July 2012: 15 days with measurable rain (with three traces); adds up to 4.45 inches!

And we were one of the drier areas!  Many places around us were between 5-10 inches this July making it a pretty memorable one and the 6th wettest July in Catalina since 1977.  Here’s the list of those wettest for Catalina:

1.  July 2006    7.22 inches   11 days with measurable rain

2.  July 1984    6.54 inches   17 days with measurable rain

3.  July 1990    5.25 inches   12 days with measurable rain

4.  July 1983    4.94 inches     9 days with measurable rain

5.  July 20081   4.73 inches   12 days with measurable rain

6.  July 2012    4.45 inches   15 days with measurable rain

1The record begins in 1977 down at Our Garden garden on Stallion Ave and in July 2008, is a mix of their records for the first half of the month, and here on East Wilds Road for the second half, and from East Wilds Road thereafter.

Here is the NOAA 30-day radar-derived rainfall map, ending July 31st, for Arizona to provide an overall picture of how well our State did this July.  Also shown is the percentage of normal map.  You can find these maps here.

De-briefing for yesterday

A disappointment for sure, since the day before, the models had indicated a pulse of rain moving through in the afternoon.  But then they changed by yesterday morning.  The rain pulse was gone.  That’s what weather computer models do;  they say they like you and then they say they don’t, in a sense.

However,  if one looked far enough to the south in the evening, there was a Cumulonimbus way off in Mexico, maybe a 100 miles or so,  that was exactly headed this way. It lasted about 20 minutes and never crossed the border.  Oh, well.  Rain hope springs eternal.

7:14 PM  Down Mexico way, a Cb!

Closer ones suddenly popped up to the NE and ENE, quite pretty, but they weren’t moving this way.

7:12 PM.  A closer Cb but may as well have been in New Mexico because it wasn’t moving this way.

There was too much haze yesterday, too.

7:03 PM.  “Deliquesced” (fattened up by humidity) smog aerosols show up as the cloud-free whitish areas at cloud base.  Really looks awful from an aircraft flying at that level since you’re looking at that layer on its “side.”

 The Weather Ahead

Seem to have entered a break in the showers now.  U of AZ mod (here), crunching data from 11 PM last night, doesn’t think the rain will be back until the 3rd.

We can hope its WRONG again!

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.