Rainy days and Saturdays

Nice sunset yesterday….as some Stratocumulus spread over the sky underneath a pesky Cirrus cloud cover, clouds that announced the beginning of our next rain spell, now underway.

Light rain is falling this morning at 4:07 AM, and has been for hours, amounting to 0.01 inches.  However, some places in Pima Land have gotten much nicer rains, around a third of an inch in the Cat Mountains overnight, for example; check here.

Progress of the real monsoon, since June 1st, can be checked back there at the beginning of this sentence.  The coastal state of Karnataka has an average rainfall of about 70 inches since June 1st, a below normal amount, believe it or not.  However, being a statewide average, that 70 inches doesn’t reflect the hill stations in the western Ghats, surely to have about twice that amount.

Now, as a further aside, Karnataka, Kerala, two Indian west coastal states  would be a great place to go for a vacation now!  There you could REALLY absorb a REAL monsoon, where passing rains, heavy, pounding, thick with drops, visibility down to less than a mile, go on hour after hour with brief interruptions.  Its really pretty amazing and worth experiencing, at least once.

But, not much lightning there, like we have, because the rain develops mainly through a process not requiring ice, much like the rains in Hawaii where lightning is also rare.  The rain develops largely through the collisions of drops, ones that stick together after they collide, and get bigger on the way down through the cloud, sometimes called the “warm rain process” because ice is not involved, and that causes most of the rain in that Indian coastal region.  Cloud bases are right on the deck, and are typically 20-25 deg C, very, very warm.

In contrast, to continue a pedantic stream, “warm rain” is rare here in Arizony because cloud bases are relatively cool (less than 10 deg C in the summer as a rule), and droplet concentration are moderate to high (hundreds per cc).  Higher cloud droplet concentrations make it harder to grow cloud droplets big enough to collide and stick together inside our clouds.

But, we do get that kind of rain, “warm rain” here once in a great while in Arizona as part of the rain that forms in our Cumulonimbus clouds when their bottoms are especially warm, higher than 10 deg C.  Seems to happen about once or twice a summer in my experience so far.

What’s ahead?

Now that afternoon and evening rains around the area are back for the foreseeable future (5 days), what’s way ahead, beyond the foreseeable future?

There, as you know, when we start thinking about beyond the foreseeable future we start thinking about spaghetti! What do those crazy northern hemisphere-wide plots produced by NOAA with their dizzying numbers of lines mean for us here in Arizona?

First, I present a map of the 500 millibar contours as produced in the Haight-Asbury hippie district by San Francisco State–I mention this because the lines on this 500 mb map look a little nervous and maybe it has something to do with that map origin, being from a cultural area whose norms are “anomalous.”  I have pointed out  on this map, “Our Big Fat Anticyclone”, one whose position is critical for decent summer rains here.  In this map, as you can see, its not really OUR “BFA”, but rather belongs to Amarillo, TX, as of last evening.

Nevertheless, it is well positioned to fan humid air from the southeast into Arizona, as is happening now.  Remember, the circulation around a big fat anticyclone is clockwise.  When it sits on top of us, things are not so good; upper level temperatures are high, humidities are low up there, stifling convection and preventing tall Cumulus clouds.

But when the high is away on holiday, temperatures are lower above us, its more humid up there, and those factors allow for deep convection; huge Cumulonimbus clouds.  It only takes a few degrees difference to go from those dry days we just had with their Cumulus pancakus, to the kinds of days ahead for us now, where clouds stand tall!

Continuing, finally, Here’s is today’s plot for 15 days from now, the afternoon of August 11th, based on global data taken at 5 PM AST yesterday.  What do you see?  You see an arrow pointing to something of a void in all the “spaghetti.”  That void represents the most likely position of our BFA some two weeks from now, and that position is pretty darn good for summer rains here.  And it is in that region, to the north of us, almost the whole time from now!

So, based on this “most likely” position, one would venture that the rich summer rain season we have had thus far, will continue to be active.  Of course, this doesn’t mean rain everyday, but that breaks will likely be short through almost the first two weeks of August.

Can you imagine how tall those desert grasses and weeds will be by then if this is the case?

The last couple of photos document our fabulous re-greening now in progress.  If you haven’t been out in the desert, you should get out there and experience this wonderful event.  Doesn’t happen every year, as we know!

On a clear day you can see Flagstaff

Of course, you can’t see the TOWN of Flagstaff, you silly person, the title was just a hook to get you here to read about clouds!  The earth curves too much for you to see Flagstaff, for Pete’s Sake. How could you even imagine that such a title could be true?

But, you CAN see the tops of Cumulonimbus clouds boiling upward OVER Flagstaff, maybe there is someone you know there and you could call them about it, find out how much it has rained.  Those Cumulonimbus tops stick up above the horizon in that direction about a quarter of an inch if you were to take a ruler out and hold it out in front of you.  Thought you’d like to know this.

Here’s the scene I am describing from yesterday afternoon.  In case you wouldn’t know what to say to your Flagstaff friend, I’ve tried to help you out in the caption for the second photo.  Maybe its your mom you haven’t called in a while….  Who knows who it might be that you know up there?

1:27 PM. The scene. Cumulonimbus tops, likely above 40,000 feet above sea level, lined the higher terrain of the Rim to the NW-NE from Catalina yesterday afternoon.  BTW, I really like Catalina.  Who would have dreamed I would end up HERE coming from Seattle!
1:27 PM. Arrow points to a top right by Flagstaff!  If you have a friend or a relative up there because its too hot here, you could have called from Catalina yesterday and said, “Hi, I see its raining up there.  Are you getting much?  Friend:  “How do you know its raining? Did you look at some radar?”  You reply, “No, I can see the cloud over you from here, I really didn’t need to look at the radar.”


Finishing off today’s lesson: The tops you see are ALMOST always completely composed of ICE crystals and snowflakes because they too damn cold at 40,000 feet or so (temperature less than -40 C, less than -40 F; they are the same numeric at that temperature, yet another piece of knowledge for you) for anything but ice we think.

Some embarrassed people have reported liquid water at temperatures below -50 C such as Robert H. Simpson, former head of the National Hurricane Center and also husband of the late Joanne Simpson, famed Cumulus researcher and FIRST WOMAN TO EVER RECEIVE A PH. D. in meteorology1.  Must’ve have been an especially great marriage because they both loved weather and clouds and hurricanes and probably talked about ’em all day.

Continuing with something relevant, once when Bob (Simpson) was in Seattle giving a talk, after the talk I said to him, smiling, “You must be pretty embarrassed about reporting liquid water at -62 C”, as he did in 1962 in a conference paper, and again in 1963 in the peer-reviewed journal, the Monthly Weather Review.

He smiled and said, “The theoreticians don’t think its there, but its there.”

Hmmmph.

The weather today and the next few days into August?

Scattered rains, lightning thunder EVERY day into August! I am so happy. More rain is on the doorstep.  Take a look below at what this extra rain we’ve had so far in July has already done to our desert as of three days ago, July 25th.  Its incredible, isn’t it?  I call it, the “re-jungle-ation” of Arizona accompanied by the appearance of new life forms; see last photo.

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1Joanne Simpson, after reviewing my grades, advised me to give up meteorology. She was a professor at UCLA then (1963), and I wanted to “walk on” as a met student in their program. In effect, though I didn’t realize it then, she saved me from myself since UCLA was WAY too theoretical for me in the approach to weather. Later I attended San Jose State2, a program much more suited to me with my weak math skills.  (Can you put a footnote in a footnote?)”

2While at SJS in the later 1960s, I was forecasting weather for the college paper, forecasts that devolved into silly, juvenile, lame topical humor, much like the “humor” here.  To drop another name in this blog, I loved what KRLA-AM, a top 40 station in Los Angeles, where I grew up,  was doing in those turbulent days of the late 1960s. They had dared to start a news parody program, recreating news events that they would first report in a serious manner.  It was bold and courageous for a mainstream media station; they dared to offend. I wanted to be a part of it, and went down to apply for summer work there in 1968.

My interviewer?  A young Harry Shearer.  The “Credibility Gap“,  the KRLA news parody team in those days, consisted mainly of Harry, Richard Beebe, and David L. Lander.  An example of their work, “Dawn of New Era for Man”,  KRLA’s 1969 Apollo 11 counter coverage to the major networks; its 8 min long, Arizona’s Papago Indians mentioned.  You can’t find this on the internet!

Back to the interview:  Harry briefly examined my topical forecasts for the SJS paper, ones I presented to him pasted on a blank sheet of paper.  After just a minute or two, he said, “I don’t think they’re that funny.”   It was painful to hear, but upon later reflection, oh, so true!  I left immediately.

I had some low moments in the 1960s, but here I am!

 

 

“Do meteorologists suppress thunderstorms?”-Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 2005

In view of the serious consequences of missed rainfall in an Arizona summer, and being a meteorologist, I felt it was important to address a longstanding question among fellow meteorologists, to clear the air, as it were, about what my role might have been in the deflection of massive storms that appeared to be coming to Catalina, but then dissipated mysteriously.  Perhaps this investigation will shed light on the three recent consecutive missed days with no major rains in Catalina while major rains fell very nearby.

There have been some rumors and innuendoes.

Perhaps if a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can affect the weather (eventually) in Texas (from “chaos theory” where itty bitty things can mess everything up), perhaps my excessive running around in the yard taking photographs of giant clouds could have had an effect, changing the airflow in some counterproductive way.

In pursuit of truth, I am providing my three readers with some intellectual, philosophical material to consider today; this research published in a respectable peer-reviewed journal, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (aka, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc.,  or just “Bull.”, for short).  This article is in the same philosophical domain as that article in Physics Today (I think it was) many years ago: “Can watching the Mets play baseball (on television) affect the outcome of the game?1

Please contemplate this article below today, and then look into your own heart about how YOU yourself might have been deflecting storms.  Maybe there aren’t any studies out there answering that question yet, and so we don’t know do we? But…..

Do Meteorologists Suppress Thunderstorms?

No.

While a quite technical, comprehensive article in which meteorologists in 28 cities around the US were examined for their effect on storms.  If you don’t believe MY answer,  the gist of this article is on p353:

“According to our data and methods, a meteorologist’s hometown is no more likely to be a weather hole or hot spot than is any random place around the conterminous United States.”

I guess that settles that…or does it?

(X-Files, Twilight Zone, etc., music here (11 11_Extraordinary Claims 1)2.

 

The weather ahead

The Canadian model has us on the edge of rain for another two-three days, then the summer rain season resumes.  Similarly, the WRF-GFS model run from the U of WA has rain moving back into our area this Saturday afternoon.  Maybe I’ll run around the house a couple of times. move some air around, and see if I can speed this return up some….

Anomalous cloud sighting

6:30 PM. This photo has been enhanced that bit to bring that “lone ranger” Cu better into view.

Now this was truly strange, I thought, in view of the totally flat, Cumulus “pancake-us” clouds.  Off in the far horizon to the SW, was this ONE towering Cumulus!  Not sure I have seen such a cloud anomaly, and not really sure why THAT one stuck up so much.  You’d have to guess that the moisture and temperature profile down that way was quite abit different that what we had here, but then, you would normally have seen many more clouds like that off on the horizon.  Strange indeed, to me.  There it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1Haven’t been able to find that classic, but will eventually.

2Credit:  The National Science Foundation for funding Bill Nye the Science Guy programs, and to the Walt Disney Studios for creating those wonderful liittle ditties at the end of each show.

Grazed and confused

Man, its tough to get rain here sometimes.  Not sure why we seem to be in a death zone for Cumulonimbus clouds lately.  Yesterday, a really great shower plodded toward Catalina and only to fade on the east side, and propagate off to the west and over the Tortolita Mountains (veered down the sideline, in football speak).  I guess we should feel lucky that, due to the lightly raining “stratiform” (blanket cloud) residual cloud from this strong storm, we got 0.02 inches here last evening.  Coulda been worse, of course.  (BTW, if you’re an old rocker and want to hear, “Dazed and Confused”, to which I allude to in the title, go here.)

Here’s the photo record in thumbnails, which I thought was interesting enough because this moderate-sized shower really exploded into something large as it approached from near the Tucson Mountains. You can also go here to get the full version as seen from the top of the Wildcat Dept of Atmos. Meteoro.


4:54 PM. Nice and cute; its even heading this way, but way too far away to make it, given the short lifetimes of small Cumulonimbus clouds.

5:04 PM. Huh? Its STILL coming, and seems to be developing a new “crop”; those flanking, non-raining clouds that might grow to take the place of the raining one. Oh, it’ll never make it. Too small.

5:36 PM. Its not small anymore! Holy Smokes! And look at those “fountain-of-youth-required-for-new-life-new dump for Cumulonimbus flanking clouds! This could be great dump here!

6:04 PM. Here, the side of the storm approaching Catalina. The flanking lower cloud deck has disappearing and only light to moderate rain is upwind now. Without re-inforcements from below, that approaching rain will only get lighter and lighter as it approaches. Dang.

6:11 PM. Awesome, but somehow “wrong”, falling over there. An almost black flanking cloud, piled high on top, was forced there by the outflow winds from the original storm as it dropped its first heavy load in Oro Valley. Because those winds aren’t symmetrical blowing out from the rainshaft, it happened that the strongest winds and uplift over them went over there. Dang#2


7:07 PM. Its raining lightly here now, coded “R–” or “RW–” in your log book. The cloud would be termed, Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus (namely, debris cloud, trash clouds from our glorious Cbs).

To finish off with something more positive, this sunrise photo taken just now while a few drops of rain were falling.

 

The Weather Ahead.

Drying trend starts on Wednesday, the 25th and lasts a couple of days.  The Enviro Canada model saw this coming some days ago, the US WRF-GFS not so much, but they agree now.

The clouds and Cbs return on the 29th with July finishing strong in activity.

In the meantime, another great day ahead, one with large Cumulonimbus clouds and scenes like the past few days are on tap.

More,  later.

It is later.

Here is the U of A model output for today, hour by hour.  Lots of activity seen for us in Catland beginning after 12 Noon with numerous showers developing by then, but nothing for tomorrow and the next day.

Maybe you should call in sick today, and enjoy the sky all day.

The End.

 

Yesterday’s drama, forecasting for picnics, etc.

In case you missed it, and you probably did because you were still in bed while I was doing things for you, there was a pretty sunrise to start the day yesterday, one that would not disappoint later by being a dry one.  After all, we’re here in the peak of our summer rain season.

 

Got 0.27 inches here, and 0.40 inches in Sutherland Heights.  (The U of AZ rainfall network will have lots of data, some places getting over an inch yesterday. Pima County amounts here.)

 

BTW, as mind wanders, the real monsoon in India is a a little below normal this year so far.   But, check out these forecast maps from IPS Meteostar and look at the west coast of India.  It rains every day all day for the 15 days of the computer model run.  Nothing really too unusual about that, rain every day all day on the western Ghats, 10-20 inches a week. Now THAT is a monsoon!  Thought you might like a little distraction, get you out of any ruts you might be, get you thinking “outside the box” for a change.

 

OUR story, the long and winding one, continues below, though it can be seen in totality, in the short form in the U of A time lapse movie.  This is a great U of A movie, with several “dump trucks” going by.  Its amazing how much water can just suddenly be unloaded by a cloud!

 

Also, lenticular clouds (hover clouds) can be seen at the beginning and end of the movie downstream of the Cat Mountains, unusual for summer.
5:27 AM. Altocumulus opacus, no snow virga. What’s the top temperature? Hint: warmer than -10 C (14 F).
7:27 AM.  You’re finally up and you see this grayness due to Altocu/Stratocu.  You start to fret over whether it can rain later in the afternoon with all these clouds keeping the temperature down.
10:32 AM. Your mood begins to brighten just like the sky;  the temperature is soaring while the mid-level clouds thin, and Cumulus begin arising over Ms. Lemmon, trailing overhead toward YOU.  You feel special.
1:32 PM. You’ve been patient, and FINALLY the clouds trailing off Lemmon are beginning to look like they might erupt into Cumulonimbus ones;  bases are firming up, coalescing.
1:58 PM. Its looking really good. Nice compact bottom almost overhead. You’re getting euphoric, well, hopeful.
2:00 PM. Only TWO minutes later and the load is on the way down! This is the time you want to be at a picnic 2 minutes earlier and amaze people by saying, “RUN for your car! NOW!”, though they probably wouldn’t pay any attention to you unless you knew them and they knew you were cloudcentric.
2:02 PM. Picnic’s over.
2:03 PM. ONE minute later! The Fat Lady has sung.
2:19 PM. Downspout from Cumulonimbus cloud moves on across to Oro Valley to “excite” other picnickers.
2:22 PM. This beauty off to the north. Name? Cumulonimbus calvus (fibrous nature of top not yet fully evident, though a practiced eye can detected the cotton candy ice composition in the two pronged top. In front of it, a Cumulus congestus. Check that shaft!  What day! Fantastic scenes all around.

 

 

 

 

 

The weather ahead.

U of A mod results not yet available at this hour (5:08 AM), but other model outputs suggest another three days, including today, of the kinds of scenes shown above.
Every day will be that bit different in shower coverage, of course, that governed by subtleties in the flow aloft, grade of moisture supply, dewpoints, etc.

But those days ahead will be great enough, our deserts being drenched here and there, the desert foilage exploding.  Enjoy those clouds while they’re here.

The End.

Black is beautiful

Here in this part of Catalina another 0.11 inches dropped from the sky in two weak, but great thundershowers yesterday afternoon, one that will help keep the greening of the desert coming on strong. As many of you know, my photographic niche is cloud bottoms, particular dark ones, and to me, beautiful, dramatic ones when rain or hail filaments begin shredding the air below them, followed by the dump.

Below are a couple of those bottom shots from yesterday. This cloud trucked off from over Catalina toward the SW and over Oro Valley/Marana where it began to rain.

3:55 PM. The bottom of a small Cumulus congestus (it was at least 6,000 feet thick, 2 km) at the time this photo was taken, trust me.
3:57 PM. A closer look at this nice dark bottom; was hoping for signs of rain strands as you probably were, too.  However, they came out later, several miles away.

Later, two weak, but welcome thunderstorms rolled off the Cat Mountains from the NE, giving us 0.05 and then 0.06 inches in the second. Below, here they come!

4:13 PM. Thunderstorm one.
6:37 PM.  Thunderstorm two. Close strike caused a power outage here.

Yesterday’s rain totals can be found here (rainlog.com) and with the Pima County Flood Control Network. Some areas in and near Tucson recorded over an inch again. How fine.

Today?

The dewpoints are higher, cloud bases are a bit lower, and so monster dumps in the area are VIRTUALLY guaranteed (never can tell exactly where they will be).  However, conditions aloft are also conducive to larger shower areas than yesterday’s were, that is, large clusters of Cumulonimbus clouds are more likely today, meaning larger areas covered by rain, and longer durations of rain.  Cool.  You can get the “skinny” from the U of A model here.

Quiz

5:54 AM. What are these rays called?
2:14 PM. Where am I?  The heaviest rain in all of Arizona fell here yesterday.
5:29 PM. Why wasn’t it raining on the Catalinas from these dark clouds?
6:16 PM. Where is virga and snow falling out? “If you miss one more, you’ll be out.”
7:19 PM. “Who was buried in Grant’s Tomb?”  A nice sunset, as almost always here, with a little snow virga hanging down from dense Altocumulus clouds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weather ahead.

Rain in the area, the models say, every day for the next few days.  Check here and with Bob (our local expert), who seems to be mad a lot, even titling his blog, “madweather.”  I guess he’s not afraid, like some men, of showing his emotions.   I get mad myself, but usually its when it doesn’t rain on me that day.

The greening of July

Update at 7:17 AM:  while mods had a dry day today (e.g., U of A yesterday), NWS has a much higher chance at 30% for our area today, and it sure looks like a higher chance.  (U of A Beowulf Cluster mod not available this morning for hi res check.)

While trying to get through the next couple of predicted days with lesser chance of rain though it doesn’t feel like it right now at 7:17 AM, and after a disappointing  0.02 inches yesterday afternoon, I wanted to check the Arizona rain futures in two models, the N-viro Can U-ro (as we would write it today) and the USA WRF-“Goofus”, both spoken with affection, to see how much “green” they have for us.  “Green1” has been the chosen color for rain by meteorologists, a particularly colorful people, who as children had an extra wide assortment of Crayolas and colored pencils.

Both models have a LOT of green in Arizona during the next 6-15 days except, as noted, for today and tomorrow where rain is marginal.

Below, as example from the Environ Can mod result for the evening of July 22nd.  Note green splotches in AZ, lower right hand corner (blue is very light rain; yellows and reds are heavier rains).

Along with the positions of rain here, in the upper left hand corner, is the forecast for where “our” big fat summer anticyclone is going to be on that day: centered way over the state where Dorothy used to live.  The air circulating around that high, clockwise, is circulating moist air into Arizona (while baking Dorothy and a lot of other people in the nation’s mid-section).  I love these maps and what they portend for AZ over the next week!

Below a sample chart for even farther out into the future from a rendering of WRF_GFS from IPS Meteostar for the evening of August 1st.   There is still “green” in Arizona, this time around Yuma, and there has been green in Arizona every day!  With our great start, it could mean that we will experience one of the wettest July’s ever in SE AZ!  The droughty weather pendulum may have swung back to make things up to us.

How do we know such medium range forecasts are have a better chance than usual of verifying?

Of course, if you are a regular part of this blogpire, you will know the answer.

It comes from the NOAA Spaghetti factory.  We meteorologists, not satisfied with one model run, like to mess them up at the start, and then look at the various “perturbed” model runs fro the 500 millibar level, and see if there is one “answer” that remains “strong”, still visible in the output amongst all the many contours of the wrecked ones. The middle of the troposphere, that domain where all weather occurs, is at about 500 millibars of pressure; sea level pressure averages around 1000 millibars (1013.6 millibars is the bottom of the “standard” atmosphere.  We like to see what the pressure patterns are like in the middle because things clarify up there, that’s where you can find jet streams, those steering currents for storms at the ground.

OK, now the punch line, don’t laugh too hard.

Below is the (humorous) plot from NOAA based on last evening’s global data for the 500 mb level due to combining:

1) the model run using the actual measurements made around the world at 5 PM AST,

2) and along with that one run, many model runs due to inputing slightly erroneous data at the beginning of the run.

Many of you will see this as a “knee-slapper”, and it really is because its a faulty production with too many contours.

But, in spite of a faulty NOAA run, there is still some information about our “big fat anticyclone” and where the most likely position will be on the evening of August 1st, some two weeks from now.  Believe or not, it is a powerful tool.

That likeliest of positions of our big fat anticyclone is that little dark spot over the Four Corners area mostly devoid of lines in this humorous output.  On this map, the Four Corners area is straight above the yellow legend line segment. At left,  a close-up of that Four Corners area with the fewest lines.

In the summer, Arizonans “need” to have a high in the middle of the troposphere to the north or east.  And that’s where the signal is strongest, represented by a center of that high situated over the Four Corners area even when the model has been degraded by bad measurements.

So, in sum, look for lots of rain in Arizona overall during the rest of July.  How nice, except when telephone poles are blown over, as happened on Sunday.

 

PS:  I took a lot of great cloud scenes yesterday afternoon and evening, but you need to have an SD card installed in your camera before a photograph is recorded. So no photos.  I hope this is a useful hint for photographers out there.

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1“Green” in the meteorological color scheme of things, means rain, an area where the models think it will have rained is colored green as a rule.  Green has been the choice of meteorologists for liquid precip ever since weather began, back in the early 20th Century at the Bergen School of Meteorology in Norway.  Why did those Norwegian meteorologists with names like Bjerknes, Palmén, Holmboe, Godske, Petterssen, Rossby, Bergeron, choose green for rain?  Just because.

 

Is it India? Or is it Catalina?

Let’s have a contest, get the brain going.

With dewpoints hovering near, and even eeking into the low 70s in AZ, with giant thunderstorms complexing our weather with sudden stupifying downpours, one wonders, after all of these blogs, this “body of work” if you will,  if the several people who comprise the Cloud-Maven blogpire, one that radiates from one part of Catalina to another,  would be able to know where they were if they could be transported to the locations in these two sets of four photos.   (BTW, all of which were taken by the present Arthur–hahahaha.)

OK, drum roll, insert photos here.

Two were taken at the Madras (now Chennai) International AP in Meenambakkam, Tamil Nadu, India, in September 1975, and the other two just yesterday afternoon in Catalina, where most of us live.  Remember, there are mountains in India, so just because you see some mountains doesn’t mean its NOT India.  Also, just because I mentioned two were taken in India first, doesn’t mean necessarily that they are the first two shots below.

OK, begin thinking and analyzing, maybe drink some more coffee.


 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, if you guessed the first two photos were actually taken in India during the REAL monsoon in 1975, you were right.  That’s a friend, Venkateswaran, on the far right of the first photo admiring the arcus cloud ahead of the downpour.

The result of our “pseudo-monsoon”,  which was a pretty good imitation of the real thing yestserday,  shown in the second set of two photos, was another 1-2 inches in the CDO watershed, 0.75 inches in here SE Catalina, 1.16 inches at Sutherland Heights, and a whopping 1.92 inches yesterday afternoon and Our Garden (Jesse, personal communication), keepers of the Catalina long term climo records.

What was the effect on the CDO River at the bottom of East WIlds Road?

It got huge.  Coulda rafted brown water.  Below are more shots of the CDO wash/river again for the second day in a row, ones after yesterday’s dump.  A young bystander (i.e., fellow gawker) said I had arrived after the peak!  Said the churning waves that developed every 20 min or so due to surges down the wash, were 8-10 feet high!  Here they were about half that, 4 feet or so from trough to ridge.  I wanted to “shop” a water buffalo in one of these photos so BAD!

Of course, this flood is “mild” compared to the Aug 25th, 2003 flow, which covered Lago del Oro road.

BTW, rainfall totals hereabouts are now up to or exceed the average July monthly amount of 3.xx inches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Weather Ahead

With high dewpoints once again today, 64 F here in Catalina, more large thunderstorms are pretty much in the bag, and importantly, this assertion is corroborated by calculating models, all that I looked at.  Here is the forecast rain picture for 4 PM today from the Beowulf Cluster at the University of AZ: 4 PM 20120715_WRF Precip (Flash Animation)  As you will see, WIDESPREAD rain is expected, with totals in the “best” cores getting up to 1-2 inches again.  Wow, three days in a row of major storms.

Things are supposed to dry out some tomorrow, but showers will still be around before a break of a couple or three days.

The End.

Rainshafts galore

How great was yesterday with the “return of the shafts”!  Though we only received a trace here in Catalina, you knew, if you saw them, that some small areas were getting drenched.

How much?

The Pima County Alert Network indicates that 0.28 inches was the most that fell in their gages.  But, from experience, you can bet that somewhere up to half an inch fell on somebody out there, judging by shaft density and the height of the cloud bases–bases were a bit on the high side, at around 10,000 feet above the ground (and moderately cool at 5-6 C) .  Will post a radar-derived 24 h rain total map when it comes out (it has) from Intellicast.com. (Gee, there it is and that eye-ball assessment seemed pretty accurate.)

Below are some shots of those glorious, local, late breaking, rainshafts. (Was about to give up on rain in mid-afternoon since Cumulus development had stagnated.  But as happens, the atmosphere changes, maybe got hot enough with our 103 F at about the time these boys took off, and, voila, up the tops of those Cu went pretty much all around us.

Note the baby rainshaft below.  They’re pretty special.  If you were to get in one, you would see that it was pouring rain, but only on you.  You could look and couple of hundred yards in every direction and see that it was only raining on YOU. You’d feel pretty special about yourself; maybe boost that self-esteem a bit.

If you want the full review of yesterday’s excitement, go here to the U of A time lapse movie.  You’ll see the sky change drastically after about 4:30 PM (if you can read the tiny time hack in the lower right hand corner.)

Today?

The amount of water over us continues to climb, and surface dewpoints reflect that, some in the 60s (61 F here in Catalina now)–meaning a lot of water vapor is around, the fuel of a good rainstorm.  The local model run from the U of AZ based on 06Z (11 PM LST) data doesn’t have a lot going on hereabouts, it seems to expect today to be a lot like yesterday–but that would be good.

However, with cloud bases likely to be lower and warmer, that will mean bigger dumps in those rainshafts as more water funnels up into those rising afternoon Cumulonimbus turrets.  Hoping for a special e-mail later this morning from the U of A summer rain specialists, always exciting since they only issue them when they think something “good” is going to happen.  Didn’t get one yesterday, deemed to tame a day maybe.  BTW, “good” is defined by meteorologists as heavy rain, blowing dust from outflow winds, flash floods, lightning, maybe some hail thrown in, etc.

4:45 PM.
4:51 PM
5:19 PM. Baby rainshaft, so cute! Wish I could have gone over there and stood under it.
5:46 PM. Shower line moves southwestward across Marana.
7:28 PM. Still going, but in the distance. Nice lightning show out that way until well after midnight.