Category: The weather ahead

Drought staggering after heavy rain/snow punch, may go down someday; more blows ahead

Any winter storm that drenches the Catalina area, including Saddlebrookians, Oro Valleyians, with more than an inch of rain in 24 h has to be one of the greatest.    Haven’t seen this much winter rain in since the so-called “Frankenstorm” of January 2010 when we got over 2 inches of rain in two days.  Here are the gaudy 24 h totals from the Pima County Flood Control District, ending at 3:34 AM this morning, about 24 h after the rain started Pima rain.  Other interesting rain totals can be found in the network established by the rainlog folks at the U of AZ here.  These totals are a bit smaller than those I culled from the Pima folks since the ob time for the rainlog network is at 7 AM LST, and here, 0.41 inches had fallen in the first few hours yesterday, and then 0.99 inches for the rest of the storm (0.01 inches just now!), for a total of 1.40 inches here in Catalina.  So, the storm totals at rainlog are broken up into two days (the rain pretty much fell in the 18 h from 3 AM yesterday to about 9 Pm last night).  BTW, a nice way to look at the comings and goings of the local rain is via the Weather Underground’s maps with animations of the TUS radar superimposed on a regional map showing our many “personal”  weather stations (e. g., here).  Its interesting that many of you do not have a personal weather station.  Well, the holiday season is here, and the economy can always use some impulsive buying and so maybe now is the time to pick one up before more storms hit.  And they will, as our models continue to show.  BTW2, a rainbow landing on a personal weather station.  Think about it.

In  just 36 h from now another low center barges into Arizona from the NW.  Due to its long overland trajectory, it’s going to be a lot drier than “Frankenstorm Junior”, once again, as another in a winter long series, stagnates in our area as a “cut off” low spinning around flinging rain around its margins for a couple of days (Friday and Saturday mostly).  So with luck, we might pick up another quarter of an inch or so.  Here is a quick look at that whole sequence, and one of the panels below, valid for Friday afternoon at 5 PM LST, for your viewing pleasure.I like this format with the four panels since you got yer upper map in the upper left hand panel showing yer cut off,  and you got yer precip in the lower right hand panel, all  in one jpeg; more cumbersome in the US model presentations I’ve found to have this much info in one jpeg.

So, what about our drought status after all this early winter rain (see below)?

Well, as I have learned from the State Climo office in 2010, not much changes due to a couple of months of wet conditions here, such as we had in 2010 when water was flowing everywhere in southern Arizona later that winter.   Seems for those folks that designate whether an area is in drought, there have to be almost years of wet conditions for the designation of droughty conditions to be removed from their maps.  Its pretty discouraging.  Perhaps it takes wide tree rings to indicate the drought is over (hahahaha, sort of)  ((just kidding!)) (((Really))) ((((Not being sarcastic at all))))

Below is the latest drought map from the Drought Monitors at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as of December 6th, when they last released a map, we here in southern Arizona were still in an “extreme drought” in spite of all the rain in November and early December.  It will be interesting to see how this map changes after our “Frankenstorm Junior” of the past two days, and with all that rain that has, and will be occurring in the droughty areas of NM and TX.   The longer term model forecasts punish (delight?) those areas with widespread heavy rains over the next two weeks.  Will it remove any of the “extreme” and “exceptional” drought designations for them?  Stay tuned.

At LEAST we have avoided the Climate Prediction Center’s fall forecast of intensifying drought here in AZ over the period of November-January.  Seven weeks into that forecast, we have dispelled that notion, anyway.  It ain’t happening.  It would be hard to take another NDJ like that of 2010-2011 when only December had any rain at all!

Well, Mr. Cloud Maven person had better post some CLOUD photos if he is to remain that and stop squawking about drought…

Here are a couple from the
 storm.  The Catalina Mountains are so wonderful when draped in precip and snow!  I would like to report that I am very happy living here full time in Catalina.

The End, though the image organization will be a mess for awhile, will “publish” now anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On schedule for major AZ storm beginning Monday

Now that the models have reconciled, “come together”,  to show a large storm affecting Arizona and us here in Catland beginning later Monday, it seemed interesting to ME to show you how this one gets here.  This is where our numerical models do things that in the olden days before them we could never anticipate.

Here is a loop from last night’s global data on how a large, vigorous low center forms over San Diego within about 84 from right now.  This loop of the high and low pressures in the middle troposphere (around 15,000-20,000 feet above sea level) from the University of Washington’s “WRF-GFS” model for the West Coast and environs:

Watch what happens in the Gulf of Alaska.  Everything is rolling along FAR to our north, going toward the east, looks like it’ll stay up there with those waves moving one after the other into Canada.  There is no hint of anything moving this way.  Then suddenly, the wave rippling along in the Gulf turns south bound as it hits the West Coast, part of it ripped off and becoming a spinning center just off California and the rest continuing on into central Canada!  Really, its amazing to see such a drastic change like that shown in this sequence.

This type of sequence has been very much like this winter’s past storms have gone through, rippling along in the northern Pacific Ocean, and then suddenly part of those waves shearing off from the main jet,  making a right turn toward the SW US, becoming an isolated, spinning, wobbling center away from the steady strong westerlies of the jet stream.  Some years have had lots of these “cut off” lows, and it seems we are headed in that direction this winter, at least through the first 6-7 weeks.

One of the keys to this happening is how vigorous is the storm immediately upwind of the one that plunges south, oddly.  This influence of upwind storms in perturbing the jet stream downwind was discovered WAY back in the 1950s.  In the current situation, an extremely intense low developing in the central western Pacific sends huge amounts of heat and clouds northeastward behind, upwind, of “our storm” and that heat and moisture (see here protruding into the Aleutians in this loop) helps amplify  the jet stream downwind where our storm wave is by causing the winds shift more to the north downwind of the warm air plume at the backside of our wave).

What it is doing is building,  for a time,  a high pressure ridge aloft within and just ahead of it.  In response to that “ridge building” plume of heat and moisture caused by that intense storm upwind of “our wave”, the jet stream downwind begins to head more to the south, IN our wave.  The intense storm behind our wave is building “amplitude” in the jet stream.  Amplitude in “synoptic” meteorology generally  means the jet stream winds go more to the north and south rather than just east and west. And that’s what you see happen for a time in this loop, and its this greater amplitude that causes a part of the once steadily progressing wave across the Gulf of Alaska to go, “Oops, must go south now” as the winds from the north increase tremendously on its backside.

The assymetry of the winds in these waves tell you where its going next.  If they are stronger on the backside, it will go south or southeast.  If the winds are strongest on the front side, or east side, it will go north or northeast.  If you can see the winds in the above loop, you’ll see that they reach 120 mph from the north on the backside as it plunges S, but the winds on the east side are only about half or less of that.

Hope this is somewhat intelligible.  Still rewriting…!

Personal predictions?  I think we’ll get at least 0.50 inches, probably see some more snow mixed in with the rain by Tuesday morning.  Think about a great wildflower bloom this spring.  In the meantime, enjoy the warmth and cirrus of the next couple of days.  One thing that might help is that disturbance SE of the Hawaiian Islands feeding moisture into the jet stream (seen here in this loop again).  I thought at first that bunch of clouds might be related to the MJO (not a coffee brand, but the “Madden Julian Oscillation” which can have a profound effect on US weather).  But it wasn’t.  The MJO is in the area of the Maritime Continent now.   Go here for the latest NOAA details on this subtle wind regime that travels around the globe toward the east.

Last evening’s “cirrus-ee”, (ice crystal clouds),  sunset.

The End.

 

 

 

“Come together, right now, over me” in Arizona with some rain

This song and refrain by Lennon and McCartney, amended a bit in the title for local interest1 was actually a reference by them to a striking “divergence” in weather model predictions of that day during a droughty time in England;  the models  did “come together” eventually to predict the same thing, and that was for a lot of rain in droughty England in the days ahead.  By the way, you won’t find this kind of historical background information in Wikipedia or in some biography.

As we saw yesterday, one model can show a lot of rain in AZ a few days, and another not.  So, we, too, as did Lennon and McCartney, wanted those models to “come together” and show the needed rain over us;  not one model doing this and another one doing that, as they can do.  I know a lot of you were fretting all day about which one was going to be right, the dry one or the wet one for Arizona?  Well, we have seen them “come together” over the past 24h.

Expect rain and snow!

And a goodly amount of it, in AZ, including Catalina, beginning late on Monday and then continuing off and on for a couple of days!   Wildflowers, here you come!  Maybe you should get that better camera before the spring bloom, and also help the economy along while doing so.

And as you might have speculated, the Canadian wet model run for Arizona, the one one showing a storm pattern similar to the ones we have had intermittently in November and early December, was the one  that won out over yesterday’s model “diffugulty.”  This is great news unless you’re chauvenistic and just that bit peeved that the Canadian model won this event in the “weather model Olympics.”  Oh, well.  The US model, while now predicting storminess  for us is a bit drier than shown here.  Still, its all good.

Here’s last night’s juiciest Enviro Canada panel for AZ, that for Tuesday morning at 5 AM PST showing the storm barging well into AZ (lower right panel).  Exult!  The entire sequence can be seen here.

On a cloud note, we had for a time yesterday, some of the rarely seen Cirrus castellanus, icy clouds with turrets.  Usually its too cold and too “stable” for turrets at heights above about 30,000 feet above the ground, but there they were.  See below.

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1In the early original drafts of this song, the reference was to “England”, not Arizona.  As you can see, those part of the lyrics referring to location and rain were a bit awkward and were eventually dropped.


Sunny malaise


2clr4me.  I’ve never texted before, but there it is.

Unfortunately 4me, but fortunately for those “bird people” that come here to avoid real weather, it is going to be sunny except for some passing cirriform clouds over the next few days, a real weather malaise.  However, the good part is that the temperatures are rebounding pretty fast.

However, we can take solace in the fact that clouds and rain are again on the model horizon, not the real one.   Those friendly Canadians up north in their version of the ECMWF model have indicated it will be a whopper, whilst the USA “WRF-GFS” is indicating just a mild event, one that occurs much later than the Canadian “solution.”  (“Solution”, hah!   Nothing is solved here!)  So, once again, we are stuck with a lot of uncertainty partly because it originates with another low that has/will drift away from the main jet stream.  Here is the Canadian view of a whopper for this next Monday.  Note that AZ is as green as a leprichaun below, lower right panel, indicating widespread rain.  Note big upper low center circulation centered over Kingman, AZ (upper left panel).  This would be a very wet scenario for Catalinans.

Next the US model for the same storm and time (Monday afternoon at 5 PM LST) from IPS MEteostar.  Note that a low center is nowhere to be seen in AZ, but INSTEAD two low centers are seen, one over Crescent City-Eureka-I-Found-It, California, and one west of Ensenada, MX.   This is so funny!  Yet annoying.  But no rain has yet appeared anywhere in AZ in the US model at this time!  In fact, as seen in the last map for the exact same time as the Canadian model with all that rain in AZ, the nearest rain to us is sill about 300-500 miles off the California coast!  Amazing!  Yet, annoying.   These are calculations based on physics.  (Well, the “physics” are implemented differently.)   Imagine if your hand calculator said that 2 and 2 was 4 on one day, and the 7 the next.   The world would be discombobulated because no one can do math in their heads anymore.

It takes a coupla more days for the US model rain to get here to AZ, late next week, and then,  its marginal at that.  Well at least the US model has some rain in it someday.  I guess we should be thankful for that.

But what would be a “tilter” in this scenario when you have such “model divergence”?  Persistence might do it.  Look how the Canadian model result below so strongly resembles the kinds of storms we’ve had since the start of November, the isolated low that drifts down into the SW.  This seems to be, at least,  our early winter pattern that we have seen several times now, and when IN a pattern, it may be best in forecasting to “stay the course”, lean toward the model solution that shows the kinds of storms that have already been happening when the models outputs are so different.   It will be fun seeing how this turns out!

The End.

“…goin’ down in the first round”

As Muhammad Ali might say, referring to the Climate Prediction Center’s three month outlook that was for dry conditions in Arizona from November to January.  So, the first round, November into early December, has delivered quite a punch against drought with another 0.40 inches here in Catalina last night.  Our December total is already 0.82 inches!  Rains have been bountiful, too, during this period in some parts of NM and Texas, horribly stricken with drought, so its been great run of drought smashing weather.   Check the latest 30 day US precip totals here (does not include the heavy rains of yesterday in TX, however).   And from WSI Intellicast, this 7 day total precip map.   Excellent.    In Catalina we now have had 2.63 inches since the beginning of November.

Below, the CPC forecast for November through January for the US issued last October 20th.  These predictions are weighted by the “moderate” La Nina event now going on in the central and eastern Pacific.  A La Nina leads to greater chances of dry conditions throughout most of the southern US.  Hence,  this forecast.  However, the correlations between a La Nina and the map shown below leave plenty of wiggle room, especially early in the winter.  Later in the winter is when the great southern US storm deflecting property of a La Nina has its greatest power, so it’s really good that we’re getting slammed early by decent rains; it might be a very dry late winter and spring.

Remember 1971-72?  And how wet it was in November and December in the SW, and then poof, almost nothing in the way of precip after January 1st?  It was awful. (I was weather forecasting in Durango, CO, then.  ((Hay! Not for TEEVEE, but for a randomized cloud seeding experiment!))


Had some pretty Cumulus clouds yesterday before the gray Nimbostratus layer moved in.  Here are a couple of shots around the Catalina area.  Always nice to see snow on the Catalina Mountains.

The last one is from today showing the gorgeous scenes, changing by the minute as the cloud shadows roll by, of the low level on the snow on the Catalinas.   Even here at just under 3200 feet elevation, last night’s rain ended with light snow for a few minutes.

Mods (from U of AZ Wildcats) don’t see precip from this next cold trough, one that lands on us tomorrow.  Darn.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that I want you to look at these forecast maps from IPS Meteostar for the next 15 days.  Just changed this to the intermediate model run, updated at 06 Z, 11 PM LST.  Much more “interesting”–means this writer saw MUCH more precip in AZ on the updated model run just now.  Check out the massive trough 12-15 days out and cross fingers.  Man, this is an exciting new change!

The End.

Great weather map day

Check this map out below from the University of Washington Huskies Weather Department.  The whole 24 h series of sea level pressure maps is here and watch how things change in the SW and western Arizona just in that time.  You rarely see lows of this magnitude in our area as we have right now, and this much change in just 24 h in a sea level pressure map.  As you can see from the low center  centered over Ajo, AZ, (below) the air is going in counterclockwise circles in our State.  Well, of course, friction caused by cactus and mountains turns the air toward that low center, trying to get rid of it.  But, the forces producing it so far are stronger so far and so it has a very low pressure (less than 1004 millibars) for this time of year over AZ.

Note, too, that all the clouds and precip (shown here) and by those white areas on the map below, are to the west and north of the center.  But that will change as the upper air low center (second map) spins back to the southwest a bit and the air over us changes in direction from the southwest, as it is now on this upper level map, to a more southerly direction in the hours ahead.

In the meantime, Pacific air should be gaining a presence over the interior of Baja and begin circulating from there up toward us.   Clouds should literally start appearing out of the clear skies to the southwest of us in satellite imagery today (such as here) and then those clouds will work their way up this way, likely increasing in depth and coverage as they do.

Another exciting prospect is that this same process, clouds appearing out of the blue, will likely start happening over us as the day progresses, and maybe, in view of the strong winds aloft, some nice “flying saucer” clouds, namely, Altocumulus lenticularis, flat, lens shaped clouds that hover over mountains will show up over the Catalinas.

These are great days ahead for weather folk, and I hope in spite of any inconveniences caused by quite wonderful inclement weather, you will enjoy this dynamo of a weather day.  Of course, you wanna go here, to the NWS, for all the great details.

Rain?  Supposed to begin in these parts between around 4 PM and 6 PM today (you can see this here from the U of WA model).   Interestingly, this model has a rather thin band of precip sitting over us for more than 12 h.   Good grief!  Too good to be true I suppose, since we might get well over half an inch, and would certainly, if it happens, push our wildflower prospects for this spring up in view of our 1.83 inches here in Catalina in November.

Also this;  a nice satellite view of the US where you can see the night lights of the cities, if you’re up early enough and haven’t seen it before.

The End for now.

THREE times in a row, Canadian model wetting it up for us

This is great!  I thought sure that the Canadian model, which has been a bit of an outlier, would take that jet of moisture and rain emanating from the remains of Kenneth the Hurricane away.  But no, yesterday morning’s Canadian run had it cruising into us with a bountiful rain, and now overnight, once again as it first did on the night before last.  So, for three consecutive model runs, this torrent of moisture from Ken, ejects rapidly over us.  Stupefying!  Today we might call this small-in-length ejection of water vapor and clouds an “atmospheric flash flood” (too short in length to be called an “atmospheric river“, the new buzz phrase for West Coast flooding scenarios when long fetches of tropical air thousands of miles long in narrow bands ahead of fronts cause deluges).

Here, with gratitude to the Canadians, most of whom live with two miles of the US because they want to be as far south as they can get and are practically Americans anyway,  is last night’s model run, showing that fine, fine looking low pressure center encroaching on southern California in 24 h.  Its that low that starts to eject the body parts from  “Kenneth” at us.  I am just beside myself with joy!

They made me happy today with this sequence (extracted from here).  You’ll want to concentrate on the LOWER RIGHT HAND PANELS and those green to yellow and red regions where RAIN is expected in the 12 h PRECEDING the map VALID time.  Unless you click on these images you will have to have a microscope to see what I am talking about.

The valid times are, from left to right, Thanksgiving Day at 5 AM AST, Thanksgiving Day when eating turkey (5 PM AST), and 5 AM AST Friday morning.  What is remarkable is how fast the rain develops after just appearing on that first panel off southern Baja.  By nightfall, the model thinks rain will have started here!  Wow!  That would mean an awful lot of, probably middle and high clouds, are already in place streaming toward us ahead of the nub of that rain area shown in the first panel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If we go to the University of Washington Huskies’ Atmospheric Sci Dept web site and this loop, you can see that it’s already happening, high clouds (shown as white regions in this loop) are already being torn from poor Kenneth down there.  Keep an eye (Kenneth’s is pretty much gone) on that bulge on the NNE side in the last couple of frames.  That’s likely where our  jet of moisture will originate.

Will be cleaning out rain gauge of dust and debris;  maybe will wax collector funnel so that those raindrops really accelerate into that inner measuring tube.  Hope you do, too.  You don’t want to leave anything out there, on the sports field, or on the funnel.

The End.

 

Ken might be bringing leftovers on Thanksgiving Day

Kenneth, that spinny thing with the eye hole, shown in this 24 h loop feasting on the warm waters about 500 miles south of Cabo,  seems inclined to drop in late on Thanksgiving Day with his leftovers.  How rude and wonderful at the same time!   Most of you (2 of 3 the three people who read this blog) will find this 24 h loop quite interesting and you might spend your whole day here questioning, “What does it all mean?”,  like the philosophers do.   So, be careful and don’t let your whole day slip away here.  I’m tempting you…

Check out these two snapshots for TG evening and Friday morning from this model run from the Canadians and the streamer of rain and moisture that comes in to SE Arizona on Thursday (lower two panels):

Of course, many of you may feel the Canadian model runs should be banned from this site based on some recent over-predictions of rain here.  And so you may wonder why I have gone back to a model that has let us “Catalonians” down so much recently.

Why, in fact,  DO I show this Canadian model output?

Because it has the most rain for SE AZ in it compared to other model runs, just like the last time it let us down!  I couldn’t help it.

Look at all that red coloring in the 2nd image, lower left panel for Friday morning (indicating the amount that fell in the prior 12 h while we were over eating and then trying to sleep on an overly full tummy but we might have a pounding rain to provide a “white noise” to help us get through that tough night)! (Stream of consciousness writing there).

Only yesterday, that same model showed the leftovers from Ken bypassing us for New Mexico.  Sure they need the rain, too, but this run from last night made me happier.  So, I am quite happy this morning with this model change showing more rain here in spite of set backs in other areas of life which I caused myself, dammitall, by not waiting to get more facts and instead relying on gossip in forming a key assessment that ultimately resulted in an inappropriate action that ruined a friendship.  (More stream of consciousness writing…) Oh, well, back to weather…

We have to remember that this model run is the LATEST run, and therefore is based on “mo better data” because its closer to the predicted event than those model runs that did NOT show so much rain here.   So, as a “scientist” I can show this latest run that shows what I want to happen and hold my head up as a truly objective observer since it was based on newer stuff;  it wasn’t just ME wanting rain.  On, the other hand, I hid from you those earlier model runs before this one that did not have much rain here with this “incoming” (trough).

So, in sum, you ARE getting a selective presentation of OBJECTIVELY produced data.  I wonder if anybody else does this?

Also, yesterday was truly stunning in clouds, with some honest-to-goodness Cumulonimbus clouds sprouting up yesterday morning.  They were so pretty.  And you got to see great examples of cloud tops “glaciating” (turning to ice) right before your eyes.  Didn’t hear any thunder, but there could have been some.  And then we had the late afternoon sun and those dramatic cloud shadows (produced by those much shallower Cumulus clouds) on the Catalinas.  Here are some examples for your visual pleasure.  BTW, we didn’t get hit by the cell cores.  So, rainfall here was only 0.02 inches; 0.03 inches, at Sutherland Heights (last photo).

The End except for this part.  Many of you have asked, “What was that recent quote by Mr. Cloud-Maven person in the Wall Street Journal about, anyway?”  Maybe they had the wrong Cloud-Maven person…

Well actually no one has asked that question…    But its an interesting story (I think) for those who write about science probably than for those who do science (he sez).  Maybe, in a display of particular grandiosity–after all, only the great scientists of our day are asked his/her opinion about a matter of scientific import in the WSJ!–explain what that was all about one of these days. Smiling very megalomaniacally here.   Hahahahah, sort of.



A pleasant 0.03 inches

Not sure even the dust noticed, but we had a brief shower around 8:30 PM that actually measured with 0.03 inches!  After the spectacular sunset, indicating a large clearing to the WSW, it seemed doubtful we would even get that.  But, what do I know after these past few days?

Below, an example of a nice sunset due to Altostratus clouds (overhead);  “file footage” really, since I had a rare missed shot of that one last evening).

With rain still out to the west and north of us right now (go here to see this 12 h loop of clouds and radar echoes from IPS Meteostar) there is still a chance of more measurable rain later today or overnight.  Still, the configuration aloft will not be favorable for anything of consequence; likely we’ll just a few more hundredths.  But, what do I know#2?

Also, you will see something dreadful regarding that possibility of rain.  A blast of clouds riding on a high level north wind coming out of Nevada and Utah, heading straight for our little system around northern Baja, that will try to keep any rain to the south of us.  The models, such as this one from the University of Washington, have us just on the north edge of any precip.

As so often happens, our models seem to always see another rain in the future, rains that so often fail to materialize.  This time the rain “mirage” is for Sunday, November 20th.  Oh, well, something to think about.

Have some climo data for Catalina, about 35 years worth and will be posting that in the next day or two.  Past records help you dream about what could be in a winter or summer.  Can you imagine that little ol’ Catalina has had almost 30 inches of rain in a year a couple of times? Imagine how the washes ran!

The End.