This link will bring up the window below. There’s a little tutorial below on what to do once when you get to this window:When you get to this page, the latest model run data will come up in red. Here, to see precipitation in colors on a map, click on the name, “1000_500_thick” for the best view of the many Arizona precipitation days ahead. You will see the precipitation totals for three (or six hours late in the model run) for the next 15 days as calculated by the WRF-GFS model, considered OUR best, but not as good as the Euro model some say1.
This is the same stuff that is rendered so nicely by IPS MeteoStar. I thought I would take you to the source, since its available an hour or two before the IPS renderings are completed.
In sum, its pretty amazing to see this many days with rain predicted so late in March and I thought you should see it, maybe brighten your day up.
Below , your March rain parade, a list of the NINE days with rain in the “general2” Catalina area from this latest model run based on global obs at 11 PM AST last night:
12 RW- VCTY3 (today)
13 RW- VCTY (recall, too, that spaghetti suggested an enhanced chance of rain between March 11-15th some coupla weeks ago)
14, 15, 16, 17 No rain indicated on these days
18 RW- VCTY
19 RW- VCTY
20 RW- VCTY
21 R4
22 RW- VCTY
23, 24, 25 No rain indicated on these days
26 RW- VCTY
27 R
Below, a peak at the latest 15 day spaghetti plot based on last evening’s 5 PM AST global data. I think you can see that there will be a lot going on in 15 days …
Valid at 5 PM AST, March 26th.
Your cloud day today
Heavy dense deep middle clouds with sprinkles in the area are passing overhead now. Will give way to an at least partial clearing in the late afternoon, meaning a great sunset is likely.
Rain not likely to be measurable today.
Yesterday’s cloud shot
5:29 PM. Nice display of Altocumulus castellanus virgae with some Cirrus and Cirrocumulus above them. Note the tufted, or protruding top4 of Altocumulus cloud in the center.
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1Remember how Superstorm Sandy, the one that battered the East Coast a couple of years ago, was better predicted by Euro mod rather than our own model, causing quite a weather flap?
2“General” is taken here as any rain that falls within a 10 mi radius of Catalina.
3“RW- VCTY” is text for “Light rain showers in the vicinity” (of Catalina, not necessarily ON Catalina, but we hope so.
4“R”, indicates steady rain of moderate intensity, namely that the models are predicting more substantial rain here where an “R” appears.
5As soon as I formulated this description about a protruding or tufted top, I realized it could be taken as untoward, perhaps even a salacious reference. Are we men so cursed that it’s always about the woman, the things we think6?
6As a further example, on a Cumulus cloud study in the Marshall Islands, I was acting as the person responsible for which clouds to sample with our research aircraft7, I noted a newly risen Cumulus turret a minute or two ahead, on the right. Speaking to the Director of the Cloud and Aerosol Group, Peter Hobbs, I reported over the intercom that there was a “young, firm, protuberant Cumulus cloud at 2 O’clock”, “Shall we penetrate it?”, I asked.
“Yes, they’re the best ones”, Peter replied.
The all male crew burst out laughing.
Q. E. D.
7A Convair 580 Turboprop. See below:
The Cloud and Aerosol Research Group’s Convair 580 readying for takeoff at Paine Field, Everett, WA.
The author has made two claims. Let us look at the evidence, the first of which was obtained yesterday morning in support of one of those. A hiker/walker, the author met, we will call him, “Bob”, though it seems doubtful that’s his real name since he had quite a strong northern European accent, said there was no running water in the Sutherland Wash, “only dampness.”
This proved to be an incorrect statement. I wonder how many other people I have corrected just now?
The wash has now been running without interruption for about six weeks. Below, two photos with dogs in them taken yesterday of the flowing Sutherland Wash at the Baby Jesus trail head, aka, “The Cottonwoods”:
8:42 AM. The Sutherland Wash in flow near the Baby Jesus trail head.8:42 AM. Dog ponders a drink from the FLOWING Sutherland Wash at the Baby Jesus trail head.
Q. E. D.
2) Can it rain again in March in the Sutherland Heights (epicenter of the above titular forecast)?
It could, but the assertion by the author is stronger than “could.” Let us again look at the evidence for such a claim.
There are several opportunities for rain here during the remainder of March.
1) the upper low that goes over tomorrow and Friday will produce scattered mountain showers in the area; a sure thing, but light ones.
2) then that SAME low, after nesting in the Tropics for a couple of days comes back over us with an even greater chance of rain next week since its had a chance to scoop up some tropical air (think Altocumulus castellanus, unstable clouds that can become little Cumulonimbus clouds).
3) In the longer term, “troughiness” (“cyclonicity”) is indicated to reside in our Great Southwest by spaghetti maps. Some individual model runs have even had big rains in the area in 12-15 days from now. Below, an example from IPS MeteoStar, which for some reason did not follow through on the “fee-for-service” they had been announcing was coming for about three months so’s that we would have to pay to look at their nice renderings of government model stuff1:
Boffo trough bops Arizona on…ooops, annotated version below to help you locate Arizona on this map.Forecast map valid on March 25th at 5 PM AST.
Another example of the wettest model run I could find, trillions and trillions of galloons of water released in storms in the SW:
Forecast map valid on Saturday, March 21st at 11 AM AST.
So, at LEAST three or four days in the remaining days of March with a chance of measurable rain, and THAT equals 100 % chance of rain falling within a 10 mile radius of the Sutherland Heights housing district between now and, and pushing the forecasting frontier even farther, say, the end of March! Going that far with such high confidence (100%) forecast is inappropriate for professional forecasting, but not here. So, this is a forecast for measurable rain on or VERY near us covering an amazing 19 days!
BTW, spaghetti thinks a trough of the magnitude above is goofy; see below. HOWEVER, there is a pretty strong tendency for cyclonic action here, just not as strong as the one above. The one above is likely goofy, an outlier model run….at this time. But, just like that New England win over the Seahawks in the last second when the Seahawks were about to run it in, but goofily passed the ball instead for an interception, outliers do occur.
Will keep an eye on this fun forecast from this keyboard, and get back to you from time to time IF it rains in the area. Otherwise, you will not hear from me again on this matter.
Below, some morning spaghetti for you.
Valid at 5 PM AST, March 26th. No sign of bluish lines, representing the heart of the jet stream penetrating the SW US as shown in that model run above. However, red lines, southern portion of jet stream, do dip southward over the SE and northern Mexico, indicating a good chance of lower latitude troughs here at the time of this map. Note that the blue and red lines suggest an “out of phase” jet stream pattern, highs in the far north, disturbances leaking into the SW US underneath them.
So hope for additional rain before the end of March is not dead, as it seems today, but has much life, in fact, to repeat, “100%” life.
Above, a typical Los Angeles Times headline for a southern California storm when the writer was growing up, one framed for Catalina. Few storms don’t do this, so it was always kind of funny.
To coninue on a nostalgic stream for some reason, the LA Times also had a very weather-centric publisher-owner1 in those days, and after a storm, there was also a HUGE rain table in the paper. I loved ’em, scoured those tables to see who got what amounts, and I think a lot of people do like them, so’s that’s why I put a rain table in here from time to time.
Below, the Pima County ALERT gauges 24 h precipitation totals ending at 3:24 AM today, covering the first batch of rain. Scattered light showers, possibly today, but more likely tomorrow, may add some to these totals, but not very much.
The Sutherland Heights portion of Catalina received 0.57 inches.
Gauge ID Name, Location
Catalina Area
1010 0.67 Golder Ranch, Horseshoe Bend Rd in Saddlebrooke
1020 1.02 Oracle RS, approximately 0.5 mi SW of Oracle
1040 0.63 Dodge Tank, Edwin Rd 1.3 mi E of Lago DO Parkway
1050 0.71 Cherry Spring, approximately 1.5 mi W of Char. Gap
1060 1.10 Pig Spring, approximately 1.1 mi NE of Char. Gap
1070 MSG Cargodera Canyon, NE corner of Cat. State Park
1080 0.98 CDO @ Rancho Solano, CDO NE of Saddlebrooke
1100 0.55 CDO @ Golder Rd, CDO at the Golder RD bridge
0.81 inches average
Santa Catalina Mountains
1030 0.87 Oracle Ridge, about 1.5 mi N of Rice Peak
1090 0.51 Mt. Lemmon, snow melt will add to this
1110 1.10 CDO @ Coronado Camp, CDO 0.3 mi S of Coronado
1130 1.30 Samaniego Peak, Samaniego Ridge
1140 1.30 Dan Saddle, Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge
2150 0.43 White Tail, Catalina Hwy 0.8 mi W of Palisade RS
2280 0.51 Green Mountain, Green Mountain
2290 0.28 Marshall Gulch, Sabino Creek 0.6 mi SSE of Gulch
Your storm day, beginning with a morning light show amid the overcast Stratocumulus:
7:26 AM. Spotlight on the Tortolitas.7:25 AM. Light on Saddlebrooke and environs.7:27 AM. Closeup of the sunny highlight on Saddlebrooke.7:49 AM, toward the C-Gap. Breaks in the overcast (BINOVC, as we would text that) reveal a higher layer of Altocumulus clouds. Nice lighting here, too.8:00 AM. Streams of dark Stratocumulus clouds rolled across the sky for hours yesterday with no rain falling from them. I bet you know why they didn’t rain.9:36 AM. The Stratocu had deepened up enough by this time to begin preciping, and I am sure you made a note of this. The misty nature of this made you also think it might be a “warm rain” process, one not involving ice crystals. However, it did not continue.11:33 AM. Light showers finally began to develop SW of Catalina after a two hour hiatus. Remember how we were thinking that showers might be numerous by now. Well, it didn’t happen. But even these pretty much fizzled out on their way here.12:31 PM. The wind shift line marking the cold front, marked by an arcus cloud (a sharp lowering of cloud bases in the lifting, cooler air), appeared NW-NE of Catalina. Real rain was just ahead.1:55 PM. Eventually the arcus cloud (horizon) and wind shift line made its way across Oro Valley. You can see how that clash of winds has deepened and darkened the clouds over it. Was thinking, “Here we go!”, deep Cumulonimbus clouds would now develop, likely as you did, too. But only weak, puny ones did likely with crappy, mounding tops.2:09 PM. Sure, there was a nice shaft, and was hopeful this would lead to some thunder, but it pooped out even before getting here! Wind shift line seemed to come in two surges, the first one dying out.6:18 PM. Sun tries to perform a colorful sunset, but fails.6:18 PM. Reflected light off orange cloud tops, or a higher layer being underlit by the fading sun, created a mysterious orange glow on the Catalinas and Pusch Ridge.4:50 PM. Some potential for flooding was forecast, and here we see that it indeed verified yesterday.
The weather way ahead
A pretty good rain threat still appears in the March 11-15th window.
The End, except for a gigantic historical footnote below.
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1In 1981, at the prodding of Otis Chandler, the weather-centric owner of the Times, there was EXPANSION of the weather page while the paper devoted an astounding amount of pages to a review weather reporting in the media entitled, “Weather: Everyone’s Number One Story.” One side bar, embedded in this HUGE article took note of the Los Angeles weather situation with the humorous side bar, “Little rain, but lots of coverage.” You can see that article below, scanned from the original clipping from 1981. Its a little disjointed due to the odd sizes of article pages. This article noted that a five month study in 1977 showed that the Los Angeles Times had MORE FRONT PAGE weather stories than any other newspaper in the country!
1) Let yesterday morning’s color show speak for itself, just incredible, speaking for it anyway.
2) Please review the U of AZ time lapse film here to understand why it takes the biggest computer Fujitsu can build to calculate what the atmosphere is doing. Also reviewing this let’s you escape from the tedium about to be presented below.
3) Expect a similarly photogenic day today.
6:42 AM. First light, this incredible scene. Altoculumulus lenticularis downstream from Catalinas. Thought I would misspell Altocumulus to see if anyone is reading this. Sun seems to be coming up earlier and earlier….6:42 AM. Looking to the left or north of the lenticular….6:44 AM. That lenticular again, the bottom structure now highlighted.6:49 AM. What can you say? So pretty all around. Another lenticular was in progress to the main one.6:53 AM. If the scene wasn’t spectacular enough, a display of iridescence (rainbow colored area) then enhanced the original Ac len even more. It doesn’t get better than this and I hope you saw it “live.” I was just beside myself, taking too many photos, losing control, rationality.8:28 AM. Both lenticulars still in place, but now augmented by a layer of Altocumulus perlucidus (honey-combed look) and a scruff of low clouds that topped the Catalinas marking the invasion of a low level moist air. The feel of rain was in the air then, too.8:28 AM, the same time as the prior photo, but looking upwind over Oro Valley, toward Marana and beyond at a line of Stratocumulus, with Altocumulus perlucidus and patchy thin Cirrus above those. Even here, the scene seemed exceptional.9:41 AM. That Altocumulus deck began arriving overhead and you could see the little “heads” trailing ice crystals like comets with long tails. When the heads are gone, you’d call it Cirrus and never know how it got those fine strands. In the meantime, the Stratocumulus and Cumulus clouds were slowly getting deeper.1:19 PM. Looking over Catalinaville1: Stratocumulus was becoming the dominant cloud form. No ice, no precip, too warm at top; also, largest droplets in them below the Hocking-Jonas Threshold (30-40 microns in diameter) for collisions with coalescence to occur, if you care to learn things.3:42 PM. One of the many pretty scenes yesterday, these Altocu perlucidus, no ice. So, much warmer and lower than those trailing ice in the earlier photo.4:19 PM. Then, as the Stratocumulus filled in again, we got our late afternoon “light show”, those drifting spots of sun illuminating our mountains, though here our own Sutherland Heights subdivision, if that is what it is. So pretty.5:19 PM. Can’t be inside when these scenes are happening…. Have problem.6:13 PM. That sunset glow we see on our mountains every day, except a little more dramatic when dark clouds are overhead.6:19 PM. The day finished as gorgeous as it began as a clearing to the far west allowed the sun to light the bases of the overhead Stratocumulus layer.
The rain just ahead
Rain masses will be forming to west of Catalina today and will pound eastern Cal and western AZ for about 24 h before roaring in here tomorrow morning. Staying the course, best guess, from extremes of at least 0.33 to a max of 1.50 here, is 0.915 inches (the average of the worst and best case scenarios) here in “Catalinaville” as the total amount from this “hit” tomorrow and the showers afterwards into later Tuesday, as a second storm part comes by. Thunder tomorrow seems likely from this keyboard as the big rainband goes over.
During the passage of the rainband tomorrow, rainrates are likely to get up to an inch an hour, at least briefly, (this is the rate, NOT the duration) and typically, with several hours of moderate (0.1 to 0.3 inches per hour) to heavy rain (greater than 0.3 inches per hour) we should get a nice drenching.
The weather way ahead, 10 days or more
After a long dry spell following this upcoming rain, spaghetti is strongly indicating we have more troughiness in our future after the temporary dry spell!
Check it out, spaghetti connoisseurs2:
Valid at 5 PM AST, Saturday, March 11th. Note clustering of red and blue lines in trough off Cal.Valid at 5 PM, Sunday, March 15th. Southward bulging red lines, so many of them, indicate a very good chance of a trough here at that time. Blue lines, for a colder part of the jet stream, also tend in this direction, a good sign.
The spaghetti plots, taken together, indicate to the present Arthur that the chance of rain twixt spaghetti 1 and spaghetti 2 shown above is about 70%. It will be extremely FUN to see if this interpretation works out for rain between March 11-15th, at least one event anyway, to continue overusing that word.
The End, finally.
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1Didn’t Jimmy Buffet do a song about Catalinaville? Has a nice ring to it. Maybe we should think about it… Or maybe, in a vein similar to Carmel-by-the-Sea, “Catalina-by-the-Catalinas.”
2Remember, spaghetti is better than the model in the medium range forecasts that are presented based on the global data. Spaghetti is there to help you decide whether that model output is from the WRF-GFS looney bin or not. Here’s how:
Spaghetti is the result of DELIBERATE little errors put into the model when they start crunching the data to see how the forecast that you see on the maps could go wrong if there are errors in the data.
Of course, there are ALWAYS errors in the data! So, when the Fujitsu Computer DIvision made gigantically capable computers for us that were better than the ones we could make, ones that could do teraflops per second, we in the weather community could then run many permutations of the same model with itty-bitty errors in the initial data to see how the results changed (diverged) in the longer term.
Remember, too, in weather itty-bitty differences can add up to large ones in the longer term. So, when the model permutations with little errors cluster and DON’T diverge, it provides more confidence that the forecast storm, for example, is more likely to happen in that fuzzy forecast range of beyond 10 days or so. End of giant footnote.
Immediately, “BS” is for “Big Storm” ahead, not something untoward.
OK, first a piece about yesterday’s unusual clouds at Cirrus levels; you wouldn’t want to be flying in, or underneath these:
1:25 PM. Suddenly, a patch of phony Cumulus fractus appeared at Cirrus levels! I wondered how many CMJs were fooled and thought these clouds were just a little higher than Ms. Lemmon’s top.1:25 PM. Zoomed view of phony Cumulus fractus.1:26 PM. “Compare to real Cumulus fractus,” as the imitation, knock-off, phony, generic brands like to say about the real thing you like, but they’re never as good are they? They don’t think that you’re REALLY going to compare the real one with the phony one and that’s why they say that. They think you’re lazy. I’m thinking of Danny Elfman1 and “Grey Matter”…..1:46 PM. Here CMJs can easily tell that those clouds, though they appeared tufted and like they might have had droplets in them when they first formed, were at ice-forming levels high in the atmosphere. Here you see the expanding “ghosts” of several of the tufts that formed (upper left center), originally a dense concentration of ice crystals or a momentary droplet cloud, a dense cloud of ice that disperses in time, no further ice forms and so acts like a puff of smoke, and thins out, often disappearing as some of these did.
You can also these specks fly by in the U of AZ time lapse film. If you look at the film when they do, you can see them twisting around. Cirrus at that level (CM estimated 25,000 to 30,000 feet above the ground) are normally like sculptures; frozen in time as they pass by this time lapse camera with little or no internal movement.
You could also detect internal movement from the ground in real time in these specks (as we can with Cumulus clouds all the time, since we’re so close to real Cumulus fractus) so it must have really been churning up there.
This patch of specks only took a few minutes to pass by, so you were lucky if you say them.
Of course, you’re only interested in the Big Storm just ahead, not turbulence….probably have grown impatient by now, not wanting to read about itty bitty specks in the sky that might have been associated with strong turbulence. Well, its still “in the bag”, no need to worry. See below this map from our Canadian friends’ model. I really like this map, so no need to look farther. Also, I wrote some things on it for you:
Valid for Monday, 5 AM AST, March 2nd. I just had to go, “wow” when I saw this forecast map.
That “kicker” trough just off the Cal coast is going to kick that trough “ball” just off Baja at us as in a field goal in American football, and we are the goal posts.
When a trough is booted out like this one will be out of its nest, the upward motion in front of it is in enhanced, so that the clouds and precip intensify, become more widespread. Its going to head right for us, as it accelerates toward the NE.
This means, in turn, that the very strong rain band already in place in western Arizona, will intensify as it moves east across the State. This is pretty darn exciting because from here it would mean quite the downpour, hours of rain, and almost certainly thunderstorms on March 2nd. However, flooding is likely as rainrates will likely get up to an inch an hour or even more as the band passes over us.
Still sticking with 0.9 inches as “best guess” here in Catalina, top amount, 1.50 inches, if band lingers longer. Secretly hope I’m low….
In one last forecast panel, this MONSTER approaching the Cal coast. Its pretty far out there, as I am being today with the notes on band favorite, Oingo Boingo and sociobiology below, to be reliable, but its shown up a couple of times now in our model runs. It is unbelievable in strength to be forecast as far south as off central Baja, and I wanted to show you what an amazingly strong storm for so low in latitude would look like, if nothing else:
Valid at 11 AM AST, March 11th, Wednesday. A trough from this low a latitude barging into southern California would likely bring rains of 10-20 inches. And, while we’re downwind behind mountains, it would still bring appreciable rain here, too. BTW, rains of 10 inches or more, even in just 24 h, are not terribly unusual in the mountains of southern Cal.
The End.
PS: A powerful jet stream is near us now, so more strange clouds, lenticular-sliver clouds, and fine granulations in Cirrocumulus and such, are likely to be seen over the next couple of days. Have camera ready.
PPS: Still some flow in the Sutherland Wash as of yesterday.
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1The genius of Danny Elfman, that is, composer of the Simpson’s theme song, and the only composer to be nominated for two film scores in the same year, and also the leader of Oingo Boingo, an LA punk rock/ new wave band in the early 1980s, formerly known as , “The Mystic Nights of the Oingo Boingo”, more like a Spike Jones gag band. An early influence on Elfman was the concept of sociobiology, as represented in “Only a Lad“, a song about an inherently bad “lad”, satirizing some popular, widely held concepts on the causes of mischievous behavior in that song. A sample below, if you care2.
“The lady down the block,
She had a radio that Johnny wanted oh so bad,
So he took it the first chance he had.
Then he shot her in the leg,
And this is what she said
“Only a lad. You really can’t blame him.”
“Only a lad. Society made him.”
“Only a lad. He’s our responsibility.”
Oh, oh, oohh oh oh oh
“Only a lad. He really couldn’t help it.”
“Only a lad. He didn’t want to do it.”
“Only a lad. He’s underprivileged and abused.”
Perhaps a little bit confused?”
2Being a rad-lib in those days, I thought it was INCREDIBLE to hear such a song with THOSE lyrics in the early 1980s on the University of Washington student radio station, KCMU-FM, again, if you care.
1While several inches of model2 rain has occurred in Catalina and in the nearby mountains this month, most of which cloud-maven person has festooned his blog with model panels of, there really hasn’t been any ACTUAL rain.
But having said that, there is even MORE model rain ahead, some beginning tomorrow in these parts. Tomorrow’s rain comes from a sub-tropical minor wave ejecting from the sub-tropics. You know, as a CMJ, a wave from that zone means a ton of high and middle clouds, i.e., likely DENSE Altostratus with virga, something that was seen yesterday off to the SW of us. This time, though, some rain should fall from these thick clouds, though almost certainly will be in the trace to a tenth of an inch range between tomorrow and Monday morning.
Model rain from 11 PM AST global data then falls in Catalina on:
February 24th
March 1st
March 7-9th
with the model total rain in these periods likely surpassing an inch or more! What a model rain winter season this has been! Astounding. The model washes have been running full since late December, too!
BTW, that last model rain period is really a great one, a major rain for ALL of Arizona!
Some recent clouds I have known and a couple of wildflowers
7:36 AM, Thursday, Feb 19: Iridescence in Cirrocumulus.7:52 AM, Thursday, Feb. 19: Iridescence in Cirrocumulus with a tad of Kelvin-Helholtz waves (center, right), ones that look like breaking ocean waves. Kind of cool looking.9:29 AM, Thursday, Feb. 19: Altocumulus perlucidus exhibiting crossing patterns, rows perpendicular to each other. Makes you think about football and people running out for passes.9:42 AM, Thursday Feb 19: An extremely delicate crossing pattern in Cirrocumulus, center. You’ll have to drill in good to see it, but its worth it.10:39 AM, Thrusday, Feb 19: Pretty (mostly) Cirrus spissatus, a thick version in which shading can be observed.6:13 PM, Thursday, Feb 19: No idea what that stick contrail is. Looks like a flight pattern to induce weightlessness. Climb rapidly, round off the top, and then go down. You can be weightless for maybe 10-30 seconds. Been there, done that in a C-130 Hercules, last FACE flight of 1973, Bill Woodley lead cloud seeding scientist. But, you pay a price, get smashed on the floor as the aircraft comes out of the dive. You cannot get up!Let’s zoom in and see if we can learn more about what happened here. I think a jet pilot was having fun. Nope.6:54 AM, yesterday. Altostratus virga provides a spectacular, if brief sunrise over the Catalinas.6:15 PM last evening.From a dog walk this VERY morning, a desert primrose.And a desert onion bloom.
The End. Hope you enjoy the copious model rains ahead!
The Everly Bros, those two crooners who made such lovely music in the 1950s, come to mind as prior expected rains evaporate in model algorithms, consumed, obliterated by Fortran “End” statements somehow, and but at the same time they produced yet another wet dream (oops, an ambiguous expression that needs to be clarified immediately) , a model rain “dream” of very wet proportions in Arizona, 10 days away. Below, from IPS MeteoStar, whose maps are so good they’ll soon be charging money to see them, this deluge:
A lot of Arizona rain is predicted during the 12 h ending at 5 PM AST, February 22nd. Comes out of the sub-tropical Pacific, as have earlier predicted heavy rains that have disappeared in a succession of later model runs, kind of jilting the writer who developed great emotional attachments to those maps, but, as happens in life, too quickly.
BTW, I am noticing its windy outside now (4 AM).
Stories from the Field
Went to the Pima Air and Space Museum and boneyard yesterday. Saw some nice Altocumulus, some distant ice in clouds on the eastern horizon. The University of Washington bought a lot of planes, well, two, from the boneyard here from PASM, two Convairs over the years, a 240 (non-pressurized), and a 580 (pressurized), which were then subject to having a lot of pylons hung on them and holes drilled in them for instrument purposes.
One pleasant surprise was that they also had a 1939 Douglas B-23 “Dragon”, the aircraft yours truly spent his first nine years in as a “flight meteorologist” with the University of Washington’s Cloud Physics Group (later, “Cloud and Aerosol Research Group”) before it crash landed in Kingman, Arizona, and had to be replaced. No people had to be replaced, which was fortunate.
The B-23 went unmentioned in the PASM tour.
But on field projects here in Arizona and around the world, our B-23 always brought a small crowd of aircraft aficionados who wanted to see something rare, of WWII vintage. Few knew what it was since only about 25 were manufactured. It was a failed project.
Possibly because of not being very fast, could cruise at 65-75 kts, it wasn’t so good as a military aircraft, but that made it great for sampling clouds; you were in them longer, and the instruments worked better at lower true airspeeds. Most aircraft in our era were flying at 100 kts while sampling clouds, and corrections had to be made for measurements that we did not have to make.
Seeing the B-23 was such a treat, bringing back warm memories of vomiting on flights, the cramped crew spaces, lots of G’s in those 90 second returns to the same cloud we had just gone through, wings vertical, blood rushing to the head, then this awful feeling of it going back down out of the turn when leveling off, to get back into a Cumulus turret or back into a power plant plume to see how many noxious chemicals it still had in it.
How did we get so many people (five or so) and so much stuff in there?!
And, of course, with the B-23 being unpressurized meant getting out the oxygen tube, sucking on that, when flying above 10, 000 feet; at times we got well above 20, 000 feet, lips, fingernails turning blue in spite of oxygen anyway.
But it also had a fantastic attribute that made “all the difference” in our scientific work, a viewing dome toward the back of the fuselage, which turned out to be my position as a crew member; sitting in a swivel chair, checking the cloud field for ripe sample candidates.
The dome allowed us to go exactly back to the place we had just come out of a turret, so that how clouds changed as they aged could be measured more accurately than other reseaerchers could do. Here’s a backward view from “the bubble” on the B-23 as it was called, taken by the author.
Looking back at sampled Cumulus cloud tops.
Having such a great look back also caused us to discover that our B-23 was compromising our measurements in second samples of clouds at below freezing temperatures by producing copious amounts of ice in narrow tubes in clouds that could be as warm at -8 C (about 18 F). We dubbed this phenomenon, APIPs, for Aircraft Produced Ice Particles, in later publications (1983).
It was a controversial, even suspect finding at first due to the high temperatures at which we observed it; no other aircraft researchers had reported it while doing cloud sampling over many years, but the phenomenon was verified a few years later in independent studies using other aircraft (1991). That finding still stands out as one of our most important, most cited ones.
But there were hazards associated with the plastic viewing dome on the B-23 in those days. It was not thick enough to stop grapefruit sized chunks of ice from blasting through it, ice that had been collected on the airframe during long periods of flight in icing conditions, that either melted off, or was ejected suddenly by inflating a rubber boot at the leading edge of the wing.
I had just stepped away to sit down on “Final” going into Sacramento’s Executive Aviation AP in January 1977 when such a chunk crashed through the “bubble” within seconds after I strapped in. Below, what the bubble looked like after it got bashed:
One of the “fun” things about having an old aircraft (1939), too, is the need to manually rotate the HUGE props to get it so it would “turn over”:
Circa the late 1970s. Engineer, Jack Russell, and Research Prof Larry Radke, position blades of the University of Washington’s B-23 for engine start. They’re having quite a good time. Cloud instrument pods hang from the wing at left.
The B-23 at the PASM:
A view of the Douglas B-23 at the Pima Air and Space Museum. Seemed forlorn amid the giants there. The one Washington had owned was previously owned by Howard Hughes and used as an executive aircraft. Our B-23 aircraft was featured in Air Classics magazine cover story in 1986, “Dragon’s Last Flight.” It had been repaired to flight ready condition in Kingman, AZ, then eventually restored to its original condition (dome removed), and now resides in the Museum of Flight, Seattle, Washington.
Yesterday’s clouds from the PASM
12:48 PM. An Altocumulus band, pretty much the only sign of the trough that passed over us yesterday afternoon and evening, following by the north winds at the ground.
2:55 PM. Cumulus, containing a little ice, right of center, and icy tops on the eastern horizon, visible from the PASM. Much colder air aloft was east of us yesterday, allowing these clouds, and some ice to form.
And, will there be a tornado today, too? Arcus cloud almost a certainty. Get cameras ready! Read on…farther down.
4 (FOUR!) inches at Park Tank, Reddington Pass area by 6 AM ! Incredible for so early in the storm! Check more totals out from your friendly Pima County ALERT regional gauges. Mods on track to verify those huge amounts that were predicted the day before yesterday! Washes will be running! Flowers happy! I’m happy! Lot of excitement here! ! !
Only 0.15 inches here in Sutherland Heights/Catalina…. so far (6 AM). :{
Yesterday’s study in gray
Today!
Some excitement just now, after seeing that a major rain band had passed by, and we’re now in a break in the rain.
Will it rain more? Tune in at 11 to find out….. (hahahaha; we don’t do that here! More excitement.)
Went to U of AZ mod run from 11 PM AST last night, the very latest, then saw that a narrow, heavy band or precip, maybe a squall line, something out of the Midwest, was foretold for us Catalinans this afternoon!
Then went to examine upper air and positioning of vorticity maximums ejecting out of our incoming trough (vorticity maximums represented by redness in the plot below from the University of Washington’s Weather Department– color scheme by Mark Albright, the color man up there:
Positioning of “red curly air” (vorticity or rotational areas) in the atmosphere at 1 PM AST today, looking for the cause of the afternoon rainband. The approach of red curly air is accompanied by upward motion in the atmosphere. When I looked at this, I exploded with a “yikes!”. more excitement, today’s theme.
This was exciting due to incoming “red curly air” this afternoon above us, AND, due to those spreading out of the contours over us (see arrowhead). Diffluent contours are indicative of air spreading out aloft, something that leads to enhanced upward motion.
And, to blab on, the air aloft will be cooling off on top of our high-for-winter dewpoint air (50s), which should lead to large Cumulonimbus clouds, likely organized in a line of thunderstorms, as all this happens this afternoon or evening.
And, going over the edge here some, as is my wont, we might well see a funnel cloud somewhere today. This is the kind of situation that you can get them. So, to sum up today:
Possible funnels! Will they reach the ground somewhere in AZ? Maybe. Lightning! Hail likely, too! Rain rates likely to reach an inch an hour, though that rate may not last an hour unless you’re real lucky and get shafted real good.
Will be watching intensely for all these manner of things today! Haven’t been this excited since Oct 2nd, 2010, I think it was when they had that tornado in PHX!
Remember, too, our motto:
Right or wrong, you might have heard it here first!
The weather way ahead
While a long spell of dry weather comes after this 2 day event, the mods have popped up with a heavy dose of rain in two weeks. Of course, normally this would be considered Fantasy 101. HOWEVER, a slight amount of credibility is added when such a pattern that brings rain strongly resembles the one you have now. Check out these upper level flow maps out, as rendered by IPS MeteoStar, that has just moved their pay wall to March from February (yay!). The first one below is for today’s situation, and the second one for Valentine’s Day in two weeks. Look pretty similar don’t they.
You see, weather has a memory like your horse. You ride to Deer Camp way up in the Catalinas; you’ve never been there before, nor has horsey, and then you head back, but you’re not sure of the way.
Well, horsey will remember for you!
(To continue with the extra excitement theme of today’s blog!)
Well, the weather has a memory that we call “persistence”, likes to do the same thing over and over for awhile, and so when a similar pattern turns up in the models that you have now, we give it a little more credibility than none when its two weeks out, maybe 30% chance of actually happening (i. e., still a bit of a long shot).
Here’s what we have today; low off Baja spinning moist air from the far southern latitudes into AZ.Valid at 5 AM AST, February 14th, Valentine’s DayThe big rain accompanying the Valentine’s Day Storm.
There are more “panels” with rain for Arizona than there are for Seattle over the next 15 days1, this as seen in last evening’s 5 PM AST crunch of global weather data by our best model (rendered here by IPS MeteoStar).
Hmmmm2.
Let us review the NOAA spaghetti factory output to see if this long run of intermittent rains in Arizona has any veracity at all:
Valid at 5 PM AST, February 9th, 15 days from now, or is it? This was based on the same global data as the many rain panels.
So, there you have it.
The End, sans all but one sunrise photo3
7:10 AM. Under lit Altostratus with virga.
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1This includes today’s late afternoon through tomorrow morning’s sprinkles or light rain.
2Recall the NOAA Climate Prediction Center’s experimental long range forecast of 4 inches of rain in TUS in January, and SIX inches in February made in early December? Could it possibly have any veracity?
Hmmmmmmmm.
3Compulsive-neurotic cloud photo documentation of the day being blunted presently by social engagements with out-of-state visitors and having to do things indoors, and not able to run outside without causing inexplicable voids in ongoing colloquies. My apologies.
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.
When you get to this page, the latest model run data will come up in red. Here, to see precipitation in colors on a map, click on the name, “1000_500_thick” for the best view of the many Arizona precipitation days ahead. You will see the precipitation totals for three (or six hours late in the model run) for the next 15 days as calculated by the WRF-GFS model, considered OUR best, but not as good as the Euro model some say1.
