7:20 AM. Altostratus with pouches of virga7:23 AM. Ditto. Ac len is the fine line cloud upper center.7:27 AM. Ditto, pretty much.7:30 AM. Nice lighting (not lightning) for just a few seconds.8:19 AM. Altocumulus trailing snow/virga. Tops, though the coldest part of the cloud, are composed of mostly of droplets at temperatures far below freezing. A few ice crystals form and drop out leaving the supercooled droplet cloud mostly intact.
12:55 PM. Just about the first boundary layer cloud, this a Cumulus fractus fragment. Hope you recorded this event in your cloud diary. Its pretty mandatory to note developments like this if you want to move on to the next level of cloud-mavenhood.
3:03 PM. Those boundary layer clouds, Cumulus ones, were reaching their maximum depth about this time. This would be a Cumulus mediocris, estimated depth 2500 feet or so.5:14 PM. Whilst clouds locally never got beyond the “mediocre” stage, or produced ice under them, to the north where the air was colder aloft, Cumulus clouds were able to grow taller and become Cumulonimbus capillatus (hairy looking with ice) incus (the last term just meaning it has a flat anvil, a flat head.)
5:47 PM. This post sunset shot shows layers/lines of smog at the same level where some flat Cumulus remains are. The smog is so visible because the air is ALMOST saturated near those clouds at their level, and some of the smog particles (hygroscopic ones) have deliquesced, have gotten much larger by absorbing water vapor, or might even be haze droplets where water has condensed on them (“smoglets”). It therefore, by definition, cannot be a “pretty sunset.”
The model rain ahead; two episodes
The low that plunks down off the coast of Baja this weekend from southern California, circles around out there for a couple of days, before deciding to move back over southern California with clouds and rain. If it was a song, it would be The Wanderer. Yes, that fits. Its expected to scoop up a generous helping of middle and high clouds from the deep tropics as extra baggage. The “extra baggage” (model predicted rain) arrives here late on the 26th (Monday) and continues off and on through Tuesday night. The first clouds, of course, high ones like Cirrus, will begin arriving a day ahead of the actual rain, on Sunday.
It is virtually certain that there will be some high-based Cumulonimbus clouds and thunderstorms in these masses from the tropics, though maybe not here. Most of the rain is projected for eastern California and western Arizona where rain is really needed–and how great is that?
However, we should be in for a quarter inch or so, anyway. Last time I guessed limits on a storm, even the lower limit of 10% chance of less than 0.05 inches wasn’t even realized. Pretty pathetic forecast. But, moving forward and forgetting past errors, this one seems to have a similar range of possibilities, the least amount 0.05 inches, the most, 0.50 inches. The chance of measurable rain here in Catalina in this first 36 h storm period is probably, from this typewriter, about 80%.
“But wait! There’s more!” “Maybe!”
A second system floats in right after that and from Jan 29th through early in Feb, and more welcomed showers are possible.
You can check out these prognostications in a more professional way at IPS MeteoStar, this link to the latest model run from 11 PM AST last evening.
The most wetness I could find for Catalina residents is in this here model run from last evening, 11 PM AST. Rains on the 27th into the 28th, as was mentioned as a possibility here some days previously, then it rains from the 29th into February 1st (new!) Prior model runs before this one last last night are much drier; are not shown, nor will they be discussed.
Gut feeling, which is what we meteorologists went on before the era of computer models, and frankly, its a feeling coming from a forecaster who suffers from “desert precipophilia1“, makes me think this wetter model run will be more correct than the bad, drier model runs that preceded it.
However, the rain in the first episode, 27th-28th, this from that system deep in the tropics, looks awful light, probably from mid-level clouds. Just looks like its not going to have much left when it gets here. An awful of rain, however, will have fallen on the ocean west and southwest of Baja California, though, before it arrives.
The later storm at the end of the month looks stronger. See the panel below, which I have pinched off IPS MeteoStar and have placed here since I suspect you won’t really look at it and I have to do pretty much everything for you:
Valid at 11 PM, January 30th. The colored regions denote those area where the model has calculated that precipitation has fallen during the PRIOR 12 h. Blue denotes heavier precip. A bunch of arrows have been added to show approximately where we are in Catalina, AZ. This is from our WRF-GFS model output based on last evening’s 11 PM global data, as rendered by IPS MeteoStar, a company who will be soon charging for these images it appears, they are that good. Nice rains in TX and OK, too.
Is spaghetti supportive of a wet Catalina in the near future, this latest off-the-computer-presses-to-you model run?
Not so much.
But then spaghetti let me down when I told a friend that “it was in the bag” for rain in Monterrey, CA on the 17 or 18th of Jan, about 12 days ahead of time, based on spaghetti. Didn’t rain at all. “Hey, take a bite out of credibility.”
So, we’ve been chastened royally here, as a British citizen might say; the deliberate errors in the “ensemble” plots sometimes aren’t big enough apparently compared to the goof ball measurements that sometimes come in. So, I’ve downplayed the idea that spaghetti is all knowing. It could be WRONG/misleading at times, anyway.
However, to balance the spaghetti picture, the encroaching trough coming in over us tomorrow WAS well predicted, long in advance. Unfortunately, it looks a little too dry to produce measurable rain, just a drop in temperatures. But, there should be some nice cloud scenes.
Some recent clouds
5:52 PM, Jan 18th. Nice patchy Cirrus clouds with a couple of flakes of droplet Altocumulus clouds floating around below them.2:25 PM. Patchy Cirrus fibratus or “intortus”–the latter meaning kind of a tangled mess in appearance.4:43 PM. Cirrocumulus undulatus, those just-formed clouds on the right, and at the upwind side of this complex (air movement from right to left up there). Those clouds on the right likely start out as very small droplets, but then freeze almost instantaneously, followed by fine trails of ice crystals that begin to settle out. You can see this fallout happening in the older thin Cirrus clouds at the upper right. Gravity waves like this, resembling ocean swells, ones that produce the “undulatus” variety of clouds, are common in atmosphere. When the air is very near saturation, we get to see them.4:56 PM. Kind of the same thing happening here, though a old contrail has messed things up a bit (angles toward the right lower corner). Middle right, you can see the very fine trails of ice crystals heading down.
The End
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1Does not appear to have a biogenic culprit. The origin of this affliction is currently unknown.
I accidentally mistyped “Digging” and that’s what came out, Diggomg.” I can’t pronounce it either. Then I thought, you know, that it could be quite a hook for a blog, a word no one’s seen before, and would want to know more about it. Maybe more than the two general readers I get would want to look into what “Diggomg” is. So, I have left it intact as an cheap blog attraction strategy.
Besides, things happen for a reason, even if its just a mistyped word due to sloppy fingering…
Here’s the “dig”:
From last evening’s 5 PM WRF-GOOFUS model run, as rendered by the folks at IPS MeteoStar, is valid for 11 PM Jan 23rd. The current pointed to by the arrow is something we call “digging”, going south, but this one in its velocity of 50 knots and more all the way past the latitude of Acapuccalo, MX, is truly extraordinary. What’s the impact on our weather? Nothing at this time. But in southern Cal, those strong winds out of the northeast aloft can mean an extra strong Santa Ana hot desert wind episode in the canyons and coastal areas, a July in January situation, and with that up goes the fire danger.
“Digging”1 is a common phenomenon in weather and jet streams, that’s usually the way storms get all the way down to Arizona because storms and jet streams plunge southward or to the southeast from the Pacific and that process we call, “digging.”
But here, an extraordinarily narrow current filled with little disturbances (kinks in the winds aloft) goes all the way from Spokane to Socorro Island in the tropics off Mexico, and that makes this map so unusual. You won’t see this everyday. You might want to archive it.
Here’s the next panel, 24 h later, and, as the current going to the south ends, it does so with a very strong current passing over southern Cal.
Valid at 11 PM AST January 24th. It has a lot of rain portent for Catalina a few days later, but here, it could be a devastating Santa Ana, winds 50-100 mph below favored canyons.
What’s the portent for Catalina weather?
Plenty!
The End
Hahaha—Just kidding. Ending right there would be cruel. It would be like TEEVEE people do, as in, “Will it be cold tomorrow? Stay tuned for a few hours and we’ll tell you!” We don’t do that here. Read on…..
Low pressure centers form in response to all this current plunging south off Baja, and those centers that form are WAY down off southern Mexico where its so unusual to have that happen in the wintertime. Down there, they get loaded with water and then begin moving north, almost like tropical storms, though having far weaker circulations.
That, my fellow weather friends, is the excitement ahead: plunging jet, surface low pressure centers forming deep in the Tropics, ones that then move north and are likely to affect the Southwest with generous rains. Its not in the bag, though, since lows like that are not well handled by the models, seem to have a mind of their own. So, in the end, the models are pretty clueless about where these juicy systems will end up.
HOWEVER, if you do rummage through the IPS MeteoStar progs, and I strongly recommend that, you’ll see that the rains begin affecting us possibly as early as the 27th. All in all, an unusual situation is unfolding in front of us over the next few days, more clouds and rains to dream about helping to spike our wildflower bloom that bit more.
BTW, that mod run from last night also had quite the Cal rain blaster beginning on the 30th, likely leading to flooding. Presently, none of that rain gets far enough south to affect us.
The Real End
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1Many of you probably won’t remember the little known, but nevertheless classic Bob Marley take on digging:
Who can forget those classic words, “Archaeologists are no wacko scientists.” (“Wacko” in the reggae dialect is pronounced like “waco”, as in Waco, TX.)
Wednesdays here in Catalinaland are, of course, trash and recycling days. And, along with T and R day, we found ourselves amidst some pretty pretty scenes, and in some cases, extraordinary ones,….and a little rain (a trace here in The Heights). I reprise those scenes in case you missed them; you probably did because you’re not some kind of photonut like the writer.
However, be advised that some of the mid-day photos will show smog, smog that was ingested into our poor clouds.
That smog bank, emitted from the Tucson area, almost reached Catalina yesterday during the day. It came up around Pusch Ridge and up along the west side of Samaniego Ridge and almost reached Catalina before its advance was halted by a north wind push and it retreated to the the south. My heart was beating so fast that it might overrun us! Marana and Oro Valley were heavily contaminated for awhile. And smog is like a cloud cancer1.
7:46 AM. A rare display of Stratus along the Tortolita Mountains. If you were hiking and were in this, it would be fog to you, still Stratus to me viewing it.7:46 AM. Rare shot of what appears to be ground fog or just fog rolling eastward out of Tucson. Some flakes of Altocumulus above, and a higher layer of Stratus on the Tucson Mountains.
8:49 AM. This was an amazing sight, to see a thin Stratus cloud fronting an early morning Cumulonimbus capillatus. The Stratus is hard to see, but its the thin dark line on the horizon above Priscilla’s house below the turrets and ice of the Cb. The only other time I have seen such a sight was in Seattle after a snow with Stratus clouds and fog all around the city, but with warm Puget Sound sending up plumes of big Cumulus clouds.
10:37 AM. The day was not without some cloud levity, as these “twin tower” Cumulus clouds show, drawing attention to themselves.
11:26 AM. First ice in clouds becomes visible. It was obvious a few minutes later, but if you saw at this time, or can find it here, you are a pretty CMJ, worthy of an accolade. Of course, if you looked at a radar map of the area, you would have known where to look in advance since there was a small echo in this complex by this time. The precip just was not enough to form a shaft. Note, as well, that Twin Peaks, Continental Ranch area is NOT visible due to the smog bank that was going to move up this way, as it turned out. And look how gorgeous it is toward the Tortolita Mountains!
11:38 AM. OK, here the ice from that turret in the prior photo is now obvious (center frizzy area). However, it was also obvious that the smog toward Marana/Continental Ranch was now closer, even while we had a north wind here in Catalina. Was that southwest wind going to win and mess up our fantastic skies?11:42 AM. Here you can see the smog as it was advancing around Push Ridge and had gotten farther north along the side of Samaniego Ridge. Those lower cloud fragments along Pusch Ridge at the top of the smog tell you that the air was more moist than the air our Cumulus clouds were forming in, and therefore, that this advancing smog bank likely associated with deliquesced aerosols from cars and other urban effluents (aka, “air sewage”) accumulated during the Tucson fog earlier that morning that was now being mixed into a deeper layer and heading this way! To think of breathing air like that. in a short while..it was a ghastly thought.
12:12 PM. To make a short story long, the advance of the smog, with its lower based clouds got as far as Golder Ranch Drive over there by Samaniego Ridge (whitish area below the lowest cloud base on the left), before receding under a freshet of north wind. However, some southern parts of Catalina were affected for a short time.
1:14 PM. By this time, larger complexes of Cumulonimbus clouds, pretty weak ones, were developing over and north of the Tortolita Mountains and upstream of us offering the hope of some measurable rain in Catalina, the smog pretty much pushed back to the southern parts or Oro Valley and Marana.
2:00 PM. Widespread light rain showers were in progress from these weak Cumulonimbus clouds, but sadly, bypassing Catalina. But huge visual payoffs were ahead as the clouds broke at times, and some stunning sights emerged.
2:35 PM. Stunning….to me, anyway. View this in full screen mode for best impact. Later, more accessible stunning.
3:01 PM. Breathtaking; in total awe of this scene! Note gliaciated tower at right.
4:28 PM. And those scenes just kept coming! It was hard to be indoors for even a minute.
5:28 PM. The fading sunlight and the fading Cu only got more breathtaking. And we realize how lucky we are to be here and see scenes like this so often.
5:38 PM. The smog belt, held at bay during the day, still lurked to the SW of us, compromising our sunset by providing a reddish-yellowish sickening hue to it, a sign of a smoky presence, that may compromise today if we’re unlucky.
The weather ahead and way ahead
Well, RIP El Niño, an EN expert has written me just yesterday. Not much left of it he says, having a attached a map of ocean temperature anomalies to kind of rub it in. So we can’t count on hot water in the eastern Pacific to help fuel Southwest storms as was expected by the CPC and others last spring. But, that doesn’t mean that there can’t be a juicy late winter and spring, but the odds are down.
And, we won’t see clouds like yesterday until the long-foretold-by- spaghetti trough arrives around the 22nd of January, and with it some chance of rain. Doesn’t look like it could possibly be very much. BTW, Only 0.02 inches total in three days of light showers in the current situation. :{
BUT…..in the longer term, spaghetti is once again HINTING at a break-on-through-to-the-other side situation, your writer’s favorite as a kid, 10-14 days from now. A high builds up along the West Coast and in the eastern Pacific, gets too big for its britches, can’t maintain its giant north-south range, drifts farther and farther north and begins to break up, kind of looking like a horseshoe with the open end down (toward the south) as the jet stream “breaks on through to the other side” and “underneath”, that being a jet stream comes through from the warm subtropical central Pacific to the southern areas of the West Coast.
The north part of the West Coast and Gulf of Alaska are dominated by higher pressure with lower pressure to the south, so its kind of an upside-down-from-normal looking weather map, pretty rare, and that’s why its cherished by yours truly.
The End, at last!
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1As you know, when clouds are heavily contaminated with air pollution, they can’t rain as easily because the droplets are smaller inhibiting rain in two ways: by preventing the formation of drizzle and rain drops, and making it more difficult for ice to form since the formation of ice happens at higher temperatures when cloud droplets are larger. So, clouds have to be taller when they are polluted to produce rain, either way.
It doesn’t get much better than this plot below for our Catalina weather 10-13 days ahead, which is always pretty fuzzy-looking as a rule. “Better” means for rain chances here, which is not everyone’s “better.”
Here’s the excitement:
Note blank area, that is, an area free of lines area centered on the gambling and other mischief-permitting State of Nevada1.
Note how the red lines dip down into Mexico, whilst the blue lines bulge northward into Canada along the West Coast.
This error-filled plot2 tells us that it is almost certain that a trough will be in the lower middle latitudes where we are on January 22nd or so. Just about guaranteed.
In the meantime, those blue lines indicated that a ridge of high pressure is going to divert northern storms into Canada and southeast Alaska. Sometimes we refer to situations like this as “split flow”; the southern portions of storms in the Pacific move ESE toward southern California and the Southwest, while the northern portions split off to the NE, as is happening now. Weak upper level disturbances pass overhead, the next one tomorrow, and with it, a little more rain, the models say.
U of AZ mod has rain moving in toward dawn tomorrow with totals here amounting to about like that last rain, 0.10 to 0. 25 inches. Given model vagaries, probably the lower and upper limits here are likely to be 0.05 (worst case scenario) and 0.50 inches (best case scenario), so a best guess would be the middle of those, 0.275 inches, not too much different from the AZ mod. This is the sports-like part of weather forecasting. What’s your estimate, fantasy or otherwise?
BTW, there were quite a few stations reporting over an inch of rain in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties during the past 24 h, and so while weak, this system is pretty juicy, lots of liquid water as measured by dewpoints which should rise into the upper 40s to low 50s here during the next day. Also, there have been some embedded weak Cumulonimbus clouds and that’s a possibility here tomorrow, too, as the rainband goes by. You’ll be able to tell that by strong shafting below the clouds. As always, hoping we here in Catalina get shafted tomorrow.
But the ones these days are weak, while the split ahead in 10-13 days is likely to contain much stronger disturbances, well, at least ONE before it gives out.
Yesterday’s clouds
7:22 AM. Sunrise Altocumulus.
11:42 AM. Another very summer-like looking day with clouds beginning to pile ever higher over the Catalinas.
12:51 PM. Small Cumulus are developing over the Catalinas while far above them are, two crossing contrails, about the same age suggesting that aircraft crossed paths simultaneously. The FAA flight separation rules now allows for 1,000 feet of separation instead of the 2,000 feet in years past, and so if you’ve flown recently, you may have noticed planes that appeared to be a lot closer to you than ones a few years ago. This has been permitted due to improvements in aircraft GPS accuracy, and was deemed needed due to the vast increases in air traffic in the decades ahead. Still, there were times when opposite flying aircraft were so CLOSE, passing by like bullets, that you wanted to scream to the pilot, “Hey, wake up and smell the air space!!!!”
1:44 PM. Probably had a little ice in that smooth section, but overall really looked like a miniature summer Cumulonimbus cloud. Did not see if it had an echo, and never was it clear that there was ice.2:02 PM. As Altocumulus castellanus overspread the sky, lenticular clouds were still visible beyond the Catalinas. Some lenticulars began to sprout turrets, an odditity, but one driven by the condensation of water, something that releases a little heat (in this case) to the atmosphere causing the cloud to be more buoyant.
5:32 PM. A sunset of Cirrus and Altocumulus. Not bad.
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1What a great and honest state motto that would be! “Nevada: That US State where gambling and other social mischief is OK with us!”
2Don’t forget that due to growth in computer capabilities, we can now have many model runs from the same data and be done with them in a timely way. These “spaghetti”, “ensemble” or better yet, “Lorenz” plots are computer model runs with deliberate (!) slight errors introduced to see how the model forecasts of high and low pressure centers changes, given a few slight errors. This is because there are ALWAYS errors in the data anyway, there are always error bars on measurements, etc. By doing this, only the strongest signals in the forecasts remain, indicated by grouping of lines these two colors of lines, red and bluish. So, the forecast of the jet stream coming out of Asia is very, very reliable. Things go to HELL, downstream (toward the east), but some likely patterns can still be seen, such as the one over the Southwest US where a trough/low is almost certain in our area then. Will it bring us rain in Catalina? Hell, I don’t know because if the trough is a little too far to the east of us, we might only get cooler. However, since Cloud Maven person has a postive rain bias, he will say, “Absolutely. There will be rain in the Catalina area on January 22nd or so”–the actual timing might be off by a day or so.
First you had the rarely seen “Aircraft Produced Ice Particles” (APIPs, or “High Temperature Aircraft Contrails” (HTACs) in supercooled Altocumulus in the afternoon. Contrails were being produced in clouds that were “only” -20 C to -30 C (-4 to -22 F) and aircraft contrails were thought to be impossible at those temperatures, but rather, only at much lower ones, below -40 C (-40 F) or so.
Then, just after sunset, the heavy layer of Altocumulus produced a sun pillar! I was out in Saddlebrooke having dinner with friends after sunset, so had to leave dinner for about ten minutes, but I was so excited for you that I had to see it for myself, too. Since it would have been obscenely rude to tell my dinner friends the true reason why I left, when I got back after many minutes I told them I had to pee, and that seemed to go over pretty well I thought1.
Below, a coupla shots of that sun pillar I got while “peeing” on your behalf:
5:33 PM Gently falling pristine2 hexagonal plate ice crystals, falling face down from mostly supercooled Altocumulus clouds, produce a sun pillar. This site says that sun pillars are typically seen with Cirrostratus clouds and I have not photographed ONE due to Cirrostratus clouds myself, but rather ones like this falling from……yes, that’s right, Altocumulus clouds having just a bit of ice in them. How funny is that?
5:33 PM. Closer look as it fades. Note the small liquid water mammatus bubbles upper right. Mammatus in liquid clouds is also pretty rare since they are downward moving puffs of air and droplets evaporate much faster than do ice crystals. Mammatus is nearly always restricted to ice clouds for this reason. Was also wondering if my oversize salad and hamburger had been served yet.
Let us look at our sounding and see if we can see how cold those Altocumulus clouds were:
Tucson sounding launched from our U of AZ around 3:30 PM yesterday. The arrows denote the likely heights and temperatures of the Altocumulus we saw, somewhere around -20 C (-4 F) or -30 C (-22 F) for both. Hard to tell which layer was the one the aircraft were flying in, but the colder the supercooled cloud the denser the ice trail. So…..since they were dense yesterday, CM is going with the one at -30 C. Yes, that’s right, liquid droplet clouds can exist at -30 C, full reasons not known, but indicates a lack of ice-forming particles up there. But, it can also happen at the ground, too, in fogs.
Here are some of the magical, rare scenes from aircraft making ice canals in those very cold supercooled Altocumulus clouds:
2:25 PM. Ice canal over Boot Barn down there on Oracle somewhere.2:29 PM. Contrail castellanus (that row above the pole)? Had never seen anything quite like this before. Going crazy over sky phenomena now. Word Press, as here, is corrupting some of these images; can’t fix it so far.2:50 PM.
3:51 PM. Just above corrupted part of this file–I’ve given up trying to fix it in WP, is an aircraft streaking through this Cirrocumulus/Altocumulus deck, and an ice trail will form. How can you tell that that aircraft is IN the cloud and not above it? Look for different movement between the contrail and the cloud. If they are moving together, its usually the case that the aircraft was in the cloud. The aircraft is in the cloud at left.3:51 PM Close up. Very excited that a trail would develop. You almost never see the aircraft leaving the trail like this; you see the trail after the aircraft is long gone.
Skipping to the chase, as hard as that is to do, this trail really lit up as it got to the 22 degree point from the sun, where mock suns and such happen, producing a rainbow of colors due to iridescence, a rainbow producing by very tiny ice crystals in this case, of the order of a few microns in size.
3:55 PM. Started to glow a little orange here.
3:55 PM. Close up of the feature event. Was turning brighter colors as the seconds went byStill 3:55 PM. Going from orange to blueish.STLL 3:55 PM. Color fades into white as this icy contrail in the Altocumulus raced eastward. More WP corruption here, too. Think I’ll quit! Just too much time to do this to have this kind of crap happen! Sorry, having little baby tantrum now.
Guess about today’s clouds
Maybe a few Cirrus, patch or two of Cirrocumulus, and likely lenticular clouds, particularly off to the north.
The End
The big storm everyone’s talking about?
Oh, yeah, baby, its still comin’, begins on Wednesday, New Year’s Eve in the afternoon, continues for about 24 h off and on.
Bracketing possible precip totals: still 0.25 inches on the bottom (10% chance of less), 1.50 inches on the top (10% chance of more). Average of those two often brings the best estimate, which would be about 0.87 inches, somewhere in there. You know, when you deal with wobbly cut off lows, you just can’t be real confident in how much rain they’ll bring. However, it looks like the north part of the State will get the brunt in snow, which will be great for the water situation.
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1It would be fun to hear what your excuses were as a “CMJ”–Cloud Maven Junior, if you were in a similar predicament last evening and HAD to see that rare sun pillar, rather than meet new people at dinner who wouldn’t be able to understand you anyway because you are compulsed like that; leave a great dinner to go outside in cold air to take cloud photos.
Well, nobody really understands a CM.
I remember in grammar school and Junior High in Reseda, CA, when kids teased me on clear days , saying, “Hey, Artie! Is it gonna rain today?” Then they would laugh at me for being a CM before I even answered the question, knowing all the while what the answer was going to be. Still, out of civility, I would answer them: “No, we’re having Santa Ana conditions now and it can’t rain for at least five days”, but they would still be laughing in the midst of my explanation about why it wasn’t going to rain. Kind of a sad scene when you think about it, that is, how mean kids can be to kids who are different. Later, when I became a pretty good athlete, they liked me, which shows how important athletics is over knowing stuff, and helping you “fit in.”
2 “Pristine” means that can’t be gunked up by having collected cloud droplets on their faces because then the optics, like sun pillars, mock suns, that kind of thing can’t happen if the crystals are messed up with droplets on them or a lot of extra hexagonal arms sticking out of them, as in bullet rosette ice crystals.
Like scientific opinion1, climate change happens. You may not know this, but only 15,000 to 20,000 years or so ago, a blink of an eye in light years, the earth was gripped by an Ice Age. No “hockey stick” handle back then! Snow and ice piled up over a kilometer deep on top of the Space Needle in Seattle. And the polar ice cap extended to places like Cahoga Falls, Ohio, while burying the Great Lakes, which didn’t exist.
NOW, of course, we’re in an “Interglacial” period called the Holocene, where its nice and toasty, for the most part, the way we like it as a people. Really, human beans do not like Ice Ages; they can really die off in a hurry2 and have to repopulate themselves afterwards! Well, I suppose that part might be fun.
The forecast models are foretelling something in the way of a flashback in the way of a pressure pattern over nearly ALL of North America that might well have been the average pressure pattern day after day during an Ice Age (there have been many), the last one, at its peak, not surprisingly, was called, “the Last Glacial Maximum.” I’d call it that, too.
Here are a coupla panels from the venerable Enviro Can computer model with its FOUR panels of weather. Take a look at the pressure patterns in the right side panels, you may have to use a magnifying glass, both showing the predicted sea level pressure pattern. These forecast maps are astounding to C-M and will, therefore, be likewise to you, too: a high pressure area so expansive with cold dense air that it covers millions of square miles, even more in square kilometers, maybe billions, since the kilometer is a smaller Euro unit of measurement that makes everything seem farther away when you’re driving to someplace and the distance is in Euros. (hahaha, just kidding folks).
Valid Monday, December 29th at 5 AM AST. Giant high pressure cell has formed in the Canadian Northwest Territories, and its leading edge is affecting the US from COAST TO COAST! I am pumped, don’t high pressure regions this big this too often in NA. In eastern Asia, e,g, China, where all our stuff is made, and Siberia, this big a high is SOS in the wintertime. So, we’re seeing a bit of eastern Asia wintertime conditons, too.
Valid just 24 h later, 5 AM AST, Tuesday, December 30th. Temperatures in some mountain valley locations in MT could be as low as -60 F. NE flow aloft, behind the upper low, will provide exceptionally dry air above the surface layer, and that will allow whatever “heat”, and we use this word, advisedly, to efficiently escape from the surface after nightfall. So, clear skies, dry above you, no wind (as in a valley) down, down, down plummets the temperature.
So, we have an historical treat coming when the average temperatures every day in the US were 15-20 F lower during the Last Glacial Maximum! (Ugh.) The oceans were at lot smaller then, too, because a lot that water was piled up on top of the Space Needle, etc.
You might have noticed in these panels that the Ice Age-like conditions are plummeting rapidly southward, and big trough is starting to curl over the interior of the Pac NW. Yes, since we are still in the Trough Bowl, that curling air pattern, containing frigid air is headed toward Arizona, and will be here or not in early January.
Why a bifurcated statement?
Models are confused. Two model runs, only 6 h apart (5 PM and 11 PM AST last evening have the low center aloft for the SAME time, January 1st at 5 AM AST over a) Pebble Beach Golf Course, Carmel, CA; b) over Gallup, NM! How funny, outrageous, and frustrating is that? See below:
Valid at 5 AM AST, January 1st, New Year’s Bowl Day. With the amount of cold air with this system it would likely be snowing in lower elevation places north of SFO. Also, it would rain on the Duck-Seminole bowl game in Pasadena, CA.Also Valid for January 1st at 5 AM AST. But which one will be right?
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But, we are “gifted” with an opportunity to learn about chaos in the atmosphere, aren’t we, that is, those times when little errors can lead to huge differences in future states.
So, to resolve this weather conflict, and lose a few more readers, we go to the NOAA spaghetti factory, and examine the “Lorenz plot” for this time period and see which one is looney:
Valid 12 h before the maps above, New Year’s Eve, December 31st at 5 PM AST.
Well its pretty obvious that the goofy one is the one having the low over SFO and vicinity. Most of the circulation pattern has a center in Arizona somewhere. But this interpertation means that extremely cold air is likely to invade at least the northern half of Arizona as January begins. The good side is that there would be substantial, and later, reservoir filling snows in the mountains, and a good chance of substantial rain here in Catalina as the year begins.
The end of maybe solving a prognostic conundrum.
Today’s weather
Well, its all “out there” by your favorite weathercaster, and they all do a pretty darn good job, and so no use hacking over what’s already known by everybody except to say that the jet streak at 18,000 feet (500 mb), that core that circumscribes precip from no precip areas during our winters, passes over Catalina (our area) around 5 PM AST according the latest model run.
And that’s, too, when the models expect the first rain around Catalina to arrive. As before, this ain’t gonna be too much unless we get real lucky, top amount likely below a quarter on an inch between 5 PM today and the end of possible showers later tomorrow afternoon.
And of course, there’ll be lots of wind, maybe gusts to 40 mph today, a windshift to the NW here when front goes by overnight, with a temperature drop of about 10 degrees almost simultaneously. Expect a frosty Lemmon on Friday morning when the clouds part.
The interesting part is that echoes and clouds will appear out of nowhere as that big trough expands southward, cooling the air aloft, allowing cloud tops to rise to ice-forming levels. Also, if you go there now, you will see giant clear slots between those middle and high clouds that passed over last evening until right now (Ac castellanus visible to SSW now), and a tiny band in west central Arizona, and the echo-producing clouds in the NW part of the State. Those unstable-loooking clouds will be gone soon.; they’re more from tropical locations.
Keep an eye on that little band in the middle; it may turn into a bona fide rainband as clouds add onto it, widens and thickens. That’s probably what’s going to bop us this evening with rain.
Expecting to see a nice lenticular cloud downstream from the Catalinas today. They’re common AHEAD of the jet core since the air is much more stable then, resists lifting and so you get cloud pancakes that hover over the same spot. How you log them if you see any.
Will we see our usual, “clearing before the storm”? This is when middle and high clouds depart, there’s a big clearing followed by an inrush of low, precipitating clouds. Not sure, but will look for it if that little band of middle clouds ends up as only that as it passes by today. The invasion of low clouds would follow that. Too much speculating today!
Yesterday’s clouds
3:42 PM. Cirrus fibratus thickening to Altostratus toward the horizon, invade sky as big trough approaches, upper ridge skiddadles.3:50 PM. Looking at Cirrus and CIrrostratus advancing over the Catalinas.5:20 PM. Your yesterday’s sunset. Heavy ice cloud shield advances on southern Arizona, Cirrostratus with Altostratus in the distance, the thickening NOT due to perspective. Hope you caught that.
Finally, the End. I’m sure you’re glad, too, if you got this far!
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1Remmeber back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when it was widely believed that a new ice age may be at hand because the earth had been cooling off for a coupla decades? It was also being pointed out that an ice age could onset in a hundred to a few hundred years from past ice age onsets! Yikes. Scary times on earth then when the Beatles were popular.
2Of course, if you were to die in an Ice Age, you might end up being well-preserved and then people would see what you looked like, the hair style you had, tattoos, etc, as we’ve seen with a few dead people that have been found from those glacial times. I guess that’s something positive to say about cold times.
Well, fountains spray water, and storms spray water (and snow) on the ground, so quite an unexpected confluence in descriptions, comparing fountains and storms.
That’s right, three storms are shown in the model run from last night. They been kind of coming and going, the model generally clueless about what’s really going to happen here, especially with California gully washing rains from the lower latitudes, that then affect Arizona.
However, they’re BACK, those gully washing rains in southern Cal, beginning around the 6-7th of Jan. They used to be exceptionally ferocious and floody in the WRF-GFS and came in on Rose Bowl day, that day when we were all dreaming of Ducks floating around in Pasadena. California Dreamin’, as it turned out. The floods now showing up would only be ordinary ones, at least to start.
But, “hey.” enough said about California! What about us?
A little snow overnight or the following morning after the day after Christmas. That would be the 26th. Precip amounts have to be light, since the trajectory of this cold storm is completely over land, but then that helps keep it cold, though I am not in favor of cold.
Amounts, again; Since its marginal to begin with; 0 to 0.25 inches max in melted snow water, if it snows.
Then what?
Next, on New Year’s Eve, the model, as rendered by IPS MeteoStar, erupted with this Arizona “fountain” number 2:
Valid at 5 AM AST. Jet core is already south of us, brown and reddish area, so it on the verge of raining here at that time.
But, as you know, when a low is predicted to be by itself, as in this case, the prediction is “iffy”. But, lows like this one, should it verify, bring the longest duration of rains and snows to Arizona, i. e,. are fabulous drought-denting storms because they move very slowly when out of the main flow. In fact this one would take more than 24 h to go by! You’d be looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of a half inch to an inch of precip here in the Catalina area.
Below, “fountain” number 3 “in preparation” as we say about our manuscripts, sometimes ones that never materialize in a journal, as it is with some of these storms the model predicts.
Truly, I say to you1, this is what dreams are made of for a southern California precipophile; get the sandbags out! Years of below normal rain, rectified! Drought busted! Let’s see what drought bustin’, mutton bustin’, cow-punchin’, drought stompin’, calf ropin’, hornswaglin’, storm herdin’ map really looks like:
Valid at 5 PM AST, January 5th. Drought bustin’ portent all over this map!
Don’t even need to show what happens after this, “Juicy” out there mixes it up with some Arctic air and is slammed into southern Cal with Hawaiian-like dewpoints and rain. Just like calf ropin’. That cold air and upper jet extruding offshore will “rope” Juicy in. Lotta “warm rain” involved, too, that type of rain that forms without the need for ice.
While Juicy loses some water and some punch after southern Cal, it would still be a big rain producer in Arizona, particularly the northern half. We would likely be just inside the edge of the southern edge of this. Still, we have to be glad for the State as a whole as our water situation would vastly improve with these storms, especially storm fountains 2 and 3.
Valid at 5 PM AST, Jan 5th. Looks pretty damn good for breakthrough flow to “the other side”, from the central Pacific to the West Coast and Great Southwest, wouldn’t you say? Note the bunching of red lines from the east Pac into Arizony. Chances better than average that we’ll see this break on through to the other side, Doors, 1967.
Standing by for snow and rain…. Sincerely, standing by for rain, C-M.
Yesterday’s day in contrails
Pretty upset yesterday as contrail after contrail formed and floated over Catalina. I don’t mind contrails when I’m flying somewhere, never even think of them, but when they foul the natural sky, I am livid.
Fortunately, the air got drier up there and contrails were rare after 10 AM. I can hardly stand to post this, but will for the sake of documentation so that you may be outraged as well. NIMB!
9:21 AM AST. Barrage of contrails fouls natural sky. Hope you’re mad now.
We hope this barrage was mainly due to those exceptional jet streams winds rushing down from Canada into the interior of the Southwest toward New Mexico causing airway contrails to shift over us.
Exceptional?
Some winds between 30,000 and 35,000 feet were clocked at over 200 mph! Great if you’re going from Seattle to Albuquerqueque, but not so great if you’re going the other way.
The End.
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1I had a sudden urge to say, “hypocrites!” just then for some reason. Crazy.
2″Spaghetti tasters”…. Made me wonder what happened to that great underground/alternative music band, The Oil Tasters… Remember their big hit, “Slit Chapped Lips“? Great example of what the 80s underground music scene was all about, that raw, exploration of different sounds, the overall contempt for “pop” music, the kind that makes a lot of money, like that produced by the Four Aces, etc.
(Can’t find that song about chapped lips on YouTube, its that good!) ((Later, found it!!))
((Can’t believe that I have touched the entire extrema of music in one blog, from the Four Aces on the left, to the Oil Tasters on the right, and everything in between; i.e., The Doors, 1967!)) (((Just shows you how deep your music knowledge can go; can it get any broader3?)))
3I remind the reader that if humor like this is not your cup of tea, nor the personality I effect here is also not, that my offer to stop blogging for a million dollars is still on the table.
The first of a couple of patches of rain over the next 36 h are passing through now, R at this second, 4:40:32 AM, and 0.09 inches of rain so far. Nice.
And with the last troughy coming across tomorrow during the day, with another chance of light rain then, too. Looks like we’ll easily go over 2 inches for the month of December (1.94 inches now), the first above normal in rainfall winter month since November a year ago.
Yesterday’s clouds and flowers
Not as widespread or dense as expected in the afternoon, but prettier, which helps counteract error. Let us begin our review of clouds with some paper flowers; there are still some blooms out there! Amazing.
8:25 AM. Seen on a dog walk under overcast Altostratus. Desert marigolds still going strong.8:38 AM. Classic Altostratus, some virga apparent below darkest part. Saguaro cactus is extruding slowly from the ground on the right. Need time lapse to really see it do anything.11:17 AM. Deeper clouds have moved away and now comes lower, shallow Altocumulus clouds some spewing virga. Photo annotated for Mark Albright, University of Washington research meteorologist who lives in Continental Ranch, and thus in the Tucson morning smog tide.
3:27 PM. One of the prettiest scenes of the afternoon, this array of Altocumulus.
3:27 PM also. Only the extra special Mark IV cloud maven personage would have caught this aircraft ice trail, originally within those lower Altocumulus clouds, much too warm for normal contrails. This is probably around 30 min old.
5:12 PM. Sunset in leading bank of clouds that led to the light rain this morning.
The weather way ahead
Threat of a larvae killing cold wave later this month fading; looks like that cold air will end up in the eastern US now, and no further precip after the series this week. Darn.
Check these out in yesterday’s “Olympics of optics” where all kinds of goofy optical things were seen:
3:19 PM. Fireball crosses Tucson skies leaving long plume of “smoke.” Photo not touched up in any way shape or form because that would be wrong. Note: always carry your camera with you since you only have seconds to capture something like this.3:19 PM Fireball crosses Tucson skies 2.
3:57 PM. Then there was this “wrong way1” partial halo a few minutes later. Could it be another sign of climate change, as almost everything that happens is? The sun is below the bottom of the photo; haloes are supposed to go around the sun not around nothing. When a partial halo around nothing occurs like this, its called a “circumzenithal arc” caused by tiny, pristine ice crystals like hexagonal plates. If you want to read about optics of all kinds, go to the University of Washington Huskies weather department where they have optics chapter online.
4:10 PM. Contrail passes through or above Cirrus uncinus. Yesterday was one of the top (worst) days for contrails above and in view of Catalina IMO. Note lines of contrails above and behind weather station. We hope it was due to an unusual confluence of conditions such aircraft flying a heights different from normal due to a peculiar wind profile, Cirrus moisture at the level of the airways, that kind of thing since we rarely see as many as yesterday.
Today’s clouds
Thickening and lowering, ho hum, the usual as a trough aloft (bend in the jet stream winds up there) off southern Cal and Baja approaches today. Ahead of the bend in the winds, seen in the map below, the vast layers of air rise ever so gradually, something like cm per second. But, its enough to produce sheets of clouds.
What kind of clouds?
Heavy, dense and gray ice clouds we call Altostratus (As), with thicker and thinner spots should dominate the day. Then as the moist layer lowers, that is, as the As “bases”, really just comprised of falling snow that only looks like a solid bottom, get lower, patches of virga will start to reach the ground later today. Altocumulus ought to be around, too, water droplet clouds not cold enough to be completely iced up. Expecting those layer clouds, or undercutting layers to be low and lumpy enough to be termed Stratocumulus late in the day.
Rain?
The strongest winds at 500 mb (around 18,000 feet above sea level) will be to our south beginning today, a necessary condition for virtually ALL wintertime rain here. CM is expecting some rain to fall in Catalina later today, or tonight as this bend in the winds aloft goes by. Expected amounts in this first wave, trace, minimum to 0.25 inches max by mid-day tomorrow.
Its really dicey situation since its not clear how deep the moisture is off Baja now, but looks potent enough for as much as a quarter inch from this keyboard, though less is more likely. Sorry the range is necessarily so great.
BTW, the WRF-GOOFUS model didn’t have ANY rain predicted for this time frame period in both of the 5 AM AST and 5 PM runs of yesterday. So, we’re out on a bit of a limb.
After tommorow….
After 5 PM AST tomorrow, all peoples and models see more rain for Catalina as two waves/troughs barrel in right behind the first one that goes over tonight. The 2nd and 3rd ones produce a couple of rains through Thursday with big breaks likely in between.
The total amounts for Catalina between now and Friday morning still look like they will be contained within the range of 0.25 inches (things don’t go so well; disappointing really) and an inch (things go really well). Best guess is average of those, for a few day total of 0.625 inches.
The End
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1Remember “Wrong Way Corrigan”? Picked up that fumble and scored a TD for the other team? Maybe it was an early sign of the effects of concussions in fubball.
