Pretty boring lately…. No motivation here, even after caffeinating royally every morning. Have had some pro work to work on, too, like reviewing a manuscript for a journal–loosely translated, work that’s largely comprised of “finding fault in the work of others,” which I am pretty good at, to be a little immodest. Due this weekend, too…
11 PM U of AZ mod has late afternoon and evening rains in Catalina! Yay. Looks pretty wet, too, through the middle of next week, some lucky places (Catalina/Oro Valley) might get 1-3 inches during that time I suspect. (Neck out pretty far here.)
But…another longish dry spell takes hold after that. Seems to be the character of our summer; a couple good, wet days, then a long dry spell.
Still there were some great cloud sights yesterday, and I wanted to share them with my reader, wherever you are.
Down at second from the bottom is the rare sun pillar, and the last photo, a kind of an odd parhelia (sun dog) since the clouds were mainly Altocumulus ones in which it was occurring and it was darn bright.
Parhelia normally occur in icy Altostratus clouds. I would guess that this one might have been caused by ice crystals produced by an aircraft that passed through that Ac layer toward the horizon, right.
There are a lot of photos here of yesterday’s clouds, considering it was a day with no rain. Oh, well, pretty normal for a cloud-centric person where the least cloud minutiae is somehow “interesting.”
8:13 AM. Very gratifying and a little surprising to see the first tiny Cu spring up so early in the morning off’n Lemmon. But, would it be only shallow moisture?10:13 AM. Also a promising sign, a thin turret rising out of a blob of small Cu. Mr. Cloud Maven Person apologizes in advance if this shot is somehow offensive by suggesting a middle finger.10:52 AM. Clouds mass above Ms. Lemmon, BUT, can they reach the ice-forming level where the temperature is as low as -10 C (14 F) or lower so that they can rain? I’m thinking it’ll be close, but was not real hopeful.11:19 AM. Amazing! On this expected to be dry day, Ms. Lemmon and her environs have created a Cumulonimbus cloud! Nowhere within a hundred miles was there another cloud like this!11:19 AM. Zoom of the icy “calvus” top in the middle (its not very fibrous yet, but is clearly loaded with ice, unlike the crinkly turret at left. Sometimes that “calvus” look is compared with the look of “cotton candy.” Within about 10 s, there was a rumble of thunder! You remember, cotton candy don’t you?12:56 PM. Pretty obvious here that the day was done as far as Cumulonimbus clouds over the Cat Mountains are concerned as the drier air moving in the from the west began to take its toll, as well as the cooling of the mountains by the prior thunderstorm. Or was it done? CM thought so, but maybe I shouldn’t tell you that, causing you to lose confidence.1:50 PM. A truly shocking sight to CM. The Cumulonimbus clouds were able to start up again!2:04 PM. Mr. Cloud Maven Person enjoys showing you how fast cloud tops can glaciate, and this was a nice case (Cb calvus stage here).5:23 PM. Well, it was all over by this time, no more Cbs, but here’s a Cumulus mediocris showing crepuscular rays (ray features due to high aerosol loading of the air).7:32 PM. Nice pastel-colored Cirrus spissatus cumulonimbogenitus (I couldn’t stop with just “Cirrus”, I had to ruin it with a long unpronounceable part. Oh, well, that’s what cloud-maven person does.
Next and maybe last rain of the summer (kidding only a little) looks to be around August 3rd still. Flow aloft looking awfully grim overall for summer rain in Catalina mod longer term predictions… This may be the worst thing I have ever said to a desert people during their “wet” season. Let’s hope we have about 5 inches on August 3rd or so!
Didn’t group together as hoped, though a wind shift aloft did happen last evening (from SSE to SSW, seen here). But there was nothing with it. Too dry I guess, too stable, viz., air locked into place near the ground. Boohoo. When the venerable U of AZ model outputs came out later yesterday morning finally, they knew that virtually nothing was going to happen beyond isolated thunderheads yesterday during the day. Well, you can’t wait that long, until late morning; you have to go with your gut sometimes, even if it might be wrong.
Some photos from our quiet day:
9:34. Cumulus began massing over Ms. Lemmon 3 h earlier than the prior day, a good sign for much more action than the prior day, which had none.11:58 AM. A Cumulonimbus was in progress (note frizzy, icy top at left)! View zoomed here to make cloud appear larger than it really was. But, ignoring that trickery, it did rain over there underneath it.. Was very hopeful at this point since large clouds were shooting upward S-W, too (see below).12:19 PM. Cumulonimbus and Cumulus congestus pock the SW-W horizon. Maybe they’ll form a line as that upper level windshift approaches….4:19 PM. Yes, finally, it appears that a line of Cumulonimbus and heavy Cumulus clouds are organizing upwind as I drove steeply downhill on Oracle Road.4:42 PM. But the clouds were also speaking to me, as they often do, sending a different message: “Help me! I’m drying up! Dry air is right behind me.” So, too much dry air, no clustering factor, in fact, and we were left with isolated, though pretty clouds at sunset (see below).7:22 PM. Shadow from a distant, lonely Cumulonimbus clouds provides a shady relief for a patch of Cirrus. Very dramatic scene, even if it was now obvious that the thought of a line of clouds moving in with rain was highly bogus. HOWEVER, an amazing amount of instability (as measured by CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) went overhead quietly last night (over “1900”) as the wind shift aloft approached; had it happened during the daytime, I think we might have had something to talk about. Hardly goes over “1900” in the daytime! Darn. You’ll know that something changed when you see the anvils go off toward the east, and not the west as happened yesterday.
Today’s clouds
Enough water in the air yet for isolated Cu and a Cb, probably much like yesterday. U of AZ mod sees a little afternoon rain in the Catalinas. But, really nothing good in sight now with the exception of around August 3rd. Poor desert. The Canadian model has a Big Rain Day (BRD) on August 3rd as remnant tropical storm moves up the Baja coast and the US model, too, has rain chances picking up then for just a day or two (only). This is getting to be a hard summer.
Thin Cirrostratus overspread the sky at dinner time from the east, thickening into Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus mammatus (you can breath now), toward the Catalina Mountains and in the direction of Oracle. What a gorgeous sight this was!
While the storms that spawned this icy blob were mostly dead by this time, undercutting Altocumulus castellanus below the mammatus formation (barely visible in the photo below) gave hope that the day was not done as far as rain was concerned. And it wasn’t.
Round about midnight, the wind and one of the more intense lightning shows of the summer crept over the Catalinas and into Catalina, sparks flying. Strikes too close for CM to feel comfortable on the front porch in metal lawn furniture.
Sutherland Heights was watered with 0.18 inches, an OK amount, enough to revive some of the wilting desert weeds of summer. The Cat Mountains, not surprisingly, got the most. Ms. Sara Lemmon got 1.02 inches, Sam Peak, 0.83 inches. Hope they weren’t having an astronomy show at the Sky Center!
You can see the list of Pima County gauges here. LTGICCCCG1 still out there to the distant SSW at this hour, and major rains are still in progress in western Arizona, all good. (Those low lying areas of western Arizona such as along the Colorado River, have a “bi-modal” peak frequency of late evening and early morning rains, btw. Not much happens in the middle of the day to mid-afternoon out there.)
No clouds during the day yesterday, even over Mt. Lemmon, was a surprise, and is rare in my seventh summer here, and is a testimony to how dry the air was aloft over us even with some humidity near the surface. Things quickly changed during the night, and this morning, we’ve got it all, significant humidity at the ground all the way up to Cirrus levels. Perhaps due to the low starting temperatures associated with the rains in the area, the U of AZ mod doesn’t think Cumulonimbus clouds will form over our mountains until late afternoon into the evening hours.
In any case, should be a great day visually; lots going on. Thinning clouds this morning, then the rise of the Cumulus, and we hope, as the mod projects, another blast of rain in the evening and early nighttime hours.
7:26 PM.
6:00 AM. In case you missed it just now, this beauty.
The Weather WAY ahead
The NOAA spaghetti factory still is not showing patterns that are fruitful for generous rains overall in the next 15 days or so. So, anything we get should be considered quite a blessing during this time. Another giant trough is going to affect the East Coast and Midwest (the last one, a couple of weeks ago, brought the coldest July day in the 140 year history of Memphis records where for the first time the high temperature did not reach 70 F in July! Wow.) Those east of the Rockies may well wonder in the times ahead, what happened to summer? Of course, those cool temperatures might well be welcomed in late July and August, but the circulation pattern that brings them is also not so great for summer rains here. Oh, well, hoping for the best.
Sincerely, your CM.
——————– 1Weather text for “Lightning in the cloud, cloud-to-cloud, and cloud-to-ground.” A weather report amended with this comment, LTGICCCCG, was always one of the most exciting that you could see reported from a station, especially if you lived in lightning-deprived areas like California and Washington as did CM.
With a high in Sutherland Heights/Catalina yesterday of 107 F, maybe fully baked is more appropriate, though “half-baked” does align itself pretty well with this blog. It was so hot in TUS yesterday, the venerable U of AZ sounding plot, constructed on a “Skew-T” diagram, was not able to capture the surface temperature at the time of the balloon launch in Tucson. Don’t see that too often. Looks like the horizontal scale (abscissa) needs to be extended to 50 or 60 C (113 to 131 F). Hahaha, sort of. See below:
The 5 PM AST balloon sounding launched from Tucson yesterday. Note white line for the temperature and how it goes “out of bounds.” Penalty!
The moist air surge predicted by the models yesterday, the one rushing up the Gulf of Cal, is happening, though maybe at a walk or trot instead of the “gallup” foretold by the models. So, if you get up and notice that the dewpoint is over 50 now, that why; you’re experiencing the rush of humidity from tropical sources.
And with the half-baked air by afternoon, why it makes sense to anticipate a full-growed (as we westerners would say) Cumulonimbus cloud in the vicinity today, yay. BTW, if would be even that bit hotter without all the haze due to dust, and maybe some smoke, since the sun was dimmed that bit glaring down at us through that stuff.
Your clouds from yesterday, such as they were:
1:40 PM. As humilis as humilis can get. Prescott was having a thunderstorm at this time, and you can’t even see its top, that’s how bad the visibility was. (Of course, in LA, or Bakersfield, yesterday would have been a stupendously clear day!)
7:00 PM. The clouds filled in a little toward sunset, and some anvil Cirrus from Cumulonimbus clouds in the western part of the State, blocked the sun as it set.
100% chance that those of us domiciled in Catalinaland will hear thunder today. Rain-cooled air blowing at us? Yep. Rain? Maybe, 60% chance at my house; 100 percent chance between the Catalinas and the Tortolitas up toward Park Links Road somewhere. Namely, there will be TSTMS, but exactly where no one knows. Clouds should pile up early on the Cats in more or less a line during the late morning, early afternoon, then as yesterday drift off toward the west-northwest, taking their rain with them, spawning more developments. The summer rain season begins anew!
Check out this for the depiction of hourly rain situations predicted for today, courtesy of our U of AZ Weather Department.
4:10 PM. Coming at you! Something like this, what we saw yesterday, should happen today, except they should blossom into full Cumulonimbus clouds. Dewpoints are up! Surf’s up! (Somewhere.)7:32 PM. Nice sunset consisting of Altocumulus cumulogenitus clouds (originated with those mountain Cumulus clouds earlier in the day).
I was marveling at this title, one that just came out of nowhere, using the idea of a superhero and a standard measure of how bubbly the clouds might be. I really don’t know how it happened, but there it was…
Think of “supercloud” as a Cumulonimbus cloud, those giants of the cloud kingdom, ones that can top out near 70,000 feet above sea level and can have UPDRAFTS as high as 80-100 mph in their very rare and strongest forms (where nothing can fall out, of course). An armored T-28 research aircraft operated by the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology flew through one of those superclouds; went up on its own some 5,000 feet in a minute!
Well, of course, clouds in Arizona are never THAT bad (or good) depending on your viewpoint, but today, according to millions of calculations in the U of AZ Beowulf Cluster, the Cumulonimbus clouds of today will be more bouyant than the ones we had yesterday. We get that indication from last night’s 11 PM AST model run where it calculates something called “Convective Available Potential Energy”, or CAPE. Today’s CAPE will be about two or three times larger than yesterday’s, according to the model. Orangutang1. A first test of that U of AZ model’s prediction will be in this morning’s Tucson balloon sounding, which needs to replicate the model’s prediction for that time of day to have confidence in it. (Will have to wait for quite awhile here while our TUS sounding; its still on its journey upward now at 5:11 AM.)
Predicted TUS sounding for 5 AM AST by the U of AZ supermodel which downsizes that output from the NOAA WRF-GFS one. The red, dashed line delineates, with some terrible assumptions though, like the air isn’t mixing with the air around and above it, nevertheless its very useful. The amount of CAPE isn’t much here, only “500”, though its pretty good for 5 AM AST. Supposed to be well over “1,000” by this afternoon!
The TUS ballon sounding (“rawinsonde”) for 5 AM AST this morning (July 13th). Ooops! Not as much CAPE suggested here as in the model, though the definition is somewhat different from the model (which is Mixed layer CAPE, or MCAPE).
So, what does all this gobbledygook mean? Casting aside the fact that the actual sounding is not quite as unstable as our local model was predicting due to writer’s “confirmation bias”, a killer of good science, we should have sooner2, bigger dumps overall in the area, and happily, more of them. Thunder on Ms. Lemmon before noon will be a very good sign that the model has captured today pretty well.
Yesterday’s clouds and a stupefying sunset scene to the east
7:56 AM. Altocumulus perlucidus (cellular area) and opacus (solid gray areas). 1:55 PM. First moderate-sized Cumulonimbus arose just before this, vicinity of Oracle. 2:16 PM. Pretty typical of yesterday’s rainshafts. Sprinkled (its NOT drizzle!) here in Sutherland Heights after this. We get mad when we think of people calling sprinkles, “drizzle” as you know, and it just kind of came there.) My apologies. 7:19 PM. Glorious coloration of our fabulous Catalina Mountains, specifically, the lower portions of Samaniego Ridge. 7:27 PM. A glorious halo effect created by a former Cumlonimbus anvil, a few minutes later. This was an incredible scene. Was lucky to be out and capture it.
The End.
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1An unexpected word has been inserted as a reader check. Is anybody still reading this? Techno-language causes droopy eyelids, makes people want to give up reading altogether, kids to fall behind in their STEM work. Its quite a powerful effect.
2I have a some relatives and friends in Oklahoma that root for the U of O Sooners. I will be rooting for sooners today, too.
Its always nice to know that someone around you got an inch when you only got a trace; builds character because you’re glad for THEM and not moaning about a rain miss or Ms. Rain, 2014.
So, that’s the kind of day it was yesterday. Thunder on the north side of The Lemmon by early afternoon on for a an hour or so, with that associated rain shield/anvil passing north of us–0.98 inches fell at Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge, BTW.
Later, big, fat Cumulus starting to line up to the north of us, as they often do, and then exploded into strong storms with good outflows in the middle of the afternoon; black columns of rain pounding down in the desert just north of Saddlebrooke. Certainly an inch or more fell out there in the core of that storm.
So, its “great” to think of desert critters and vegetation near us getting hammered with water in this droughty time while we only got a little baby sprinkle overnight; the best model we have again overestimating the strength of a an evening rain band that didn’t materialize. Got a couple of layers of clouds, but only a little baby trace, to continue to emphasize some character building disappointment.
Showers galore in the afternoons and overnight for the next three days. Monday looks to be have the wettest potential according to the U of AZ mod, today, Saturday, the least. Maybe there will be a Catalina surprise today, though. Clouds ballooning off The Lemmon and environs are supposed to trail out over Catalina today, not so much to the north as they did yesterday, so, remnants of early Cumulonimbus clouds that are locked to the mountain in the late morning and early afternoon, may bring rain here before they die completely.
Then there is always the chance on these days that our real diurnal rainfall maximum, the late afternoon and evening hours, will yet produce a dump. Its gotta happen one of these next three days….
The cloud story for yesterday
8:21 AM. 12:19 PM. 1:26 PM. 1:35 PM. First ice. 1:35 PM. Close up of ice fall out (whitsh haze in center clearing). 2:00 PM. Thunder on the mountain! 3:15 PM. From the cloud base photo collection. Quite nice for a time; thought there was a turret piling up over ME, but then it began to look tattered, developed bright spots in the middle, and shrank in size, indicating that the updraft feeding it was dying out. 3:21 PM. Thunderstorm trudges across desert north of Saddlebrooke. Outflow winds from the north reached Sutherland Heights about this time, helping, for a time, to cause that cloud base overhead to fatten up for awhile. 7:20 PM. The best parts of our sunsets aren’t always to the west!
Forgetting about yesterday’s unforecast subdued afternoon convection hereabouts after about 1 PM), lets talk about the misery of others; the little crybabies that leave Arizona in the summertime, decimating its economy, so that they can be cooler and “happy” in northern climes (while dodging hail and tornadoes, we might add).
Well, how about them birdies being really COLD before very long, due to record breaking low July temperatures? Yes, that’s right, what’s left of the “polar vortex” will once again, due to global warming, of course, spin out of control and down into the northern US in just about 5-7 days. And with it, long term July low temperature records will fall in the eastern US. Count on it.
So, once again, as some scientists alleged last winter, global warming will actually cause cooling. (Almost everything that happens is due to GW these days, as we know. (“GW”, BTW, now repackaged in the catch all, temperature-neutral phrase, “Climate Change”, during the past few years because, globally, it stopped getting warmer way back in ’98, and when the years began to pile up without global warming, scientists had to find another phrase to hang their mistaken hats on. (Where was the usual scientific “caution” back then?)
HOWEVER, continuing on with this harangue, and being a “lukewarmer”, we must watch out that the coming big El Nino doesn’t release a spring-loaded, pent up release of global heat. Might well happen, so don’t give up on “GW” quite yet; hold some cards on that question for another few years.
And, of course, if there is a step jump up in global temperatures just ahead, the phrase, “climate change” will be dumped by scientists and media for “global warming” again. Count on it, #2.
But, I digress, mightily, mainly due to yesterday’s cloud disappointments.
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Not in a great mood after yesterday’s bust, as you can tell, except for that strong thunderstorm that pummeled the north side of the Catalinas beginning about 11:30 AM, that was pretty cool; had continuous thunder for about an hour and a half, too. Dan Saddle up on Oracle Ridge got 0.63 inches, but you can bet 1-2 inches fell somewhere up there.
I was so happy then.
I thought the “Great Ones” would arise upwind of us in the direction of Pusch Ridge, but no. Those clouds got SMALLER as the afternoon wore on, it was incredible, and by sunset they were gone with only trashy debris clouds of Altocumulus and Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus from great storms in Mexico drifting over our sky. Even the sunset was disappointing.
Well, that 3:15 am to 3:30 am little shower this morning than dropped 0.15 inches here in the Heights, and 0.24 inches down there at the Bridge by Lago del Oro gave a psych boost1 that got me here on the keyboard.
10:55 AM. Nearly invisible veil of ice crystals begin to fall from an older Cumulus congestus turret. This was about an hour and a half ealier than the prior day, indicating that the Cu tops were reaching that level sooner than the prior day, suggesting bigger things (I thought). When you see this happening this early, you also look for an “explosion” some massive turret to suddenly blast out of these developing clouds, and that did happen within about half an hour after this.
10:55 AM. Close up, in case you don’t believe me.
11:04 AM.
7:33 PM. Your sunset.
Today? Check here. Once again, mod expects early Cumulonimbus on The Lemmon, then groups of thunderstorms move in during the evening (as was more or less predicted yesterday, but didn’t happen.) Will go with mod again, though, because I would like that to happen.
The weather way ahead
We’ve talked about cold air, now to balance things off, how about a discussion of the warm air ahead? Real hot air.
Was blown away by the spaghetti outputs from last night for the period of about two weeks from now. You can see the whole package from the NOAA spaghetti factory here. Below, our weather in 12-15 days, usually beyond confident predictions, but not here:
Valid at 5 PM AST July 22nd. Massive blob of really hot air settles in over the western half of the US. In this map, the most reliable long term predictions are over the western half of the US and over the Saharan Desert (indicated by the lack of lines in those two areas. A lot of lines means the weather pattern is pretty unpredictable.)
Valid at 5 PM July 25th. Massive upper level blob of really hot air continues to dominate the western half of the US.
&
So
The hot blob of air should lead to record HIGH temperatures all over the place in those days beginning around the 20-25th of July. Rainfall here? Indeterminant. If the high center sits over us, it might just be hot, real hot, but dry.
But, if the configuration aloft is as shown in the second plot, it could be very wet as tropical disturbances shift northwestward from Mexico into Arizona.
Sorry, can’t do much with precip from these, I don’t think.
The End, and covering all the possibilities, CM
==================================== 1Paraphrasing, the song for weathermen, those speaking to clouds; “Rain on me, when I’m downhearted….”
7:35 PM. Curtains of ice droop down from heavy patches of Cirrus spissatus producing an outstanding sunset last evening. Hope you saw it. What kind of ice? Likely “bullet rosette” ice crystals are the ones falling out.The complex ice crystal called a “bullet rosette” for some reason as imaged at 130 mph by an instrument (Cloud Particle Imager) on the University of Washington’s research aircraft high over Barrow, AK. These were at the bottom of Altostratus (thick ice) clouds around 23, 000 feet above sea level. Tops were about 32,000 feet, and was thick enough to produce a gray overcast. The CPI was designed and built by Paul Lawson, a friend who was a starting defensive back on the Michigan State Spartan’s National Champion fubbal team of 1966 or 1967. He formed, and is still the CEO, of Stratton Park Engineering Company, one that makes a lot of high end instrumentation for imaging cloud particles. Likes to meditate, too; just kind of sits there for hours on end like a piece of pottery. I don’t get it. Maybe its related to concussions he might have gotten.
Action shot of the University of Washington Convair-580 research aircraft in flight, in case you wanted to see that. My job was to stand on a little stool (hmmmm, that doesn’t sound right) so my head would be high enough and fit in that little dome and say things about clouds, which as here, was usually too much. Pretty cool, eh?
Wasting time here, filling in with filler material1 since there’s no real chance of rain, though, as usual, pretty clouds and maybe some real nice sunrises llike this morning’s and sunsets. That’s OK. We’ll get by until the Big Boys arrive, those Cumulonimbus clouds of summer, with all their splendor and drama. As reported in the media, a better than average rain season is being foretold by the Climate Prediction Center. How nice is that?
Small Cu today, maybe a CB top way off toward the S or SE…. Have some nice Altocu now, splattered around. No rain in WRF-GFS hereabouts for two weeks, but, as we know over and over again, they can be VERY wrong in that longer view!
The End.
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1Remember when newspapers had “fillers”, interesting little facts punctuating the pages where the columns and such left little spaces after being laid out? They had some fascinating material in them, such as that a certain spider’s web strand, if the diameter of a garden hose, could support TWO 747 jets! (True!)
