Well, it used to be film…. Blobs of sprinkle clouds pummeled Catalina yesterday beginning soon after 12 Noon and ending only after 7 PM when an extraordinarily rare “Geo-Astro Meteo Conjunction” (GAMC) was observed due the conjunction of a rainbow, a moonrise exactly over Mt Lemmon, and the top of Mt. Lemmon itself visible through… Continue reading Rare “Geo-Astro-Meteo Conjunction” captured on film!
Category: Virga
Icy up top
You won’t find such small Cumulus so full of it as they were yesterday very often. But with cloud bottoms and tops as cold as -15 C (5 F) and -25 C (-13 F), respectively, it was bound to happen. Cloud bottoms were located at 16,000 feet Above Sea Level (ASL), or about 13,000 feet… Continue reading Icy up top
Clouds ‘n’ ice galore, a trace of rain, and thunder, too!
Rained, too, between 3:42 PM and 3:47 PM, actually 273 seconds, if you had your stopwatch out. It was great. I ran around trying to get wet, but couldn’t do it. … Continue reading Clouds ‘n’ ice galore, a trace of rain, and thunder, too!
Snowy day (overhead)
Cloud tops in those deeper Cu reached -30 C (-22 F) yesterday, plenty cold enough for lots of ice, with a few scattered very light showers reaching the ground, even a few drops here in Sutherland Heights a little before 5 PM, qualifying for a day with a trace of rain. Imagine! Rain! What izzat?… Continue reading Snowy day (overhead)
Rain to fall in Catalina, March 1st and/or 2nd!
Very happy to post this breaking future news here on February 24th. Close rain call on the 27th, too, as the first of two significant troughs with their low pressure centers march into California, bringing a drought break there of some consequence. Likely an inch or two in the coastal areas south of SFO… Continue reading Rain to fall in Catalina, March 1st and/or 2nd!
Hydrometeors shower down on Catalina
Note redundancy in title. A “meteor” is already going down, so you don’t need the word “down.” Hahaha. They were small drops, some were as small as drizzle-sized (500 microns in diameter or smaller) and too far apart to be called an occurrence of “drizzle”, but they fell throughout Catalina allowing Catalinans to register a… Continue reading Hydrometeors shower down on Catalina
Ice with them clouds
Not expected by this brain yesterday, but several of those many more Cumulus clouds than expected also fattened up to heights where ice began to form, also not expected. As you know, that means precip fell out, at least up there. As a weatherman-cloud person, there are always surprises every day (!) to delight… Continue reading Ice with them clouds
The L. A. suns
We begin today by not talking about sports as the title suggests, but rather examining pretty castellanus, Altocumulus castellanus, that is, from yesterday morning: The brighter regions at the top are liquid droplet clouds, below, snow virga as the drops quickly freeze into ice crystals. As they grow and collide, snowflakes (“aggregates of single… Continue reading The L. A. suns
Less splotchy; more filling
The clouds yesterday were supposed to be “splotchy”, big clearings between interesting middle clouds like Altocumulus with long virga strands. Instead there was a vast coverage of Altostratus opacus “dullus” with long streaks of virga, with a few drops reaching the ground here and there but not here. There was some mammatus-t clouds, too. Also,… Continue reading Less splotchy; more filling
April as seen in rain day frequencies; some wildflowers seen
————————————- Guest Statement/retrospective on March 2013 for Tucson by Mr. Mark Albright, a mostly temperature-centric climatologist specialist from the University of Washington: “March 2013 was the 2nd warmest March in the past 65 years (1949-2013) at the Tucson Airport (KTUS) with an average temperature of 65.7 F which was +5.6 F above the 1981-2010… Continue reading April as seen in rain day frequencies; some wildflowers seen