If you were on Ms. Mt. Lemmon, or just in Tucson yesterday taking your wife to the airport for some reason, you would have seen a line of large Cumulonimbus tops lining the east through southeast horizon in a broken line. It was pretty impressive, and demonstrated how close our summer rain regime still is, astronomically speaking anyway.
There is still enough heat and moist air around for some small Cu around here, but that’s about it for today and tomorrow, though the Canadian model still thinks there will be some big enough clouds for them rain in the general area of SE AZ today and tomorrow.
But, just small Cu can produce dramatic scenes on the Catalina Mountains, much better ones than just a clear sky, so that’s SOMETHING to enjoy before the long clear days following the complete end of our summer rain season and the desiccating air that follows by Sunday and Monday.
About the most we can expect after the Cu are gone is the occasional appearance of CIrrus clouds once in awhile as storms in the westerlies track across the West, but to our north.
Next, I thought I would post a map of global ocean temperature anomalies for September 19th, in case you were thinking about going to the beach somewhere. Seems like most of the ocean is slightly warmer than normal for some reason, except around Antarctica.
However, the hot spot we need, suggesting an El Nino might happen, just isn’t there. Kind of neutral or even below normal in the eastern Pacific along the Equator in the eastern half of the Pacific. Phooey. It was sad, too, reading the Climate Prediction Center’s statement that the ENSO (El Nino-Southern Oscillation) alert system was “not active.” I hope no one was laid off.
The presence of an El Nino, as you likely know, can help jack up precip totals in the Southwest in the late winter and spring. So, its likely that official predictions will be for another drier than normal cooler half of the year (October through May).
Will have some additional Catalina climo charts in the next day or so, maybe an erroneous personal prediction of the October through May precip like last year’s…hahaha, sort of.
