The weather ahead

Tropical river to flow into Arizona

The summer high pressure sitting on top of Catalina in the middle and upper atmosphere, squashing our Cumulonimbus clouds with its extra warm air, is destined to relocate to Dubuque, Iowa over the next five days. Along with the return of better showers, more bigger ones, as this happens, this movement will also allow a river of tropical air to flood into Arizona with the remains of Hurricane “Xxxxx” (hasn’t formed yet, but will shortly way down off Mexico way).

Before placing much confidence in such a wild scenario, let us examine the NOAA “Ball of Yarn After Kitty Played with It“, as my one blog reader once termed it, or, AKA, the “ensembles of spaghetti”:

NOAA "Ensembles of spaghetti, valid for — NOAA “Ensembles of spaghetti”, valid for 5 PM AST, Sunday, August 25th. Pretty cool, huh? Big trough off West Coast; big fat high over Plains States, tropical river flows between them into Cal and AZ. Really, this is as good as it gets for summer rain deluges, ones that deserts are always in need of in parts of those areas. I am pumped because the clustering of the red and bluish lines, as you know, mean that this model forecast pattern is just about a foregone conclusion.

So,after DELIBERATELY putting little errors in the data that the model crunches to see if there are tipping points, little errors that make a big difference, then running the model over and over again to see how different the results are, we can see that everything looks pretty much the same even after little errors are put in. That means the tropical river forecast is robust. In plain language, “Count on it!”

These forecasts also include the remnant of a tropical storm or hurricane that has yet to form, being swept along into western Arizona and SE Cal. Some of our greatest floods in Arizona have occurred with these kinds of storms, as you know. Presently, the bulk of the tropical river will impinge more over the western lowlands of Arizona rather than here, but we should be in great position to accumulate appreciable rains anyway, if not the heaviest.

BTW, interested in tropical storms impacted, say, Yuma? Go here, type in the name and you will see, oh, names like Nora (1997), Kathleen, 1976, and so forth. It happens. Pretty damn exciting for those folks. So maybe it will happen again. Atmo is set up to do this, or come close.

Now for the little cloud news for yesterday, not as good a day as hoped for, just hot with run of the mill, isolated storms. Can hardly find rain in the past 24 h in the Pima County ALERT gauges.

12:18 PM. Already 100 F here but only modest clouds have formed over the Catalinas. Look at how confused the top is, one leaning one way, and the other another way. Shows how still the atmosphere was at that level, almost calm.

2:05 PM. You gotta love this little guy, all puffed up but so little, trying to be all it can be against the big fat high over us. — 2:05 PM. You gotta love this little guy, trying so hard to be something. I just wanted to fly up there and hug it, all puffed up the way it was but so little. Kinda reminded me of the antics of my very little brother when he was, trying to be more.

Below, the human metaphor for that little cloud shown above; my little bro. He was so cute, too. Went on to be a tough guy, as well, a young LA policeman working the Watts area during the riots, you know, guns pointed at, death threats from Black Panthers¹, ambushes, etc.

Thanks, bro, for all you’ve done.

5:34 PM. Squashed Cumulonimbus over west Tucson just after a spectacular cloud to ground stroke. Didn't think it had it in it to produce LTG. — 5:34 PM. Squashed Cumulonimbus over west Tucson just after a spectacular cloud to ground stroke. Didn’t think it had it in it to produce LTG.

6:49 PM. While it didn't rain, we did have our usual sunset glory, lighting on the mountains. — 6:49 PM. While it didn’t rain, we did have our usual sunset glory, lighting on the mountains.

7:11 PM. Sunset colors with distant Cumulonimbus with Cirrus spissatus cumulonimbogenitus in the foreground (debris from dissipated thunderheads, of course). — 7:11 PM. Sunset colors with “Cirrus spissatus cumulonimbogenitus” in the foreground (debris from dissipated thunderheads, of course).

Finishing up with a quick look at the 11 PM U of AZ model runs…. Has some more showers around here than yesterday, which isn’t hard to do. But yesterday, this same model was foretelling a down day today. Hmmmm.

Well, gotta go with the latest, or just have a great day; lay back and enjoy whatever happens. Oh, yeah!

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¹Across from the Watts police precinct was a Black Panther headquarters which at one point had a sign, “Off the pig Rango.” My brother went over and told them he was upset that they had misspelled his name. The next day the sign read, “Off the pig Ragno”, also misspelled.

The End.

Drama queens

Quite happy early on yesterday with Cu sprouting upward rapidly in the mid-morning, then it ended up being a sad day for us yesterday with only a trace. It appeared, with the early generation of towering Cumulus over the Cat Mountains, then thunder just before noon, that we were going to have a good chance of a big dump, a land-filling rainstorm, to make a play on the word “dump.”

But no.

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Next, in a continuation of negative thoughts, I propose a spending cap on college athletics. Here’s why from the NYT, no less¹. In the short of it: the Duck has more money to spend than the Dawg, and, as a former employee of the University of Washington, I am upset. Yes I am THAT great a former employee. Even when working at the U of WA full time, I advertised the company teams AFTER working hours by wearing this and that with Dawg logos, that’s how good an employee I was.

But Oregon has crossed the line; its got to stop. Think of the poor AZ Wildcats, too, if you’re so inclined. The only worse thing that could happen is for the University of Phoenix, with all their money, to start a football program and join the Pac 12 after the WAZU Cougars drop out because they are so bad. (The Cougars ARE really bad, to get an in-state rival Dawg dig in. hahahaha, Cougs.

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Now, some clouds, real drama queens, but still pretty darn photogenic:

11:25 AM. Cu pile up beyond the Gap. — 11:25 AM. Cu pile up nicely beyond the Gap. Note pileus clouds atop Cu left and distant right, a sign of good updrafts. I like pileus clouds.

SONY DSC — 11:36 AM. While these two Cumulus clouds became marshmallows, the first ice (fibrous area, upper left) begins to show.

So with all the drama shown above, here’s what ensued from that great looking base, demonstrating that you can only be “mostly be sure, but not all sure”, to paraphrase a Billy Crystal line in “The Princess Bride.”

3:02 PM. The pitiful rain shaft on Samaniego Ridge that eventually emitted from that great looking base. Little baby rain was falling here at the time. Traced is all. — 3:02 PM. The pitiful “rain shaft”, if I may so elevate such light rain, on Samaniego Ridge, the outpouring of precip that eventuated from that great looking base. Little baby rain was falling here at the time. Traced is all it did.

What happened? The intensity of the shaft tells you how high the tops of those really dark bases got, and in this case, probably they probably got no higher than the marshmallow clouds shown above with their equally weak shafts. Not much rain, either, in the Catalinas.

Why didn’t the tops get higher?

The outflow shove wasn’t enough to jack them up, the air just a bit too cool feeding into the bases, weakening outflow winds. You can make up a lot of stuff. But, darn, it looked SO GOOD there for a moment.

Today? Well, the same scenario replayed over and over again it seems. Likely Cu building on the Cat Mountains again, probably not as early a start as yesterday–TUS sounding’s a little drier. I should see what Bob sez, since he really knows stuff.

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¹ Sent to me by a science prize-winning friend² with whom I shared Husky season ticks with. It was interesting since I got a minimal science prize of sorts, too. The headline: “Prize-winning meteorologists attend college football games together.” Kind of an unexpected scenario I would think.

² ^{Got his prize, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and congratulations from Al Gore at the White House back in ’00 or so. (Can you put a footnote in a footnote?)}

Late bloomers; Canadians forecasting wet spell just ahead

Yesterday was interesting because Mr. Cloud Maven person¹ gave up on ANY rain around here as late as 5:30 PM yesterday, when the sky was punctuated by only Cumulus mediocris clouds. Sure, there were large, and quite pretty Cumulonimbi to the NW-NE over the distant high terrain, but it seemed Ms. Lemmon could not take part in producing the rainfull joy those distant clouds indicated as she so often does; was a real Cb wallflower. See below.

DSCN5227 — 5:21 PM. Under 104 F skies, Cumulus mediocris over the Cat Mountains having bases way up at about 14 kft above sea level (of course, less high above sea level in future decades) produces a yawn.

5:23 PM. Nearly solid mass of Cumulonimbus tops line N horizon.

Within half an hour, things began to change. What happened? Sometimes when you see changes taking place all around you its a sign of some upper level trigger, some pattern in the upper level winds that is causing the air below to come together under it, and produce large areas of clouds and thunderstorms, a little cyclonic swirl. I can’t really see anything to explain the suddeness, so I will quit this topic rather than leaving you hanging. I think I will show you two ant cones now.

Two symmetric ant cones. But why? — Thought break: 7:57 AM, before the cloud development mystery, two symmetric ant cones. But why? There are many mysteries in life that can’t be solved, so I’m not feeling bad at all.

5:45 PM. Nice, but still, at this size can only produce sprinkles and virga. Note slight bit of virga above Pusch Ridge. This WAS a sign that these modest clouds with high bases were beginning to reach upward to the glaciation level, where ice forms, a level that changes in height from day to day generally because it is partly dependent on the aerosol content in the air. This begain happening in several clouds almost simultaneously! — 5:45 PM. Nice, but still, at this size can only produce sprinkles and virga. Note slight bit of virga above Pusch Ridge.
This WAS a sign that these modest clouds with high bases were beginning to reach upward to the glaciation level, where ice forms, a level that changes in height from day to day generally because it is partly dependent on the aerosol content in the air. This began happening in several clouds almost simultaneously! I am sure you started to get worked up, as I did.

5:58 PM. Cute narrow shaft falls from a glaciated turret that has also climbed that bit farther from the prior photo. You also can see that while there is a big fluff of ice up there above the base, the rain that falls out represents only a tiny portion of where ice formed in the cloud. This would be the graupel/hail region of the cloud, melting of course on the way down because its so friggin' hot, to be colloquial there for a second. — 5:58 PM. Cute narrow shaft falls from a glaciated turret that has also climbed that bit farther from the prior photo. You also can see that while there is a big fluff of ice up there above the base, the rain that falls out represents only a tiny portion of where ice formed in the cloud. This would be the graupel/hail region of the cloud, melting of course on the way down because its so friggin’ hot, to be colloquial there for a second.

Cutting to the chase, these surrounding cloud eruptions that occurred simultaneously, suggesting some help from above:

6:01 PM. Rainshaft fibers began emitting from this pile of Cumulus crumpulus. It was amazing since it now seemed everything was starting to rain! And rain reached the ground under this in Oro Valley. Stupendous, because now you’re looking everywhere for something to go over you.

DSCN5297 — 7:02 PM. Great looking oval base about to “unload.”

DSCN5308 — 7:11 PM. The hammer is down. Likely 0.50 inches or so in this short-lived water bomb.

: 6:51 PM. “Man with hat and beer”; sun illuminated rain in background.

DSCN5316 — 7:11 PM. Part of the spectacular electrical show last evening.

The weather ahead….from the Canadians.

This output that was churned out yesterday during the day is so good for us, I thought it was worth repeating today. Note green and yellow areas in southern AZ over this period. It represents, after our “June in August” spell, what I would like to see happen over the next week to 50 days to green things up again, if its not too late already.

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¹ Best to refer to yourself in the third person if you’re wrong or surprised about something in your field of expertise.

Cis fib and Cis spis lead to nice sunset; big trough, big wind ahead

Cirrus fibratus and Cirrus spissatus, of course. Here they are from yesterday.

2:56 PM. Cirrus fibratus, straight or gently curved elements.

7:28 PM. CIrrus spissatus (thick, patchy Cirrus) with other varieties.

The weather ahead

Troughulent weather is ahead as you can plainly see here from the NOAA spaghetti factory:

Here’s what it looks like on a regular 500 millybar map (IPS MeteoStar):

No rain in it for us, but if you missed having wind yesterday the 21st, well this situation will make up for it. Likely to be gusts over 40 mph in these here parts when it actually peaks out in about a week. In the meantime, a West Coast trough ahead of this violent jet streamer from the Pacific will keep the air moving long before this unusual event slams into Cal.

The End for now.

Less splotchy; more filling

The clouds yesterday were supposed to be “splotchy”, big clearings between interesting middle clouds like Altocumulus with long virga strands. Instead there was a vast coverage of Altostratus opacus “dullus” with long streaks of virga, with a few drops reaching the ground here and there but not here. There was some mammatus-t clouds, too. Also, the end of the clouds didn’t get here until after nightfall, not in the afternoon as anticipated from this keyboard.

The result was a much cooler day than expected, too. On TV, they were talkin’ low 80s for yesterday, a reasonable expectation given “splotchy clouds”, but in Catalinaland, it only reached 73 F under the heavy overcast. Very pleasant for being out-of-doors.

Oh, well. Maybe I’ll try building model airplanes and talk about those instead. Or make up historical anecdotes that aren’t true, mixing characters up from different eras and see if anybody notices. Now that would be fun! (Naw. Too silly.)

Here’s your day, beginning just before sunrise when some fabulous, fine-grained Cirrocumulus clouds came over top:

6:31 AM. Finely grained Cirrocu top of photo, line cloud would also probably qualify as Cc, though calling it Ac would not result in a fine from C-M. — 6:31 AM. Finely grained Cirrocumulus (Cc) top of photo, line cloud would also qualify as Cc, though the granulation is larger, still not large enought to be Altocumulus. With a little imagination, the top center cloud appears to be hanging down like those house Christmas lights.

Also at 6:31 AM. Here are your splotchy clouds. I can’t believe how good the forecast is going after an hour! There some much ice in the center cloud that you’d have to call it Cirrus spissatus, but an hour ago it was likely an Altocu cas, or floccus, one at very low (not “cold”, to be proper) temperatures.

7:41 AM. Clearings between clouds disappearing! Passing by, and from a thick Altostratus opacus cloud, a display of mammatus/testicularis left center (trying to be even-handed here in cloud nomenclature).

1:04 PM. Line of heavy virga from what else, Altostratus opacus, tops at Cirrus levels. Chance of late sun pretty much gone by now. BTW, if you saw a time lapse of mammatus clouds, you would see that the upside down Cumulus turret look, opens up to fibrous little shafts like these. — 1:04 PM. Line of heavy virga from what else, Altostratus opacus, tops at Cirrus levels. Chance of late sun pretty much gone by now. BTW, if you saw a time lapse of mammatus-t clouds, you would see that the “upside down Cumulus turret” look (as in the prior two shots), open up to fibrous little shafts like these.

6:50 PM. Good sunset, not great, as backside of As clouds finally comes into view on the horizon. — 6:50 PM, just before Husky softball defeated No. 2, ASU last night in Tempe, the heart of devil-land. Good sunset, not great, as backside of Altostratus (As) clouds finally comes into view on the horizon. The lower cloud specks at the base of the As layer are those comprised of droplets, not ice, as is the higher As. This shot helps show how different in appearance clouds of the two phases, liquid and ice, are. When they’re together, mixing it up, we call that a “mixed phase” cloud. Because there are so many particles that droplet clouds can form on (typically, in continental settings, there are hundreds of thousands per liter) those clouds have more detail and the drops are too tiny to fall as precip. In the higher Altostratus layer, the concentrations of ice particles that comprise it are probably only in the tens per liter, and those ice crystals/particles are far larger than the droplets in droplet clouds. Most of the ice particles in the As, therefore, are settling downward, evaporating. However, all ice clouds can produce light precipitation to the ground, one of the THREE ways we get precip out of clouds; all ice, mixed phase, and all liquid processes. (Some textbooks I’ve seen only talk about the latter two, BTW.)

If you want, you can go to this loop from the U of WA Huskies Weather Department here and see how the little splotchy cloud thing with that passing upper trough became a big fat thing as it came by. Also in this retrospective, you should examine the U of AZ Weather Department time lapse film. You’ll be amazed at all the stuff going on in a day that looked pretty dull all in all. Also, at the end (after 5 PM AST) you’ll seen the winds aloft change completely in direction as the backside of the trough, the clearing side, approached. I saw stuff I didn’t know was happening. You’ll also see how the mammatus pouches, if I may, open up into fibrous virga. Thank you, U of AZ Weather Department, for posting these great instruction films!

Not expecting clouds for most of today, but will likely see a couple of Cirrus streaming in from the NW late.

Still no precip in sight, unless you consider lithometeors a form of precip, dust accumulations, that is, such as we had a few days ago. Half inch (of dust) I predicted wasn’t that bad (hahahah). Dust accumulations expected now on the afternoon of the 16th, and again on during the afternoons of the 25th and 26th of April.

C-M alive, local, and… finished with the dust report, now back to the studio.

The End.

Exciting day ahead for you; lithometeors on display

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.)

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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.

Catalina to be “wind capital” of North America tomorrow afternoon

There’s the “artichoke capital of the world” in Castroville, CA, but here in Catalina we’ll the “wind capital” of all of North America tomorrow afternoon. Its great to be the “capital” of something, anything! Thought you would like to know about the wind, maybe glue on your baseball cap in preparation for extreme winds tomorrow, especially later in the day just before “Joe Cold Front” arrives with his blustery blasts from the west and northwest tomorrow evening and overnight.

No rain in “Joe”, but during the following couple of days as the unusually cold air for April makes itself at home here, we’ll probably see some Cu with ice (tops colder than -10 C, to continue a refrain here), and that could mean enough virga for a sprinkle at the ground here. Likely some measurable snow on Ms. Lemmon during that time.

Here’s what happens as rendered by IPS MeteoStar, these cool looking wind maps for tomorrow. Not much to begin day at dawn, then “pow” by mid-late morning:, then wind reaching a crescendo (a great word, you can feel it) during the mid and late afternoon. Gusts likely to better 50 mph in brief puffs here in Catalinaland.

Valid at 5 AM AST. No wind here yet, mod sez.

ann 2013040700_CON_GFS_SFC_WINDS_SLP_042 — Sun ignites ground wind machine by 11 AM AST tomorrow. Dust raised to our southwest by 25-30 kt steady winds likely to invade area during late morning and early afternoon, gradually thickening. Horizontal visibility may be less than 10 miles, which is unusual for here.

Valid at 5 PM AST, tomorrow April 8th. Gust here in Catalina, likely to exceed 50 mph. Hang on to your hat and toupee. — Valid at 5 PM AST, tomorrow April 8th. Gust here in Catalina, likely to exceed 50 mph. Hang on to your hat and toupee, likely need a lot of hair gel if you don’t hat up. And, park your car on the south side of tall trees.

Today’s clouds

Passing Cirrus

The End.

Pretty strong “signal” showing up for April 17th

Wasn’t going to blog, gets boring after a while with only dry conditions ahead, but then saw this and got pretty excited, as you will, too. Might not need that extra cup of joe to get going today.

Its valid for Wednesday, April 17th, at 5 PM AST. Pretty cool, huh?

Its unusual to see a strong signal 312 h from the model start time as here, but especially so as we get later into the spring when the jet stream is slowing down all over the northern hemi and the troughs in it smaller, spaced more closely together, slower moving, too. (Summer is really goofy in that regard.)

Here, both the 00 Z (yellow lines) and 12 Z (gray lines) model runs in the past 24 h are indicating a big fat trough in the Southwest, and the bunching together of the red lines suggest a lot of confidence in that forecast. It would mean another real chance for rain here near this time, plus or minus a day or so.

The weather just ahead, Monday

In the meantime, our very next big trough, cold slam, and stupefyingly large low center, one that explodes from a tiny “Tonopah Low¹” early on Monday morning, to one whose circulation extends from southern California to Missouri, virtually covering the entire western US! In spite of its gigantic extent, it still looks dry here, any rain accumulation here very “iffy.”

On the other hand, a half inch of dust accumulation is quite likely since it’ll be darn windy that day, dramatically windy. Likely to see more than 40 mph here in Catalinaland and visibility noticeably reduced in dust later on Monday.

BTW, its quite normal for low centers that are weak over the ocean to erupt into deeper lows as they move inland, during the spring. Just the opposite happens during the deep winter period when ocean lows move inland and weaken or die over the cold continent because they lose the temperature contrast that drives them. In the spring, the warming continent is “food for lows”, like spinach for Popeye (you remember Popeye, don’t you?). Ok, then in more modern terms, like that Hulk guy that got so gigantic when he got mad or something. That’s what happens in the spring to little lows and their troughs when they move inland, especially into the warm Southwest from the Pac NW.

The great news here, and I am so pumped about it, is that this giant low will be a whopper in terms of precip for so many droughty areas of the mountainous West and the central and northern Plains States. Check out the Canadian model here as an example of what’s coming to the Plains States. Just what the weatherman ordered. I’m sure it will make the news.

For reference purposes, a before you, if you will, here is the awful drought situation from the drought monitor folks in Lincoln, NB, in the central and Southwest US as it stands today:

US drought status as of April 2, 2013. Ugh. — US drought status as of April 2, 2013. Ugh

Yes, this Monday’s low will be a billion dollar baby for some. And here’s where storm chasing is truly fun because of all the happy people you’ll meet in the rainy areas, not like those storm chasers who relish seeing tornadoes and destruction, as might happen farther to the south in Texas and across the South².

Yesterday’s clouds

Cirrus, thickening into a dull, kind of lifeless layer of Altostratus by late afternoon and evening, the latter a deep all ice cloud; no opening in it to the west for a great big sunset, nope, just gray all the way. Staring with sunrise:

5:59 AM. Cirrus over Samaniego Ridge. — 5:59 AM. Cirrus/Cirrostratus over Samaniego Ridge.

10:41 AM. Cirrus fibratus (the thicker patches might also be termed spissatus, but who cares?) There also appears to be a high thin layer of Cirrostratus. There are definitely multiple layers where clouds are. — 10:41 AM. Cirrus fibratus (the thicker patches might also be termed spissatus, but who cares? :}) There also appears to be a high thin layer of Cirrostratus. There are definitely multiple layers where clouds are located.

6:08 PM. Altostratus opacus. Note little tendrils of virga demonstrating that its a precipitating cloud (light snow); just doesn't get to the ground — 6:08 PM. Altostratus opacus. Note the mottled look due to virga, demonstrating that its a precipitating cloud (light snow); just doesn’t get to the ground

Today’s clouds

We’ll see the end of our pretty Cirrus and Altocumulus clouds that we have this morning by mid-day to early afternoon. Enjoy them now. Might get a good sunrise bloom here in a few minutes, too. Hope so.

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¹Usually located on top of Tonopah, Nevada

² “Truth-in-packaging”: Mr. Cloud Maven person chased Hurricane Carla in 1961, one of the 20th century’s greatest, ended up in Seabrook, Texas, near Galveston, and let us not forget the song about Galveston (has some wind in it) as a kind of distraction, so he’s being just that tiny bit hypocritical here.

Hoping Canadians win model forecast duel

This from Canada last night for April 8th at 5 PM AST: appropriate descriptor for AZ; “juicy.” This was such a great find early this morning!

Note deep upper low at 500 mb in eastern Cal (upper left panel) and gigantic surface low centered in Four Corners area (upper right panel). Would almost surely mean rain here in Catalina 24 h after these panels (the last one in the forecast series). If these maps verify this would be another billion-trillion dollar value storm in drought relief for the Southwest AND Plains States over the days following this map.

However, you will be as moribund as I was after looking at the USA WRF-GFS model output for the SAME moment in time, 5 PM AST April 8th below. I had hoped both models would show the same thing, which would build confidence on what’s going to happen on the 8th-9th, but they are vastly different! Take a look at THIS upper level pattern: no low in eastern Cal, just a strong jet pouring down from the Pac NW with cool air. No moisture of consequence here in Catlandia with a pattern like the one below.

Also valid at 5 PM AST April 8th, for the 500 millibar pressure level.

So who you gonna call when these kinds of things happen? Spaghetti!

Well, if you know anything at all about “spaghetti” you will only get more moribund, maybe start crying when you see it for the same time as these models. The Enviro Can mod is clearly an outlier “solution” even if though are dealing with different models. Inserting some “chaos” in form of “bad balloons” (bad data) at the start of the USA model run does not reveal a pattern with a low in eastern Cal in any of the “ensemble” model runs, but only results in a strong signal (line bunching) for a jet to whoosh down the interior of the West Coast that then loops back toward the northeast over and east of us–not good for precip here, just a rush of cool-cold air.

However, it WILL still be a pattern that’s great for Texas and the Plains States in general, so let us not be selfish in our dryness and begrudge others who get rain, but rejoice with those droughty others who will get so much relief beginning around the 8th as shown here–and that relief lasts for about three days, too. Just hope there aren’t too many tornadoes in Texas and eastward…

As an aside, it might be worth the drive to central Texas to see some of those Big Boys out there, get some perspective on Nature’s power.

Yesterday’s clouds, those small Cumulus, almost beyond the curvature of the earth to the north-northwest

Only the truly great cloud maven juniors of our time would have observed and logged in their weather diaries those tiny Cumulus clouds (humilis and fractus) that appeared momentarily off to the north-northwest horizon, barely visible, from Catalinaland around 5:12 PM. Since I had foretold some distant Cumulus to the north yesterday, I damn well was looking the whole afternoon, straining eyeballs, and was starting to feel sad until I saw this one cloud, and then I was SO happy, euphoric really. I think this one, and a couple of others needing a microscope to see, were there for about 15 minutes is all. Here is that photo-documentation of a small, distant Cumulus humilis. I’ve added some writing on this photo to help you find it, but you will have to blow it up.

Also, its OK to log things you missed in retrospect into your weather diary; it helps make it more complete. BTW, there were also a few little patches of Cirrus.

The End.

Small Cumulus to distant north this afternoon!

On going theme here: excessive excitement over not much. Might need binoculars to see them, but they’ll be up there over the higher terrain I am pretty sure, maybe even a 2-minute Cumulus fractus over Ms. Lemmon.

Today will be one of those days you write home about, if your home is not here, and you haven’t gone back to Wisconsin yet. The sky should be so blue today as it dries out aloft and the Cirrus goes away, with the temperature “just fine” as a weak trough passes by over the next day taking the temperature down some.

No rain in the “Big Trough”, the one that sits on Catalina in about a week (April 8th and 9th), sorry to say. It crashes down on us a little too far to the east, so there’ll just be real cold air for April here, and a sky dotted with a few clouds, ones likely to sport virga. This will be a good time to tell your eastern and northern friends, or ones in Europe¹, the latter place where they are having one of the coldest springs ever, that it will be brutally cold here, so cold that the high temperature might only get to 73 F (21 C) during the afternoon of the coldest day, Monday or Tuesday of next week). (OK, its a cruel joke…but kind of fun anyway. I tell my brother in NC things like that all the time.)

Still pretty green in isolated spots in the desert, though most everything looks stressed now. Here are some examples of how green it is in those isolated spots. When you’re walking around in places like this, there’s hardly any sunlight that gets through the canopy, and in some area, the purple flowers are the size of helicopters at the top of it (view from hot air balloon). Amazing.

Jungle vegetation seen on a recent hike/ride — Jungle-like vegetation seen on a recent hike/ride near the back gate of Catalina State Park.

For comparison, a photo by the author of the jungle in the northern state of Rondonia, Brazil, 1995, taken while skimming tree tops in U of WA research aircraft collecting data on biomass burning. Of course, the jungle’s likely gone now, but… (and what a sad thought):

Near Porto Velho, Rondonia, Brazil, 1995. No flowers at top of canopy here, just bugs, birds and smoke.

Yesterday’s clouds

Cirrus!

Our desert, even in drought, showing its tinge of spring green, followed by a nice sunset.

: 6:12 PM.

The End.

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¹Unintended consequences, described here when we’re planning for later warmth, much later, when brutally cold weather is still going to occur from time to time, and always will, as in Europe now. I thought it was a pretty fair read so am passing it along (this from Mark Albright, climate folk hero from the U of WA). Some models predict that while the Arctic warms over the decades, the land masses nearby will still see extreme cold (as the Chinese scientists recently asserted concerning THEIR extreme winter cold); we don’t want to forget those susceptible to cold. What a mess this planet is in! Dammitall! End of editorial content.