Chance of rain likely

Sorry for that silliness in the title, but I’m afraid those model runs that had our storm staying too far south to give us a “significant” rain were correct.  So we are stuck with only a chance of rain, nothing “sure” about it today or tomorrow.  Surely, there will be a little here and there in SE Arizona over the next 36 hours, but that’s about it, “here and there.”  So we might even be missed by rain here in Catalina.

These are times when being a weather forecaster is tough, because some model runs (particularly those Environment Canada ones) had a tremendous storm affecting virtually all of Arizona just a few days ago in several runs.  And, because rain is such a treasure here, there is that background bias that wants those kinds of model runs to be correct.  Also, my dad was born in Winnipeg, Canada.  So I really wanted those Canadian model runs that were wetting it up in AZ to be right!

But they were seriously off the mark, bogus, producing smoke and mirrors, etc., and the chance that they might be was indicated all along in the “ensemble” model runs (or “spaghetti” plots that illustrated all the uncertainty in where this low center was going to end up as it came toward us.  The bright side, the chauvenistic side, really, is that the USA (!) models, ones that I did not want to be correct because they never had much rain, were really far superior in the handling of this low center all along.  Below, the latest Enviro Can run that is now compatible with the US NCEP runs that had the low skirting us to the south pretty much all along.  Note red splotch over the Mexican State of Sonora in the upper left hand panel.  That are is where the most active rain systems would be!  Note yellowish-red colors indicating  lot of rain in the prior 12 h along the west coast of Sonora, lower right hand panel.   This panel valid for Sunday afternoon, 5 PM LST.  Dammitall!

But, it is likely that area of Mexico could use a good winter rain and so, in being magnanimous, I will pretend to be happy to see them get a lot of rain and us maybe even none.

In sum, wave the flag over the US NCEP model’s superior performance over the Enviro Can model!  Sorry dad.

The End

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By Art Rangno

Retiree from a group specializing in airborne measurements of clouds and aerosols at the University of Washington (Cloud and Aerosol Research Group). The projects in which I participated were in many countries; from the Arctic to Brazil, from the Marshall Islands to South Africa.