Clouds drop 0.01 inches in Catalina! Nice sunrise, too, yesterday

Of course, only CLOUDS can rain, so the title is a little silly, but it sounded more dramatic like that.  This is the first measurable rain, it fell between 9 and 10 PM here,  in EIGHT weeks!

And you could sure smell that special fragrance from the ground and desert vegetation as soon as you stepped outside to do your exercises this morning!

Nice sunrise yesterday morning to start the day.  In  case you missed, of course, I am there for you.

BTW, in the captions below, I have included for you a discussion of climate issues in a kind of stream-of-consciousness format.  OK, its a rant that came upon me out of the blue.  CM sometimes gets mad and loses control for a few seconds;  need to get some counseling maybe…

6:56 AM.  Altocumulus perlucidus.  Say no more.
6:56 AM. Altocumulus perlucidus. Say no more.  Might be a lenticular sort of on the right.  Not the classic almond shape, but it did hang on for a long time in that spot.  Say no more.

Kind of gray after that in Altostratus with an undercutting, lower layer of Altocumulus by mid-afternoon darkening the sky up some more. Some virga here and there with sprinkles-its-not-drizzle reaching the ground by late afternoon in the Catalina area. Here is your cloudscape for later in the day, very Seattle like during approaching storms that actually rain lightly on you for hours:

10:35 AM.  Classic Altostratus translucidus, ice path in cloud all the way to the sun.
10:35 AM. Classic Altostratus translucidus, ice path in cloud all the way to the sun.
10:39 AM, after walk down a slope to give YOU a view to the southwest, classic Altostratus as seen when not looking toward the sun.  Hard to tell if its translucidus or opacus looking this way.   By the way, even when you can see the sun, As clouds are thousands of feet thick, tops usually at Cirrus clouds levels.
10:39 AM, after walk down a slope to give YOU a view to the southwest, classic Altostratus as seen when not looking toward the sun. Hard to tell if its translucidus or opacus looking this way. By the way, even when you can see the sun, As clouds are thousands of feet thick, tops usually at Cirrus clouds levels.
1:26 PM.  Here come the lower, flocculent masses of Altocumulus clouds, ones composed of droplets.
1:26 PM. Here come the lower, flocculent masses of Altocumulus clouds, ones composed of droplets.
3:15 PM.  It was all downhill for cloud bottoms after the Altocumulus moved in.  Now, the bottoms are lumpy and much larger, casting them as Stratocumulus.  There was some virga and very light rainshowers reaching the ground at this time, too.
3:15 PM. It was all downhill for cloud bottoms after the Altocumulus moved in. Now, the bottoms are lumpy and much larger, casting them as Stratocumulus. There was some virga and very light rainshowers reaching the ground at this time, too.  A few drops fell at 3:11 PM.  Only the great cloud mavens of all time would have noticed.  Lasted maybe one minute.
3:15 PM again.  Lot going on here, so I thought I would point things out, in particular for my fellow meteorologist Mark A at the U of WA who winters in the Tuscon smog plume.  Mark is a super sleuth when it comes to snowpacks, you know, was fired as Assist State Climo for Washington when he demonstrated, along with two faculty members, that the claims of gigantic snowpack losses due to global warming (now repackaged as "climate change") were hugely exaggerated, like the result of cherry picking a cold snowy beginning and ending with a run of El Nino winters, ones that lead to less snowpack in the Cascades of Washington and Oregon.
3:15 PM again. Lot going on here, so I thought I would point out some things on a gray day, in particular for my fellow meteorologist Mark A at the U of WA who winters in the Tuscon smog plume. Mark is a super sleuth when it comes to snowpacks, but maybe doesn’t have so much moxie when it comes to smog. Mark, as you know may now, was fired as Assist State Climo for Washington when he demonstrated and kept complaining, along with two faculty members, that the claims of gigantic snowpack losses due to global warming (now repackaged as “climate change1“) in the Cascade Mountains were hugely exaggerated, likely the result of cherry picking a cold snowy beginning and ending with a run of El Nino winters, ones that lead to less snowpack in the Cascades of Washington and Oregon.   Such cherry-picking led to a wonderful suggestion of huge declines that has led to a bounty of funding and continued employment, promotions, accolades, citations by  Big Media, etc, because such claims, even if exaggerated and untrue, are what we want to hear! And, no one ever got a job for claiming they can’t find any sign of global warming, or only a little one, but rather are vilified for even suggesting exaggerations in the “global warming” domain.  Mark, BTW, continuing his sleuthing has recently shown that similar claims for declines in snowpacks in Montana near Glacier National Park,  have not been decreasing but rather increasing.  He’ll get HELL for this one!   So, more vilification is likely ahead for poor Mark, as well as more smog.

What’s ahead, besides the Big Pac 12 Fubball Game on Friday evening?

More clouds.   Maybe a few more sprinkles especially tomorrow after dawn.  See nice map below from the U of WA Dept of Atmospheric Meteorology (original colors on the map below by that big troublemaker, Mark Albright)

Ann 2014120415_MM5
Valid for 8 AM AST, tomorrow morning, which is Thursday, in case you’ve lost count of the days of the week.  The arrow denotes an upper level trough, or bend in the winds. Ahead of the bend (sometimes referred to as vorticity, or curling air, or red curly air) the air tends to rise producing cloud sheets, whereas behind red curly air, the air descends. See Seymour Hess, Introduction to Theoretical Meteorology, 1959, Florida State University Press.  As you can see by the arrow, that slight bend in the winds is about to pass over your house in Catalina, and the U of Az model output from last evening sees a little rain here with that passage.  Yay!  Also note suggestion of bifurcated jet flow with a minor maximum in wind (slight bunching of contours) to the south of us, nearly always required for rain here in the cool season.

The End

 

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.