That’s pretty much it for the weather just ahead. Nice upper low passes overhead in the next coupla days, but it really needed an steroid-like injection of tropical air from way down south to do much for us in the way of measurable rain. Oh, sure, we’ll still get some clouds and isolated showers, maybe one or two with lightning somewhere in the whole state of Arizona, but our chances of measurable rain here in Catalinaland have gone way down because the moist tongue hasn’t materialized in time to reach us, but rather will be shunted to the east. But, the skies will be spectacular, even if they’re dry for us.
For a psychological lift, in addition to the one provided by large amounts of coffee, generous rains will fall in drought-stricken NM and west Texas as our little disappointing low approaches and moves over us. OUR tropical air will be just a little too far east, but great for them.
BTW, the Canadian model, the one that had so much rain in our area as late as 36 h ago, has bailed on rain here, as well in the past two model runs. Probably won’t be going to Canada now for any vacations in the near future; pretty bitter about those misleading forecasts. I think they smoke too much up there, too.
Yesterday’s clouds
First, in case you’re mad at me for predicting measurable rain, 0.05 to 0.25 inches, have some kind of “rain rage” going on now, a picture of a cute dog to help you get back in control of yourself:
Photo of a cute dog.10:04 AM. Flying saucers! Altocumulus lenticularis clouds sometimes trigger calls to the police department that a flying saucer is about. Had a real scare back in the 50s around Mt. Rainier, Washington due to an Ac len (true story).12:12 PM. This one looks painful. Never seen anything like it before, a kind of yoga for clouds, “downward dog” cloud formation.
12:12 PM. Wouldn’t want to be flying under this one; suggests extreme turbulence to me.12:44 PM. That shredded, ragged base below the lenticular in the center indicates heavy turbulence below it. The smooth cap is due to a temperature inversion that allows some give, a dome, a hump in it, but nothing more.1:46 PM. An example of almost invisible Cirrus/Cirrostratus. “Invisible Cirrus”, btw, is kind of a hot research topic since clouds affect the radiation budget of the earth. That kind of cloud is just ice crystals floating around up there that are too low, and small, in concentrations to be seen, but can be captured by aircraft instrumentation., which is how it was discovered. This is about as close to “invisible Cirrus” as you can get. Look hard and you will see the faintest whitish hazes around and above the flecks of Ac len clouds; the one a left center has a trail of fine ice crystals coming out of it. Ac len remain stationary while the air flows through them, so the ice ejects on the downwind side. But, no sign of an Ac len having produced the whitish haze above and to the left of that cloudlet, though. Personally I have never seen invisible Cirrus.
The weather way ahead
NOAA spaghetti plots suggesting that tropical air ahead of a trough may yet bring us rains in early June. Check it out.
Other than that, our only chance for measurable rain is in the next 48 h when MAYBE a rogue shower might hit. But, no matter what, pretty skies anyway for the next couple of days. Have camera ready.
First, pretty nice sunset yesterday evening, which is redundant because sunset always occurs in the evening.
7:18 PM. Altostratus with slight amounts of virga, underlit in the evening sunset. Haha, “evening sunset.”
7:19 AM. Liked the way was splayed over a house in the foreground. Sort of perty.
7:42 AM. The thicker Cirrus clouds are Cirrus spissatus, or “Cis spis” for short, though not in polite company. Should be the State Cloud of Arizona, we see so much of it, those white or gray patches of ice cloud. Kind of fed up with just “Cirrus-ee” skies these days.
7:43 AM. Looking north-northwest from Catalina toward Mt. Humphries, a delicate blend of Cirrus uncinus fibers (upper half of photo) with thicker Cirrus spissatus in the distance (thicker appearance not due to perspective).
OK, enough great information on clouds and things we can see from Catalina/Sutherland Heights, now for the rain ahead….
Rainshowers, some thunderstorms wrap around this low that drifts from over San Diego to over Puerto Peñasco, Mexico (aka, Rocky Point) by Saturday. Here the Canadian version of what the weather configurations will be this coming Saturday morning:
Valid at 5 AM AST, Saturday
As you can see, a little bit of tropical air gets whirled into this low from someplace down Mexico way, and, viola, showers and a couple of thunderstorms erupt. This could happen anytime between Thursday night and Sunday morning, maybe even a couple of days of scattered showers.
Rain here in Catalina? I think so. Likely range, not a lot, but from a low end of just 0.05 inches, to as much as a quarter of an inch by Sunday morning (10% chance of less; only 10% chance of more, as a first take on this). Gorgeous, dramatic skies are guaranteed, and likely some strong winds here and there emanating those high-based thunderstorms we can get this time of year.
BTW, not reporting on the US model forecast since it shows the low next weekend passing a little farther to the north, i. e., doesn’t take as favorable a track for rain here as the Enviro Can model shown above.
The weather way ahead
After the little “lowboy” goes by next weekend (producing some great, badly needed rains in NM and TX), the Arizona oven is turned on. Look for a string of 100+ days beginning in about a week.
Coming to weather theaters next fall and winter, “The Ninja (?) Nino.” Looks warmer and warmer down there in those key “Classic” and “The New Nino” equatorial ocean zones off South America to Hawaii. CPC’s (Climate Prediction Center) is getting pretty worked up about it, too. Check it out below and here:
Sea surface temperature anomalies from NOAA, valid for May 19, 2014. OK, here we go!CPC
Of course, as we know here, the effect on the summer rainfall season is not really well documented. But things can wetten up in late summer and fall due to tropical storms that drift farther north toward us, remaining a bit stronger because the ocean temperatures that maintain them are a bit warmer. This enhances the chance of a wet spell or two then. Mainly, with a good Nino, the chances of a wet winter go up a lot, particular the mid and later parts.
In the meantime, let us dream about September and October 1983, as the Great El Nino of 1982-83 was fading, but still was associated with colossal rains in Arizona those two months. In case you forgot, this recap about those days and TS Octave. During that water year of that Great Nino, October 1982 through the first couple of days of October 1983, just a year and a couple of days, Catalina recorded a Seattle-like 32 inches of rain!
Well, its not windy1 yet, but it will be, and everyone knows it. The infamous “Tonopah Low”, as the ancient weathermen called it, is now in formation over Tonopah, Nevada, as a big bad trough roars into California, over the Sierras, and into the Great Basin today and tomorrow. We should have noticeable winds by mid-day, a dramatic accompaniment to some pretty Cirrus clouds, ones that will be chugging along up there at 100 mph or so. The U of AZ mod also suggests a few mid-level clouds, ones likely to be brief Cirrocumulus patches (those clouds having tiny granulations that make them look higher than they really are) or Ac lenticulars NE of Ms. Lemmon; also off to the north of Catalina, as the moistness aloft increases later in the day. Cirrus likely to devolve into thicker Altostratus. Watch for a great sunset today, since holes far to the west of us in these higher clouds are possible that would allow the fading sun to light up the bottoms of the high and middle clouds after it sets. Hope so, anyway.
I am really happy for you today since this will be the really first interesting cloud day in awhile. You might consider leaving work around lunchtime so you don’t miss anything, like some iridescence around the Cc.
Of course, the late April cold air blast, mentioned here so long ago in a blog that I might get a forecasting award of some kind2, will hit tomorrow as the cold front (sudden drop in temperature, barometer rises instantly, and wind shifts) hits later tomorrow morning. Have jacket ready.
Looks like this cold front, with the jet stream sagging over us or slightly to the south, will be enough for a little rain now, a tenth of an inch likely the most that can fall. Still, it will be something to break up the monotonous string of zero precip days.
Now I will look at the AZ mod precip output and see if there is any credibility to that rain amount mentioned just above. (Oh, fer Pete’s Sake, accum precip run ends at 1 AM today here a few minutes before 5 AM AST.)
Well, the WRF GOOFUS model run, based on global data taken at 5 PM AST yesterday, did have some rain here tomorrow morning. Rain for Catalina and environs has been coming and going in various outputs for days on end.
The Cirrus will be gone tomorrow, but with lots on interesting lower clouds, some having ice in them, will produce nice picaresque views of the Catalinas as clouds and shadows of clouds roll across them after the front goes by and the clearing takes place.
The Weather WAY ahead:
Very “troughulent”, in a word.
A lower latitude trough will be affecting this area not too long after this current big boy passes starting a few days into May. With those lower latitude troughs usually comes just high and middle clouds with their spectacular sunrises and sunsets, and their presence keeps the temperature from spiking to astrological levels due to those clouds, but also because the air aloft is a little cooler in a trough than when an upper level high pressure area (a region of deep warm air) is squatting on top of us. So, really ovenly weather will be MOSTLY held at bay as we roll into May. Yay.
Once in a while, one of those persistent troughs, too, can scoop up some real moisture from the tropics and bring some rain here, so there’s even a chance of May rain as this situations develops. This troughy situation begins to develop about 8 days out now, around May 4th, but persists beyond the 10th.
Check out the spaghetti for the morning of May 10th to see what I am talkin’ about:
See arrow that points to the general area in which you live. Note, too, where all the red lines are, big gap over the West until the blueish lines, indicating a pretty darn reliable forecast even this far out.
The End
————
1TItle is a pathetic reference to a popular but crappy IMO song from the 60s.
2Actually, I didn’t think it up by myself, that forecast of cold air late in April, but relied on the NOAA spaghetti factory to give me a heads up, so that if I was to get an award, I would have to acknowledge and thank the NOAA folks who produce spaghetti for their work in supporting my efforts, and I couldn’t have done it without them.
April 12th, 6:57 PM. In case you missed it or forgot about it already.
Still looking like a couple of pokes of cool air in the last ten days of April, no rain indicated with them, just wind.
Some sprinkles maybe on Friday or Saturday from mid-level clouds like Altostratus or large clumps of Altocumulus with virga, some of the latter likely large enough to transition in name from Altocumulus (castellanus) to Cumulonimbus clouds. As with the last sprinkle a few days ago, any rain will be from clouds whose bottoms are well above Ms. Mt. Lemmon.
A great sunrise/sunset or two is almost guaranteed on Friday and or Saturday. This cloud action due to a weak wave/trough in the subtropics that creeps toward Arizona in the next few days. You can see it now in the sat imagery from the Washington Huskies Weather Department here. Its that little thing spinning around in this loop east of Hawaii with a big plume of high and middle clouds streaming NE from the Equator toward the West Coast to the east of the upper low. Expecting nothing more than passing Cirrus before Friday.
Today we celebrate the model in techno-pop song, and not only the human ones, but also the ones that give us hope (or not) for rain in Arizona. (Advisory: If you listen to the Kraftwerk 1980s tune above, you won’t be able to get rid of that melody all day!) Speaking of today, see farther below after lesson in reading spaghetti.
Below, two model outputs for the almost the exact same time separated by only 6 h of obs as input for the late afternoon and evening of Wednesday, April 23rd.
One outputm the first one, suggests we’re in for another, unseasonal, blazing heat wave like the current one for Arizona. while the other a wet, cold blast into the Great Basin, with windy conditions here and a major cool down just ahead; the latter leads to sequence of troughs that leads to rain here, with eventually exceptionally COLD weather, and considerable snow in the mountains!
Repeated-annotated for emphasis
In the East, the first one above suggests that winter will seem likes its continuing into summer with a super cold wave for late April, while the model output below shows nothing special going on at all.
Sadly, the one above with the oven lit here (big ridge in the West and the amazing vortex in the Midwest_, is the one that was computed on data 6 h LATER than the one below, the one that looks pretty exciting for us, even if its just a cool down with a bunch of wind. “Later”, as you imagine, usually implies more accuracy.
Who you gonna call to see which of these astoundingly different model outputs has the most credibility, which one is the most likely model ghost buster? The NOAA spaghetti factory! See below:
On the map above, the deep vortex in the Midwest has almost no support at all (you would have to see a LOT of blue lines in the US and not in Canada for that support), while the West Coast has a lot of support for a big trough to blast in (lots of blue lines along the West Coast).
In sum, it would appear that the chance for rain late in the month is not completely bogus, but a very a big heat wave is. Rather, keep coats handy for later in the month. See rain in AZ below associated with the more credible output (from IPS MeteoStar’s rendering):
Valid Saturday morning, April 26th. Wouldn’t this be great!
Clouds….
About like yesterday. But there’s a real “storm” up there of sorts. If you were on Mt Everest and Mt Everest was here where Ms. Mt. Lemmon is, there would be a real blizzard up there at the top; 50 kt winds, light, dust-like snow off and on all day. In normal speak, there will be lots of Cirrus, Altostratus (huge gray areas), those former clouds composed of ice crystals, some Altocu (droplet clouds) mixed in.
A lot of snowbirds head home when the temperature goes above about 85 F (30 C) because they can’t take it like we can, which is what will be happening today and for a couple more days before some thick middle and high clouds move in toward the weekend with their often accompanying blazing sunsets/sunrise to go with the blazing temperatures. So, expect some extra traffic on the roads in the next few days. If this blog was a grammar school playground, I’d be calling them “little crybabies” when I saw them leaving.
But, while the hot regime digs in now, “I want to leave you today with this final thought”1but one in the form of a weather map:
384 h from now, or about two weeks. From last night’s WRF-GOOFUS model run which can’t be trusted this far out.
For credence, and transparent, or “clear water” credibility2, we look to the NOAA spaghetti bowl to see if that map above has any support:
Valid the day before of the map above. I think I can see something here that would support unusual rains in Arizona in later April…. Its my job. Those red lines (contours that reflect where the troughs are), at least kind of dip down in our area. But for real credibility, we those blue contours, not red ones.
The End
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1This phrase is kind of a literary device, a trick really, often used to keep people reading, thinking that the piece is going to end without them investing too much more time. But then it goes on some more.
2Though it would be a good name for a band, its not a strained and awkward allusion to the 60s band (“Creedence”3 CR) that broke up because of all the infighting and never got back together to do legacy tours of all their great hits and make a lot money like the Eagles did when they resolved all of THEIR infighting (almost). I guess Hell hasn’t frozen over for CCR. Too bad. I remember seeing CCR live at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, and how the whole audience leaped up in unison and as if by command when they launched into their hit, “Proud Mary” with those big, booming chords we all learned to play on our guitars!
3A common misspelling of the word, “credence.” The band was not known for spelling, but man, to name your band with a misspelled word, wow.
Valid two weeks from now, Thursday, 5 AM, March 20th. Massive trough, at last, settles into the West for awhile, more in keeping with climo. Keep jackets at the ready. Rain? Dunno yet, but probably on the correct side of 50-50 beginning around the 17th. Changes! Warm and dry for a coupla days, followed by a parade of troughs, quite a few minor ones over the next week or so, before the Big One forms. Above, this is a VERY strong signal in the spaghetti for two weeks out, and so got pretty excited when I saw it, as you are now, too. So, when mid-March arrives, get ready!
Was going to close with this NWS forecast for Catalina (might be updated by the time you link to it), but then saw just now that Saturday, the day a cold, dry trough is over us, it’s predicted to be 76 F here in Catalina, too warm. I would prepare for upper 60s.
Canadian model has even had rain near us at times as this trough goes by on Saturday, but only here in the 11th hour (from yesterday’s 5 PM AST run) has the US model indicated that the core of the trough and rain near us on Saturday, as the Canadian one had for a few days before that. Hmmm…
The fact that any trough is ending up stronger than it was predicted, as the one on Saturday, is a good sign of being close to the bottom (farthest S lattitude) of the “trough bowl”, that location where troughs like to come and visit. So, maybe this is a precursor for us, this unexpected little cool snap on Saturday. Maybe climatology is beginning to work its wonders at last in the West.
Powerful storms begin affecting the interior of the West and Great Basin in 10 days, and that pretty much marks the time when the winds here start to pick up to gusty at times as strong low centers develop to the north of us, and the major jet stream subsides to the south toward us.
It will be the end of the warm winter era for us, too. While cold settles in the West, it will mean very toasty weather back East from time to time, something those folks will greatly enjoy.
———————–Climate issue commentary; skip if you’re happy with the climate as it is now—————————-
As you likely know, much of the upper Midwest had one of its coldest winters ever, and just a few days ago Baltimore (locally, “Ballimore”, as in “Ballimore Orioles”) had its lowest measured temperature EVER in March, 4 F!
“RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
0930 AM EST TUE MAR 04 2014
…DAILY AND MONTHLY MINIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDS SET AT BALTIMORE
MD…
A DAILY RECORD MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 4 DEGREES WAS SET AT BALTIMORE MD TODAY…BREAKING THE OLD RECORD OF 5 SET BACK IN 1873.
THE MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 4 DEGREES FROM TODAY WAS ALSO THE LOWEST MINUMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDED ON ANY DAY IN MARCH FOR BALTIMORE. THE PREVIOUS RECORD MINIMUM TEMPERATURE FOR MARCH WAS 5 DEGREES ON 4 MARCH 1873.”
(Thanks to Mark Albright for this official statement; emphasis by author)
If you’ve followed some media reports, the exceptional cold of this winter has been attributed to global warming, a hypothesis that has been questioned by climo Big Whigs. However, if it is right (which even lowly C-M doubts), parts of the upper Midwest may become uninhabitable due to cold in a warming world, quite a weather “oxymoron.”
Also, if you’ve been hearing about weather extremes and global warming (AKA, “climate change”) you really should read this by a scientist I admire, Roger Pielke, Jr., at Colorado State Univsersity, his rebuttal to a Whitehouse science adviser’s characterization of his testimony before Congress about weather extremes (they’re not increasing).
What seems to be happening in climate science is the opposite of what our ideals are. Our conglomerate of climate models did not see the present “puzzling” halt to global warming over the past 15 years or so as CO2 concentrations have continued to rise. However, instead of being chastened/humbled by this failure, some climate scientists seem emboldened and only are shouting louder about the danger ahead. Presently we are struggling with a number of hypotheses about why the hiatus has occurred (e.g., drying of the stratosphere which allows more heat to escape the earth, more aerosols in the stratosphere in which incoming sunlight is dimmed some as it was due to the Pinatubo eruption in 1991, ocean take up of extra heat, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current slowing down, causing northern hemisphere continents to cool off.)
UPdating at 8:28 AM: This from the “current”issue of Science (Feb 28th) about the Global Warming Hiatus (GWH): It might be due to the cold waters of the eastern Pacific, now reigning year after year almost for the whole time of the “hiatus.” (BTW, you’ve heard of it, haven’t you, that hiatus in rising global temperatures? If not, write to your local media sources about this. Its pretty important.) Science mag is $10 if you want to buy it off the newstand.
What ever the cause of the puzzling hiatus in warming, it was not accounted for in our best models right from the get go, and so, naturally there SHOULD be caution on everyone’s part until we know what happened and can get it right in those many climate models..dammitall! Unless we know what done it, how else can we have confidence that they are going to be very accurate 100 years out????
———————————————end of climate issue/rant module————————–
Here are a couple of nice sunset scenes from March 4th, that same day it was SO COLD in Ballimore, these to help you cool off personally after I got you pretty worked up with climate issues. Hope I didn’t spoil your day, and try not to be mad at work thinking about it.
6:19 PM. Row of Cirrus lenticulars appears below CIrrus/Altostratus layer. I think they were too high to be Altocumulus lenticulars, and dissipated into ice puffs right after this shot.6:31 PM. Cirrus spissatus (thicker parts) with strands from Cirrus uncinus under lit by the sun.
3:53 PM. Three little rows of clouds are emitted from the Tortolita Mountains to the west, drift over Oro Valley. These kinds of “streets” are there, and usually emit form the same spots, every time we have a moist, but shallow layer of air, and there’s a bit of wind. We met men would call this situation a “cloud-capped boundary layer” where air rising to form these clouds doesn’t get any higher, usually due to a stable layer like an inversion. The visual divergence, where one of the streets looks to be going to the left, and the one on the right going to the right, is due to perspective. Cloud streets are virtually parallel to one another. The flow at cloud level was toward the photographer, me. You got Cirrostratus on top of these Cumulus/Stratocumulus clouds. (Where clouds like these are more isolated, we call them, Cumulus, when the same clouds group together into masses, we start calling them Stratocumulus. Its kind of a fuzzy area in our fuzzy classification system (see Catalina cloud maven’s cloud classification article in the Encyclopedia of the Atmospheric Sciences, 6 vols., yours for $2258.20, “only one left in stock”, Amazon says, and the great Judy Curry, is Ed.–better get it before its gone!
5:03 PM. That little zone (center, here) on the Tortolitas is still pumping out the clouds. Compare the back edge of this larger mass (which now would be Stratocumulus) with the origin point of the previous photo. The cloud street is the one on the left that goes off the screen.5:32 PM. That high Cirrostratus layer steadily thickened, becoming Altostratus here, as the afternoon wore on. Seemed like another storm was moving in. Those isolated Cumulus clouds and their “streets” filled in, too, becoming large, dark areas of Stratocumulus, adding to the false anticipation of a rain as a storm skirted Arizona.
The weather way ahead after the upcoming heat wave
I have been staring at this weather Rorschach test for a few hours now, and there’s not much to say about it, except that there seems to be two eyeballs near the North Pole, and maybe one of the yellow lines forming a jaw down there toward Greenland, possibly a tilted drivers cap toward Russia.
Clearly the global patterns are “unsettled”, to use one of our favorite forecasting words. (“We will have ‘unsettled’ weather over the next few days”, as one might say in Seattle most of the year.)
Below, “troughing” is suggested in the SW, but not much. The Asian trough, anchored along the coast of Asia, is shown moving offshore here as it should during the spring, and that in turns helps form a trough downwind in the SW US, as we see happen in the spring over the long term (in climatology). So we can only hang our hat on climo, that these uncertain times shown below in the plot below will resolve into something better than more drought.
We can also ponder the larger question of, “How’s come we can put a man on the moon and various space junk on Mars and can’t forecast the weather beyond about a week?” Its crazy.
Or even the vastly larger question concerning chaos theory, a theory that rests on the phenomenon that small perturbations in the initial state of unstable systems are able to make huge changes over time, thus:
“Will a space probe, going off into deep space, as is happening now, an artifact that’s not supposed to be there, unsettle the unstable Universe?”
Valid for 1700 AST, March 17, 2014.
Pretty thoughtful blog today, I thought. Usually don’t go this deep, but it just kind of happened.
Started to rain here in at 3:45 AM…have 0.01 inches so far. :{
So far in AZ, Flagstaff area leading the way Statewide with about 0.90 inches. You can check out those amounts in real time here from the USGS, and here for Pima County. Also you can look at those amounts reported in real time at PWSs (personal weather stations) throughout Arizona on the Weather Underground “Wundermaps” as this exciting, much awaited day develops.
Point forecasts from the U of AZ “Beowulf “for today, based on 11 PM AST data, here. (Graphical version not yet completed.) You’ll see that a mighty amount of over 4 inches of water content is forecast for the top of the Lemmon (Summerhaven) from this storm. These calcs are usually a little high, but even 2 inches would be fabulous up there. Catalina, per se, does not appear in the point location list, but Oro Valley is expected to get around half an inch. We should do better than that here in Catalina/Sutherland Heights.
———-SC rain doings———
Forecast “10 in 24” at Opids Camp; got about 8, same for favored locations in Ventura County. Working on 10 for storm there as I write; another round of pounding rain moving into the LA Basin now. NWS tornado warning for east central LA expires at 4 AM today. (They saw rotation in a severe thunderstorm around Covina earlier this morning.)
BTW, go here to see how excited the Los Angeles branch of the NWS is today. You’ll see that their domain is a kaleidoscope of colors for warnings and advisories of all kinds! Ninety five percent of the time, they really don’t have that much to forecast in southern California, pretty boring really, so this is a great time for them to show their stuff, be excited, “show the colors.” (Me, too!)
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Some of yesterday’s cloud scenes
6:46 AM. Sunrise on the C-Gap.6:57 AM. Two levels of ice clouds, an rare site. The darker on just above the mountains is some icy remnant of an Altocumulus cloud that converted to ice. The whiter clouds are at Cirrus levels, likely some spot of droplets before almost instantly glaciating. The different colors give away the different heights, and also the difference in movement; one level moving relative to the other tells you this, too.8:37 AM. Microversions of Cirrus uncinus suddenly blossomed overhead; almost missed ’em. What was unusual was how tall the vertical parts were with tiny hooks at the bottom. That vertical part indicates a layer of air with no wind shear, a phenomenon almost always observed at cloud tops. The wind shear may have been “mixed out” by the up and down motions associated with cloud formation and dissipation.8:37 AM. Close up view of those tiny Ci unc.9:12 AM. “Webby” Cirrus. Has no official name that I know of.9:35 AM. Though the natural sky is slightly marred by a contrail, in general it was a thing of beauty all morning in particular with the high visibility, complex goings on in the cloud structure, deep blue sky, moderate breezes and temperatures in the 70s. This view, toward the Charouleau Gap, shows more of that “webby” Cirrus, and on the horizon, left of center, the rarely seen Cirrus castellanus which I report seeing almost every week here in AZ.10:37 AM. Less complicated Cirrus fibratus/uncinus patches moved in, followed by the development of small Cumulus clouds. Still very pretty though.2:50 PM. Your afternoon. The Cirrus thickened into a solid layer with gray, transitioning to Altostratus with these small Cumulus (“humilis”) below. TYpically thickening is due to the bottoms of clouds lowering (in this case, where the ice crystals falling out evaporate is perceived as cloud base) while the top stays about the same height. As the air moistens during the approach of a storm, the crystals fall farther toward the ground and the cloud thickens downward.
Rain beginning to pile up again in Cal as behemoth Pac storm moves in. See an actual, professional level weather map below, not a mickey mouse one. It will be good for you to see a complex weather map with all kinds of weather symbolia on it:
0.01 inches at Opids Camp, LA area mountain site, already (at 5:30 AM AST) out of predicted by C-M of 10 inches or so in the next 24 h; highest totals somewhere in central and southern Cal mountains likely between 10 and 20 inches for this one storm! California dreamin’1? Will keep you posted if I am right.
Here?
Really tough to forecast more than an inch in one winter’s day in a desert. Goes against the grain and the cactus, for that matter. Thought I would get some help from the great U of AZ Beowulf Cluster, but its still crunching the 11 PM AST data away as I write here at 5:30 AM. So, can’t wait for a really accurate answer. You should go there, though to get one….
Being crude, then, and I mean using a model with a huge grid spacing compared to that of the U of AZ Cluster model, the Canadian GEM indicates about 36 h of rain, 5 AM AST tomorrow to about 5 PM on Sunday, and even at a average of 0.05 inches over that time, you get 1.80 inches! Good grief. So, maybe now that BIG forecast by a BIG atmos sci faculty member at Colo State, “1.5 to 2 inches”, might be right, closer than my dinky 1 inch max forecast of yesterday. Its great to be wrong when you under forecast precip, but that’s about the only time!
Higher resolution US WRF-GFS mod run from 5 PM AST last evening has fewer hours of precip, BTW, partly because it DOES resolve the forecast in 6 h blocks, not 12 h ones like the crude Canadian model.
Also, the winds above us, being more westerly than southerly during the coming storm, is better for us here in Catalina. Deep southerly flows have to go over Pusch Ridge, and rain can be diminished locally that bit due to the downslope effect off the Ridge. Won’t have that tomorrow and Sunday, so that’s a plus.
The cut to the chase: minimum from this typewriter now HAS to be much higher than 0,25 inches as was indicated previously. Will go to 0.75 inches as the LEAST we’ll get (things don’t go well, main bands just miss Catalina, etc), with 1.5 inches as max by Sunday evening 5 PM.
Will not mention this forecast again, of course, if the rain in Catalina is outside these limits.
Yesterday’s clouds
Nice patterns and nice small Cu yesterday with great visibility again.
1:53 PM Finely granulated, and with a bit of color (iridescence) Cirrocumulus. Here, the Cc is at mid-levels, not at Cirrus levels. In our cloud classification scheme, which is a little funky, its only the tiny granulations that make it Cc and not Altocumulus. Happens a lot.
5:13 PM. Delicate Cirrus uncinus (hooked Cirrus).
6:18 PM. Sunset Cirrus uncinus, so pretty.
The End, except for a little peak at Opids Camp rain just now… Wow, was just 0.01 when I looked at the 3 AM ob, and at 6 AM is already over an inch!
Hope, too, you caught the beautiful sunrise just now. Will reprise it tomorrow.
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1Some of you will instantly recall the initial words to this pop tune:
“All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray, I went walkin’ for awhile on a winter’s day.”
These words were inserted after the “Mamas and the Papas” poke at LA smog in the original words were deemed by producers as less desirable in seeking a commercial hit. The original words that the song began with, before it was commercialized, were” “All the leaves are gray, and the sky is brown”, words that might offend Californians. Thought you’d like to know.
BTW, this video above is a PERFECT paradigm for this year’s sunny, warm and dry weather in the West, and the brutal winter back East. Take a look! Its great!
