High cold ones

Web crawlers:  This is not about Rocky Mountain Silver Bullet Beer1.

Lotta wind last night.  Gusts to 50 mph here in Sutherland Heights, stuff all over the yard.  I didn’t mention anything about excessive wind coming last night, and so there’s no point in mentioning it now.  I’m a cloud-maven, not a wind-maven….

Here’s yesterday afternoon’s sounding from Tucson, around the time we had all that ice pouring out of just about every Cumulus humilis and mediocris around:

The TUS vskkppm sounding, launched around 3:30 PM AST. A quite fascinating finding just now, is that when you type letters on the keyboard, and miss by only letter, you get a quite different word. Above, the Polish word, "
The TUS vskkppm sounding, launched around 3:30 PM AST. A quite fascinating finding just now, is that when you type letters on the keyboard when you’re not looking at it, and miss by only ONE letter to the one you are targetting, you get a quite different word.  Above, the Polish word, “vskkppm”, which was meant to be “balloon” in English2.  The arrows denote bottoms and tops of those small Cumulus yesterday, -17 C and the deeper ones (a km or 3 Kft thick), tops maybe around -25 C,respectively;  the bottom temperature exceptionally low  for Arizona.

The high cold ones of yesterday afternoon

9:53 AM. Reminescent of a summer's day, Cumulus begin taking shape over the Catalinas.
9:53 AM. Reminiscent of a summer’s day, Cumulus begin taking shape over the Catalinas.  At this time, tops are near freezing, too warm for ice.  As the day worn on, the bases and tops of the Cumulus clouds both rose, a pretty normal sequence.

 

1:47 PM. Not much happening yet, though Cu are now reaching "mediocris" in size.
1:47 PM. Not much happening yet, though Cu are now reaching “mediocris” in size.  Nice lighting on mountains, though.

 

1:46 PM. Even flatter Cu to the NW-N at that time.
1:46 PM. Even flatter Cu to the NW-N at that time.  I’m thinking, by this time “Where’s is the ice?”

 

2:40 PM, about an hour later, ice began appearing in just about every Cumulus. Here in the distance (just above home), some sprinkles likely reached the ground.
2:40 PM, about an hour later, ice began to appear in several Cumulus clouds. Here in the distance (just above the house), some sprinkles likely reached the ground.

 

3:52 PM. Hardly a cloud around without a veil of ice crystals around it. Its likely that cloud tops (and bases) rose to temperature below -15 C during the mid-afternoon hours. Here, even Cu humilis are emitting little, hazy-looking ice plumes!
3:52 PM. Hardly a cloud around without a veil of ice crystals around it. Its likely that cloud tops (and bases) rose to temperature below -15 C during the mid-afternoon hours. Here, even Cu humilis are emitting little, hazy-looking ice plumes!

 

5:25 PM. A snow flurry even touched the Catalinas.
5:25 PM. A snow flurry even touched the Catalinas.

 

5:32 PM. Iced out! The little cloud that gave out the flurry on the Catalinas in its dying phase, no more liquid water in it, and so all of the ice crystals and snowflakes in it fall out or evaporate and in 20 min, it was gone.
5:32 PM. Iced out! The little cloud that gave out the flurry on the Catalinas in its dying phase, no more liquid water in it, and so all of the ice crystals and snowflakes in it fall out or evaporate and in 20 min, it was gone.
6:23 PM. Its not windy at this time. Wind hits just before 9 PM. Here tiny shred clouds, remnants of somewhat larger clouds, show their ice.
6:23 PM. Its not windy at this time. Wind hits just before 9 PM. Here tiny shred clouds, remnants of somewhat larger clouds, show their ice (veil on the right).  BTW, its still windy this morning.  Should die out during the morning.

There are really no good names for the clouds we saw yesterday.  Maybe Cumulus humilis virgae?  Cumulus mediocris virgae praecipitatio (to keep the Latin discriminators)?  They have all the ingredients of miniature Cumulonimbus clouds, some vertical development, fall streaks and little shafts at times.  So, these kinds of clouds, that are COMMON in the interior of the West during the cooler half of the year, really don’t have a good place in our cloud atlases.  In fact, you won’t even find one in any cloud atlas! (Tell your friends how special yesterday was…)

 

The End.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1 In fact, a legendary beer from Colorado, sung about below by no less than John Denver, or someone who sounds an awful like him, while also describing some football coaching history at the University of Washington Huskies.

 

2You should try this and see what other languages might be recovered from your keyboard by making just the slightest of errors.

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.