the trough ejects toward us, will deepen up and rain will form upwind and around here as that happens, so it won’t JUST be the eastward movement of the existing band. This means you might be surprised by rain if you’re outside hiking and think the band itself is hours away. Expecting rain to be in the area by mid-morning, certainly not later than noon, with the main blast (fronted by something akin to an arcus cloud) later in the day. OK, just checked the U of AZ mod run from 11 PM AST, and that is what it is saying as well! Wow.
Finally, if you care, yesterday’s clouds:
6:45 AM. Your sunrise color, thanks to a line of broken Cirrus spissatus. Jet stream Cirrus streak, as a matter of fact, moving along at about 110 mph.9:47 AM. Ruffle of Sc topped Mt. Lemmon, while strange clouds formed just upwind of them. These kinds of shapes suggest an inversion where the air resists further upward movement and a smoothing occurs at the top similar to a lenticular cloud. Photo taken at the Golder Ranch Dr. cattleguard. which really doesn’t work that well, as the neighbors below here will tell you.The 5 AM, March 1st, balloon sounding for TUS.9:53 AM. Looks like a crab with four pinchers. How funny.12:23 PM. Shredding tops of small Cumulus like this indicate that the air is very dry just above their tops, and the shreds racing off to the right, indicate how fast the wind increased as you went upward.2:58 PM. Something is changing here. Notice how the tops are bulging and not immediately being torn into shreds. The air was likely moistening above cloud tops, and the inversion holding the tops back, weakening as our storm gets a little closer.4:19 PM. A line of still larger Cumulus had formed to the west, indicating more moistening and “de-stabilization” of the air. However, the upper low was not advancing toward us any longer and no further development occurred as stagnated, ratcheting up its rainband over eastern Cal and western AZ. The TUS balloon sounding suggested tops were getting close to the normal ice-forming level here, -10 C, the slight inversion on the morning sounding at 13,000 feet above sea level, and the one likely to have caused those smooth morning clouds, was gone.6:07 PM. Just before sunset from near Oracle where we took mom for her BD. The heavier Cumulus clouds faded with the sun. They will arise today!
Below, just some pretty patterns observed later in the day. Click to see larger versions.
3:28 PM. Cirrocumulus began to appear.3:36 PM. Twisted, tortured Cirrus (fibratus?).3:50 PM. Another view of Cirrocumulus. Though these clouds are still composed of liquid droplets, the 5 PM TUS sounding suggests they were at about -30 C in temperature. It happens.4:00 PM. An incredibly complex array of Cirrocumulus overhead. Due to perspective, its about the only view that you can really see how complex the patterns are.4:20 PM. Some iridescence for you.6:00 PM. At Oracle, AZ.6:22 PM. Finally, from the “Not-taken-while-driving-since-that-would-be-crazy-though-it-looks-like-it-was” collection, this oddity. Looks like an high temperature aircraft contrail (aka, “APIP”) in the lower center. And the trail seems to shoot up into the cloud Altocumulus cloud layer (or down out of it). Have never seen that kind of aircraft track before since it looks so steep! “High temperature” here means that it formed at temperatures above about -35 C.
Whew, the end.
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1Not!!!!!! I thought this was a good read about this deplorable new stage of “climate thought enforcement” now in progress. It was brought to my attention by climate folk hero, friend, and big troublemaker, Mark Albright. Wow, maybe Mark will be investigated, too! Maybe I should excise his name….
2I remember, too, how cute she was when she worked my lab/office at the University of Washington in the mid-1980s, and thought about asking her out, to detract from a serious commentary here. She was a Penn State grad student, not a U of WA employee; still, to ask her out would have been untoward. A human commentary like this, one about feelings and things, help boost blog attendance.
1While several inches of model2 rain has occurred in Catalina and in the nearby mountains this month, most of which cloud-maven person has festooned his blog with model panels of, there really hasn’t been any ACTUAL rain.
But having said that, there is even MORE model rain ahead, some beginning tomorrow in these parts. Tomorrow’s rain comes from a sub-tropical minor wave ejecting from the sub-tropics. You know, as a CMJ, a wave from that zone means a ton of high and middle clouds, i.e., likely DENSE Altostratus with virga, something that was seen yesterday off to the SW of us. This time, though, some rain should fall from these thick clouds, though almost certainly will be in the trace to a tenth of an inch range between tomorrow and Monday morning.
Model rain from 11 PM AST global data then falls in Catalina on:
February 24th
March 1st
March 7-9th
with the model total rain in these periods likely surpassing an inch or more! What a model rain winter season this has been! Astounding. The model washes have been running full since late December, too!
BTW, that last model rain period is really a great one, a major rain for ALL of Arizona!
Some recent clouds I have known and a couple of wildflowers
7:36 AM, Thursday, Feb 19: Iridescence in Cirrocumulus.7:52 AM, Thursday, Feb. 19: Iridescence in Cirrocumulus with a tad of Kelvin-Helholtz waves (center, right), ones that look like breaking ocean waves. Kind of cool looking.9:29 AM, Thursday, Feb. 19: Altocumulus perlucidus exhibiting crossing patterns, rows perpendicular to each other. Makes you think about football and people running out for passes.9:42 AM, Thursday Feb 19: An extremely delicate crossing pattern in Cirrocumulus, center. You’ll have to drill in good to see it, but its worth it.10:39 AM, Thrusday, Feb 19: Pretty (mostly) Cirrus spissatus, a thick version in which shading can be observed.6:13 PM, Thursday, Feb 19: No idea what that stick contrail is. Looks like a flight pattern to induce weightlessness. Climb rapidly, round off the top, and then go down. You can be weightless for maybe 10-30 seconds. Been there, done that in a C-130 Hercules, last FACE flight of 1973, Bill Woodley lead cloud seeding scientist. But, you pay a price, get smashed on the floor as the aircraft comes out of the dive. You cannot get up!Let’s zoom in and see if we can learn more about what happened here. I think a jet pilot was having fun. Nope.6:54 AM, yesterday. Altostratus virga provides a spectacular, if brief sunrise over the Catalinas.6:15 PM last evening.From a dog walk this VERY morning, a desert primrose.And a desert onion bloom.
The End. Hope you enjoy the copious model rains ahead!
a lot….beginning tomorrow afternoon or evening, not today. Today is “pause” day. Also, its trash day today here in Catalina, mentioned here as a public service.
Slow moving, sub-tropical system to drop several inches of water content in rain/snow in mountains, sez our best model, that run by the U of AZ. Thank you, U of AZ, btw. Below a snapshot of the total precip from that 5 PM AST global data crunch, “nested” for AZ. This plodding gigantostorm should keep the water coming down the washes, luxuriate our sprouting wildflowers, some of which, like desert asters, are beginning to emerge and even bloom1:
Total precipitation ending just after midnight, Feb 2nd, as seen by the WRF-GFS model run from 5 PM AST last evening. Catalina/Oro Valley appears to be in a bit of a shadow, so while Ms. Lemmon and vicinity are forecast to get several inches of water content in rain and snow, Catalina gets an inch–though hard to see in this graphic. Why? Likely south to southeast flow coming downslope off the Catalinas. But, I think its WRONG!
Lot’s of gray sky photograph opportunities ahead. Get camera ready. Not much in the way of rain seen in mods after this, so enjoy this rain “chapter” of your life as fully as you can.
Yesterday’s clouds
After another light shower boosted our storm total another 0.02 inches, a fabulous, wonderful, almost Hawaiian like day followed with a little humidity in the air, deep blue skies, and white puffy clouds, ones a true cloud maven would call, Cumulus clouds and would be ashamed if he just said they were “puffy clouds.”
7:34 AM. Sun tried to break through some puffy clouds over the Catalinas after our 0.05 inch shower. A few, very small shower cells were around, but didn’t look like much at this time.7:53 AM. Gee, a strong, though narrow rainshaft developed SSW of Catalina, upwind! Suggests a Cumulonimbus-like protruding, icy-looking top up there on top of the shaft.
8:08 AM. The three amigos rainshafts, headed this way, evnetually dropped another “surprise” 0.02 inches. Earlier model runs had indicated the rain would be over by dawn yesterday.
8:34 AM. One of the “amigos” hit Ms. Lemmon and Sam Ridge nicely. Ms Lemmon racked up 0.59 inches out of the storm overall. Very nice, considering our 0.07 inches total.8:53 AM. As we know so well, sometimes the best, most dramatic shots are those after the rain passes, and the rocky surfaces glisten in a peak of sunlight, here enhanced by crepuscular rays due to the falling rain. A rainbow was also seen, but not by me somehow.
8:54 AM. Closer look at glistening rocks toward the Charouleau Gap.
11:45 AM. The deep blue sky, the puffy clouds topping Sam Ridge, the strong sun, the bit of humidity, the bird flying along on the left, gave the sense of one being in Hawaii I thought.12:32 PM. Puffy clouds still top Samaniego (Sam) Ridge.
2:28 PM. Small puffy clouds provide a “postcard” view of Catalina, Saddlebrooke and environs. Visibility here well over 100 miles. Never get tired of these views! You got some Cirrocumulus up there, too.
2:51 PM. Another postcard view of our beloved Catalina. Rail-X Ranch and the Tortolitas off in the distance, left. Nice patterned Cirrocumulus up top above the little puffy clouds.
5:58 PM. The day ended with a nice sky-filling sunset as a Cirrus layer was lighted from below by the fading sun. The lines of virga show that while Cirrus clouds don’t have a lot of water vapor to work with up there at -40 C (also -40 F), the crystals that form are still large enough to settle out as precip.
The End
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1Desert Aster (I think) in bloom seen on the link trail from the Baby Jesus Trail to the Deer Camp Trail.
Seen on big hike, Jan. 22nd. This plant will be so happy by next week!
It doesn’t get much better than this plot below for our Catalina weather 10-13 days ahead, which is always pretty fuzzy-looking as a rule. “Better” means for rain chances here, which is not everyone’s “better.”
Here’s the excitement:
Note blank area, that is, an area free of lines area centered on the gambling and other mischief-permitting State of Nevada1.
Note how the red lines dip down into Mexico, whilst the blue lines bulge northward into Canada along the West Coast.
This error-filled plot2 tells us that it is almost certain that a trough will be in the lower middle latitudes where we are on January 22nd or so. Just about guaranteed.
In the meantime, those blue lines indicated that a ridge of high pressure is going to divert northern storms into Canada and southeast Alaska. Sometimes we refer to situations like this as “split flow”; the southern portions of storms in the Pacific move ESE toward southern California and the Southwest, while the northern portions split off to the NE, as is happening now. Weak upper level disturbances pass overhead, the next one tomorrow, and with it, a little more rain, the models say.
U of AZ mod has rain moving in toward dawn tomorrow with totals here amounting to about like that last rain, 0.10 to 0. 25 inches. Given model vagaries, probably the lower and upper limits here are likely to be 0.05 (worst case scenario) and 0.50 inches (best case scenario), so a best guess would be the middle of those, 0.275 inches, not too much different from the AZ mod. This is the sports-like part of weather forecasting. What’s your estimate, fantasy or otherwise?
BTW, there were quite a few stations reporting over an inch of rain in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties during the past 24 h, and so while weak, this system is pretty juicy, lots of liquid water as measured by dewpoints which should rise into the upper 40s to low 50s here during the next day. Also, there have been some embedded weak Cumulonimbus clouds and that’s a possibility here tomorrow, too, as the rainband goes by. You’ll be able to tell that by strong shafting below the clouds. As always, hoping we here in Catalina get shafted tomorrow.
But the ones these days are weak, while the split ahead in 10-13 days is likely to contain much stronger disturbances, well, at least ONE before it gives out.
Yesterday’s clouds
7:22 AM. Sunrise Altocumulus.
11:42 AM. Another very summer-like looking day with clouds beginning to pile ever higher over the Catalinas.
12:51 PM. Small Cumulus are developing over the Catalinas while far above them are, two crossing contrails, about the same age suggesting that aircraft crossed paths simultaneously. The FAA flight separation rules now allows for 1,000 feet of separation instead of the 2,000 feet in years past, and so if you’ve flown recently, you may have noticed planes that appeared to be a lot closer to you than ones a few years ago. This has been permitted due to improvements in aircraft GPS accuracy, and was deemed needed due to the vast increases in air traffic in the decades ahead. Still, there were times when opposite flying aircraft were so CLOSE, passing by like bullets, that you wanted to scream to the pilot, “Hey, wake up and smell the air space!!!!”
1:44 PM. Probably had a little ice in that smooth section, but overall really looked like a miniature summer Cumulonimbus cloud. Did not see if it had an echo, and never was it clear that there was ice.2:02 PM. As Altocumulus castellanus overspread the sky, lenticular clouds were still visible beyond the Catalinas. Some lenticulars began to sprout turrets, an odditity, but one driven by the condensation of water, something that releases a little heat (in this case) to the atmosphere causing the cloud to be more buoyant.
5:32 PM. A sunset of Cirrus and Altocumulus. Not bad.
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1What a great and honest state motto that would be! “Nevada: That US State where gambling and other social mischief is OK with us!”
2Don’t forget that due to growth in computer capabilities, we can now have many model runs from the same data and be done with them in a timely way. These “spaghetti”, “ensemble” or better yet, “Lorenz” plots are computer model runs with deliberate (!) slight errors introduced to see how the model forecasts of high and low pressure centers changes, given a few slight errors. This is because there are ALWAYS errors in the data anyway, there are always error bars on measurements, etc. By doing this, only the strongest signals in the forecasts remain, indicated by grouping of lines these two colors of lines, red and bluish. So, the forecast of the jet stream coming out of Asia is very, very reliable. Things go to HELL, downstream (toward the east), but some likely patterns can still be seen, such as the one over the Southwest US where a trough/low is almost certain in our area then. Will it bring us rain in Catalina? Hell, I don’t know because if the trough is a little too far to the east of us, we might only get cooler. However, since Cloud Maven person has a postive rain bias, he will say, “Absolutely. There will be rain in the Catalina area on January 22nd or so”–the actual timing might be off by a day or so.
It was a great day to hike to that wash, too. Began with a nice sunrise; missed the nice sunset, darn. Hope you didn’t.
But the highlight of the day was seeing that water was still running in the Sutherland Wash, some eight days after our great snow. Like so many things that happen to meteorologists, I didn’t expect it.
Your cloud day yesterday
Was an interesting day because at times it looked summer-like due to Cumulus formations over the high terrain, Kit Peak to the Catalinas. The scenes below are mainly from a hike1 out to some native rock etchings.
7:22 AM. Sunrise Altocumulus.10:38 AM. Petting zoo. I wanted to hop on this cow and ride it so bad! It seemed so docile. Wanted to just how riding a cow would feel like, have a new life experience. Didn’t seem to mind the several of us going by.10:42 AM. Glinting rocks through the Tucson smog layer. Yep, it rounded the corner and trucked on up along the Catalinas, kind of like our Stratus fractus does on some days. Mixed out later, of course, as Cumulus clouds ate some of it.
11:07 AM. Its always so special to see water in our washes. This scene just due east of the “brown house” and before the “Rusty Gate” heading up the east side of the hills. Pretty regular equestrian crossing point. The water was gone some few hundred yards farther downstream.12:09 PM. Nice display of Altocumulus perlucidus, while the summer-like scenes began to emerge. Note the Cumulus congestus forming over Kit Peak on the horizon, center. Pretty exciting to think of summer already!12:53 PM. This pretty summer-like scene out there on the trail just behind the Old Lloyd Golder Ranch. The small Cumulus clouds were even streaming off from the S and SSE just like they do so often in the summer! There are some Altocumulus perlucidus clouds above them.The grasses along the washes are already a few inches high! Nice to see that green coming along so well after 3.82 inches of rain in December (rainlog total that assigns the 7 AM measurement to the prior day since 0.96 inches was measured on Jan 1. Usually its put on the day of the measurement.)12:31 PM. Due to the wetness, Seattle-like mosses are beginning to appear. Got a little homesick there for a second. Expect mushroom hunting to be a big tourist industry later this winter in Arizona as more storms line up for us.2:23 PM. Cumulus pile up into the Altocumulus layer above, helping to enhance it. Didn’t see any ice or sign of precip coming out of these clouds, though was watching closely as I am sure you all were, too, for a “first ice of the day” report in your cloud diary.
Detecting ice module below. I hope most of you logged this as your first ice sighting of the day.
4:08 PM. Whilst scouring horizon to horizon, saw this gem at last: ice! What, you can’t see the ice? Too far away? See the following photo for zoomed version.4:08 PM. Zoomed shot of glaciating complex of Cumulus, some virga, light rainshower below it. Still can’t make it out? See next shot with annotation.Tops, from TUS sounding perhaps briefly as cold as -12 C before subsiding to lower, warmer levels. Almost certainly a case of “ice enhancement” or “ice multiplication”, a situation where there are many more ice crystals in a cloud than can be accounted for by ice nuclei, solid substances on which ice crystals form.
While waiting for still more rain, The End.
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1Two of the people I was hiking with are very important meteorologists; faculty members at big universities with big Ph Ds, Wikipedia pages, give lectures all around the world about what they know. While I myself am not important, if you can align yourself with important people, befriend them in some way, and then go on to tell your friends that you have befriended that kind of person and do things with them, YOUR own mediocre life seems greatly enhanced. Let us not forget the guiding words to a peaceful, successful life as told to us in “Deteriorata.”
Like scientific opinion1, climate change happens. You may not know this, but only 15,000 to 20,000 years or so ago, a blink of an eye in light years, the earth was gripped by an Ice Age. No “hockey stick” handle back then! Snow and ice piled up over a kilometer deep on top of the Space Needle in Seattle. And the polar ice cap extended to places like Cahoga Falls, Ohio, while burying the Great Lakes, which didn’t exist.
NOW, of course, we’re in an “Interglacial” period called the Holocene, where its nice and toasty, for the most part, the way we like it as a people. Really, human beans do not like Ice Ages; they can really die off in a hurry2 and have to repopulate themselves afterwards! Well, I suppose that part might be fun.
The forecast models are foretelling something in the way of a flashback in the way of a pressure pattern over nearly ALL of North America that might well have been the average pressure pattern day after day during an Ice Age (there have been many), the last one, at its peak, not surprisingly, was called, “the Last Glacial Maximum.” I’d call it that, too.
Here are a coupla panels from the venerable Enviro Can computer model with its FOUR panels of weather. Take a look at the pressure patterns in the right side panels, you may have to use a magnifying glass, both showing the predicted sea level pressure pattern. These forecast maps are astounding to C-M and will, therefore, be likewise to you, too: a high pressure area so expansive with cold dense air that it covers millions of square miles, even more in square kilometers, maybe billions, since the kilometer is a smaller Euro unit of measurement that makes everything seem farther away when you’re driving to someplace and the distance is in Euros. (hahaha, just kidding folks).
Valid Monday, December 29th at 5 AM AST. Giant high pressure cell has formed in the Canadian Northwest Territories, and its leading edge is affecting the US from COAST TO COAST! I am pumped, don’t high pressure regions this big this too often in NA. In eastern Asia, e,g, China, where all our stuff is made, and Siberia, this big a high is SOS in the wintertime. So, we’re seeing a bit of eastern Asia wintertime conditons, too.
Valid just 24 h later, 5 AM AST, Tuesday, December 30th. Temperatures in some mountain valley locations in MT could be as low as -60 F. NE flow aloft, behind the upper low, will provide exceptionally dry air above the surface layer, and that will allow whatever “heat”, and we use this word, advisedly, to efficiently escape from the surface after nightfall. So, clear skies, dry above you, no wind (as in a valley) down, down, down plummets the temperature.
So, we have an historical treat coming when the average temperatures every day in the US were 15-20 F lower during the Last Glacial Maximum! (Ugh.) The oceans were at lot smaller then, too, because a lot that water was piled up on top of the Space Needle, etc.
You might have noticed in these panels that the Ice Age-like conditions are plummeting rapidly southward, and big trough is starting to curl over the interior of the Pac NW. Yes, since we are still in the Trough Bowl, that curling air pattern, containing frigid air is headed toward Arizona, and will be here or not in early January.
Why a bifurcated statement?
Models are confused. Two model runs, only 6 h apart (5 PM and 11 PM AST last evening have the low center aloft for the SAME time, January 1st at 5 AM AST over a) Pebble Beach Golf Course, Carmel, CA; b) over Gallup, NM! How funny, outrageous, and frustrating is that? See below:
Valid at 5 AM AST, January 1st, New Year’s Bowl Day. With the amount of cold air with this system it would likely be snowing in lower elevation places north of SFO. Also, it would rain on the Duck-Seminole bowl game in Pasadena, CA.Also Valid for January 1st at 5 AM AST. But which one will be right?
========Learning Module=================
But, we are “gifted” with an opportunity to learn about chaos in the atmosphere, aren’t we, that is, those times when little errors can lead to huge differences in future states.
So, to resolve this weather conflict, and lose a few more readers, we go to the NOAA spaghetti factory, and examine the “Lorenz plot” for this time period and see which one is looney:
Valid 12 h before the maps above, New Year’s Eve, December 31st at 5 PM AST.
Well its pretty obvious that the goofy one is the one having the low over SFO and vicinity. Most of the circulation pattern has a center in Arizona somewhere. But this interpertation means that extremely cold air is likely to invade at least the northern half of Arizona as January begins. The good side is that there would be substantial, and later, reservoir filling snows in the mountains, and a good chance of substantial rain here in Catalina as the year begins.
The end of maybe solving a prognostic conundrum.
Today’s weather
Well, its all “out there” by your favorite weathercaster, and they all do a pretty darn good job, and so no use hacking over what’s already known by everybody except to say that the jet streak at 18,000 feet (500 mb), that core that circumscribes precip from no precip areas during our winters, passes over Catalina (our area) around 5 PM AST according the latest model run.
And that’s, too, when the models expect the first rain around Catalina to arrive. As before, this ain’t gonna be too much unless we get real lucky, top amount likely below a quarter on an inch between 5 PM today and the end of possible showers later tomorrow afternoon.
And of course, there’ll be lots of wind, maybe gusts to 40 mph today, a windshift to the NW here when front goes by overnight, with a temperature drop of about 10 degrees almost simultaneously. Expect a frosty Lemmon on Friday morning when the clouds part.
The interesting part is that echoes and clouds will appear out of nowhere as that big trough expands southward, cooling the air aloft, allowing cloud tops to rise to ice-forming levels. Also, if you go there now, you will see giant clear slots between those middle and high clouds that passed over last evening until right now (Ac castellanus visible to SSW now), and a tiny band in west central Arizona, and the echo-producing clouds in the NW part of the State. Those unstable-loooking clouds will be gone soon.; they’re more from tropical locations.
Keep an eye on that little band in the middle; it may turn into a bona fide rainband as clouds add onto it, widens and thickens. That’s probably what’s going to bop us this evening with rain.
Expecting to see a nice lenticular cloud downstream from the Catalinas today. They’re common AHEAD of the jet core since the air is much more stable then, resists lifting and so you get cloud pancakes that hover over the same spot. How you log them if you see any.
Will we see our usual, “clearing before the storm”? This is when middle and high clouds depart, there’s a big clearing followed by an inrush of low, precipitating clouds. Not sure, but will look for it if that little band of middle clouds ends up as only that as it passes by today. The invasion of low clouds would follow that. Too much speculating today!
Yesterday’s clouds
3:42 PM. Cirrus fibratus thickening to Altostratus toward the horizon, invade sky as big trough approaches, upper ridge skiddadles.3:50 PM. Looking at Cirrus and CIrrostratus advancing over the Catalinas.5:20 PM. Your yesterday’s sunset. Heavy ice cloud shield advances on southern Arizona, Cirrostratus with Altostratus in the distance, the thickening NOT due to perspective. Hope you caught that.
Finally, the End. I’m sure you’re glad, too, if you got this far!
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1Remmeber back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when it was widely believed that a new ice age may be at hand because the earth had been cooling off for a coupla decades? It was also being pointed out that an ice age could onset in a hundred to a few hundred years from past ice age onsets! Yikes. Scary times on earth then when the Beatles were popular.
2Of course, if you were to die in an Ice Age, you might end up being well-preserved and then people would see what you looked like, the hair style you had, tattoos, etc, as we’ve seen with a few dead people that have been found from those glacial times. I guess that’s something positive to say about cold times.
Front will roar across like a mouse, not a lion, as hoped for a few days ago. Not too many rain “calories” in it. Measurable rain will still occur, starting sometime between 9 AM and 10 AM AST–oops. raining now at 7:10 AM! Check out U of AZ model for rain timing. First drops fall here in that model output (from 11 PM AST last night), between 8 AM and 9 AM. The frontal band, such as it is, is almost here! However, the model rain tends to arrive a little fast here, though not always. FYI, be on guard.
C-M is holding firm with a minimum of 0.15 inches today, but previous foretold possible top of 0.80 inches a few days ago is out of the question. Will be happy with 0.25 inches at my house. Since I am also measuring the rain as well as forecasting it, I have a feeling things will turn out fine.
There will be a nice temperature drop, windshift, and simultaneous rise in pressure as the cold front goes by–it’ll be fun for you to watch the barometer today and see the minute the front goes by as higher pressure begins to squash down on you.
Rain might reach briefly moderate intensity (defined by official weatherfolk as 0.10 to 0.30 inches per hour). It would be great if it lasted an hour at that rate, but it likely won’t. Its moving pretty fast, and it doesn’t seem like more than 2 h of rain can occur today. Look for a nice clearing in the afternoon, and a COOL evening.
Drive south if you want to avoid rain today. Jet core (in the middle levels, 500 millibars, 18, 000 feet above sea level) is almost overhead, and just to south, and that core is almost a black-white discriminator of rain here in the cool season. So, we’re on the edge of the precip today. More to the north; less to the south.
Some clouds for you
1O:55 AM, December 11. Thought you should see this nice line of Ac castellanus and floccus underneath Cirrus spissatus.7:02 AM. Sunrise.12:32 PM. Wind picking up at the ground and aloft. Note tiny Ac lenticular with Cu fractus clouds.3:14 PM. The high cloud shield from the storm encroaches. Could call this either Cirrus spissatus or Altostratus translucidus.5:22 PM. Now we’re talkin’ Altostratus with underlit mammatus and fine virga. So pretty.5:29 PM. A late “bloom”, not really expected. Shows that there was a clear slot far beyond the horizon. Had to pull off by the Refuse Waste station on Oracle to get this. I hope you’re happy.
The weather ahead and WAY ahead
Speaking of bowls, and let’s face it, with only a 100 or so we could use a few more1; we here in all of Arizona are in the “Trough Bowl” now.
This means that troughs (storms and cold fronts) that barge into the West Coast will gravitate to Arizona instead of bypassing us and they will do that over and over again. Being in the Trough Bowl is great fun! Lots of weather excitement for weather-centric folk like yours truly. When you’re in the Trough Bowl, the weather is “unsettled”; is NEVER really nice (if you like sun and warmth) for very long because a new front/trough is barreling in at you.
So, while today might be a little disappointing, we will have many chances to get the “real thing”, i.e., a behemoth of a trough among the many that affect us in the weeks ahead.
In the longer view, a behemoth of a trough for the Great SW has just popped out of the models1 just last night in the 11 PM AST run! Gander this monster truck trough for AZ. Where’s that monster truck event announcer, we need him now!
Valid for 11 PM AST, Christmas Day! Wow. Can’t really take this at face value that far out, but if it did happen, likely would be snow in the Catalina area, and horsey would likely need a blanket after it went by. Will keep you informed periodically about this as the days go by.
OK, enough weather “calories” for you today. Hope you’re excited like me.
The End
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1Furthermore, why don’t we have bowls for women’s teams, what happened to Title IX there, maybe Beach or Sand Football? )
2As rendered by IPS MeteoStar, which is about to go from “free” to “fee” in January. Dang.
Of course, only CLOUDS can rain, so the title is a little silly, but it sounded more dramatic like that. This is the first measurable rain, it fell between 9 and 10 PM here, in EIGHT weeks!
And you could sure smell that special fragrance from the ground and desert vegetation as soon as you stepped outside to do your exercises this morning!
Nice sunrise yesterday morning to start the day. In case you missed, of course, I am there for you.
BTW, in the captions below, I have included for you a discussion of climate issues in a kind of stream-of-consciousness format. OK, its a rant that came upon me out of the blue. CM sometimes gets mad and loses control for a few seconds; need to get some counseling maybe…
6:56 AM. Altocumulus perlucidus. Say no more. Might be a lenticular sort of on the right. Not the classic almond shape, but it did hang on for a long time in that spot. Say no more.
Kind of gray after that in Altostratus with an undercutting, lower layer of Altocumulus by mid-afternoon darkening the sky up some more. Some virga here and there with sprinkles-its-not-drizzle reaching the ground by late afternoon in the Catalina area. Here is your cloudscape for later in the day, very Seattle like during approaching storms that actually rain lightly on you for hours:
10:35 AM. Classic Altostratus translucidus, ice path in cloud all the way to the sun.10:39 AM, after walk down a slope to give YOU a view to the southwest, classic Altostratus as seen when not looking toward the sun. Hard to tell if its translucidus or opacus looking this way. By the way, even when you can see the sun, As clouds are thousands of feet thick, tops usually at Cirrus clouds levels.1:26 PM. Here come the lower, flocculent masses of Altocumulus clouds, ones composed of droplets.3:15 PM. It was all downhill for cloud bottoms after the Altocumulus moved in. Now, the bottoms are lumpy and much larger, casting them as Stratocumulus. There was some virga and very light rainshowers reaching the ground at this time, too. A few drops fell at 3:11 PM. Only the great cloud mavens of all time would have noticed. Lasted maybe one minute.3:15 PM again. Lot going on here, so I thought I would point out some things on a gray day, in particular for my fellow meteorologist Mark A at the U of WA who winters in the Tuscon smog plume. Mark is a super sleuth when it comes to snowpacks, but maybe doesn’t have so much moxie when it comes to smog. Mark, as you know may now, was fired as Assist State Climo for Washington when he demonstrated and kept complaining, along with two faculty members, that the claims of gigantic snowpack losses due to global warming (now repackaged as “climate change1“) in the Cascade Mountains were hugely exaggerated, likely the result of cherry picking a cold snowy beginning and ending with a run of El Nino winters, ones that lead to less snowpack in the Cascades of Washington and Oregon. Such cherry-picking led to a wonderful suggestion of huge declines that has led to a bounty of funding and continued employment, promotions, accolades, citations by Big Media, etc, because such claims, even if exaggerated and untrue, are what we want to hear! And, no one ever got a job for claiming they can’t find any sign of global warming, or only a little one, but rather are vilified for even suggesting exaggerations in the “global warming” domain. Mark, BTW, continuing his sleuthing has recently shown that similar claims for declines in snowpacks in Montana near Glacier National Park, have not been decreasing but rather increasing. He’ll get HELL for this one! So, more vilification is likely ahead for poor Mark, as well as more smog.
What’s ahead, besides the Big Pac 12 Fubball Game on Friday evening?
More clouds. Maybe a few more sprinkles especially tomorrow after dawn. See nice map below from the U of WA Dept of Atmospheric Meteorology (original colors on the map below by that big troublemaker, Mark Albright)
Valid for 8 AM AST, tomorrow morning, which is Thursday, in case you’ve lost count of the days of the week. The arrow denotes an upper level trough, or bend in the winds. Ahead of the bend (sometimes referred to as vorticity, or curling air, or red curly air) the air tends to rise producing cloud sheets, whereas behind red curly air, the air descends. See Seymour Hess, Introduction to Theoretical Meteorology, 1959, Florida State University Press. As you can see by the arrow, that slight bend in the winds is about to pass over your house in Catalina, and the U of Az model output from last evening sees a little rain here with that passage. Yay! Also note suggestion of bifurcated jet flow with a minor maximum in wind (slight bunching of contours) to the south of us, nearly always required for rain here in the cool season.
6:52 AM. Altocumulus cloudlets over and east of the Catalinas.6:52 AM. Sprinting to the other side of the house, this spectacular scene of virga falling from Altostratus. Breathtaking!6:53 AM. To the NW, the virga roiled downward into mammatus bulges under lit by the sun.6:54 AM. The color was fading just in a minute or two, but it was still a breathtaking panorama I thought you should see.
Some additional commentary about these scenes. One of the remarkable things about clouds, a real unknown, is how clouds such as Altocumulus (1st photo) can get so cold, colder than it was this mid-November in Wyoming, and can remain all or mostly water drops, which is what you are looking at in those cloudlets over and beyond the Catalinas. Pretty amazing. This phenomenon has been known about for decades, but not fully explained. We expect to see a lot of ice in clouds with tops colder than -30 C (-22 F) as you might imagine.
Here’s the sounding near the time of these photos, with writing on it:
———-Begin learning module———————————-
The Tucson balloon sounding, launched around 3:30 AM AST yesterday morning.
As a CMJ, you need to be armed with explanations if, on a morning walk, your neighbor, at first overwhelmed by the morning beauty, but then instead of being quiet, goes on to ask, “Hey, aren’t those clouds composed of droplets; they must be pretty low and warm?”
Since you’ve already seen the TUS sounding for the hours just before this, you know those cloud bottoms are real cold and high, -26 C, and 19,000 feet above you here in Catalina, and tops are really cold, about -32 C (-26 F), you cringe. What to say? How do you explain clouds that can sit there at -32 C and develop little or no ice, while knowing that Cumulus clouds, ones whose tops have never been colder than -7 C, can be completely composed of ice just after reaching up to that temperature?
—————-End of learning module, such as it was———————
Here’s another example from yesterday of extremely cold clouds with few ice crystals:
9:36 AM. Altocumulus perlucidus opacus (sun’s position is not detectable). The TUS sounding for the morning would not be valid at this time since the cloud bases were slowly lowering but they would still be about -20 C at this time, height about 17,000 feet above ground level. And, at this temperature, such clouds are ultraripe for ice production by aircraft that may flay threw them. See next photo for a POSSIBLE aircraft production of ice in these cold clouds.
10:43 AM. Of course, all of you were looking for some aircraft perturbation I’m sure, and this seemed “too linear, too uniform, the crystals too small (as deduced by the sloping lines of virga underneath this line for the ice to be natural. No other virga looked like this having straight fine lines underneath, the thing typical of contrails. However, its not the typical ice canal, either, with clearings beginning on the sides. In fact, the cloud seems thicker here where an aircraft may have traversed it, posing an explanatory challenge. Also counter to reason, why would an aircraft fly so far in what would have been light rime icing conditions in those Altocumulus clouds? Lots of questions, no really good answers.
11:07 AM. Linear feature passes over Catalinaland. Was hoping for a drop so I could claim it had rained in November, even if it had been a phony rain.
11:32 AM. Looks phony to me! Not a real cloud. I think we’re looking now at the tube of high concentrations tiny ice crystals that slowly settled out from that Altocumulus layer after an aircraft went through it–this tube to me appears to be BELOW the general layer, due to settling out after a few larger ice crystals fell out first. Am about 60 % sure that’s what happened and caused that linear feature. Getting pretty worked up about, too.
Well, Shakespeare said it: “Much ado about nothing,” so it must be important if he said it.
Had some really nice cloud scenes after the big clearing came through in mid-afternoon:
3:38 PM. Our typical spectacular lighting on the Catalinas scenes as storms move away.
4:49 PM. A dramatic finish to the day; light showers hit south and southwest of Tucson, but faded before arriving here.
There were some light showers that produced as much as 0.20 inches of rain in the south and east parts of Tucson late yesterday afternoon and evening. Nice for them.
The weather way ahead
Nothing in the way of rain in the immediate future. Have to wait until December for any real chances. See this bad boy for December 6-7th, this panel only 360 h from now1!
Valid at 11 PM AST December 6th. Note that the heaviest rain in Arizona is over Catalina! These are totals that accumulated in the 12 h prior to 11 PM AST. Hope I made you that bit happier showing you this. It’s a pretty cold system, too, might be a close call for snow here.
The End.
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1360 h in advance, even using our best model, is about in time like the distance to Betelgeuse in light years. Hence, caution when the writer says, “only.”
Here we go…..some pretty, but also dull, photos, along with some novella-sized captions as mind wandered into the obtuse while writing them.
6:44 AM. Nice sunrise due to Altostratus/Cirrus ice clouds.2:00 PM. Kind of a dull day yesterday, kind of like this blog. Stratocumulus (Sc) clouds topped Samaniego Ridge most of the day, below that gray Altostratus ice cloud layer. But those Sc clouds were too warm to have ice in them, and droplets were too small to collide, stick together, and form misty drizzle. Have to get to at least 30 microns in diameter before they stick to one another. Misty drizzle? Could be a great name for a late night female vocalist doing earthy songs like Earthy Kitt back in the ’50s. “Earthy” was much hotter than global warming.3:29 PM. An Altostratus translucidus to opacus, mostly ice-cloud with a dark patch of Altocumulus droplet cloud blocking the sun. If you look closely, (upper center) you can see a that there’s this Altotratus layer may be topped by a Altocumulus perlucidus droplet cloud layer. Yes, droplet clouds at the top of As where the temperature is lowest? Yep, this counter-intuitive finding happens all the time, up to about -30 C -35 C. Been there, measured that; in aircraft research. Ma Nature likes to form a drop and have it freeze before forming an ice crystal directly from the water vapor.4:40 PM, shot taken as we entered a local restaurant. You’ve got your two layers of Altocumulus, with some Altostratus translucidus above those, filling in the gaps. Gaps? Huh. I am reminded that I have a failed manuscript about “gaps”, these kind; Cloud Seeding and the Journal Barriers to Faulty Claims: Closing the Gaps., rejected by the Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. way back in ’99. It was an instruction manual, in a sense, about how to prevent all the bogus cloud seeding literature that got published in the 1960s through 1980s, and was not only published, but cited by our highest national panels and experts, like the National Academy of Sciences. Amazing, but true. I give examples. You can read about this chapter of science in Cotton and Pielke, 2007, “Human Impacts on Weather and Climate”, Cambridge U. Press, a highly recommended book. That cloud seeding distortion of cloud seeding science was due to many factors, of which perhaps the primary one was, “nobody ever got a job saying cloud seeding doesn’t work1.” This was a great segue. Of course, we have similar stresses on those researchers looking for effects of global warming nee “climate change” now days. Nobody will ever get a job (a renewed grant) saying they can’t find evidence of global warming, “Can I have some more of that money to keep looking?” And beware the “Ides of March” if you criticize published work in that domain! Think of poor Judy C , a heroine to me, and how she’s been vilified for questioning climate things.
5:29 PM, took leave from Indian food there in R Vistoso for this. Its not just anyone who would excuse himself from dinner to do something other than visit the laboratory.
That’s about it. No use talking about the rain ahead again. Seems to be a couple chances between the 20th and the 30th.
The End
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1You can make a cloud snow a little by seeding it with dry ice or silver iodide. This has been shown since the earliest days of experiments. Below, to demonstrate this, an aircraft inadvertently “seeded” this Altocumulus cloud layer. However, whether the small amount that falls out from previously non-precipitating clouds is economically viable is not known. Increasing precipitation due to seeding when the clouds are already snowing/raining has not been satisfactorily proven. As prize-winning stat man, Jerzy Neyman, U of Cal Berkeley Golden Bears Stat Lab would tell you, you need a randomized experiment and followed by a second one that confirms the original results, with measurements made by those who have no idea what days are seeded and evaluations done by those who have no vested interest in cloud seeding. Wow there’s a lot of boring information here. Getting a little worked up here, too.
Ice canal in supercooled Altocumulus clouds over Seattle, bases -23 C, tops -25 C (from PIREPS). Photo by the Arthur.
