Little troughy disappoints with a trace of rain; but is there a decaying hurricane in our future?

First, before de-briefing yesterday’s disappointment, this happy map for early September.


Valid at 5 PM AST, Friday, September 6th. The models are really trying to help us out with our drought, and once AGAIN, they have come up with a doozy of a prediction to do that. Crunched by the illustrious WRF-GFS model from the 5 PM AST global data, millions and billions of calculations involved, btw, rigorous math employed, too, and look what popped out!

Some background in support of the map above:

Presently,  we have the two Niños going (the newly written up in Nature,  “Cal Niño”, and the regular “New Niño” down there in ocean region 3.4).  This fall, that combination of two Niños gives us a huge leg up on having a significant rain from a tropical storm because both Niños, with their massive areas of above normal sea surface water temperatures, will help dying hurricanes get closer to old Arizony before falling apart. The warmer the water, the longer they last.

The forecast map above is no less than the THIRD model-of-some-kind’s prediction in the just past two weeks that a tropical remnant/center will go into Arizona.  The first two weren’t even close, Julio, was it, that the Canadians said would go over Yuma a couple of weeks ago.  And then the big one that is forming now was supposed to do come into AZy in one WRF-GFS model run about a week ago.  Now the Big One, will die way out in the Pacific without even getting close.

What’s more, as the one person who reads this blog, you will know that we examine spaghetti to see if there is ANY credibility to such a long range forecast, most of which should be put in trash immediately.  Here’s what made the above happy map even that bit happier, below, from the NOAA spaghetti factory.  Its been annotated for your enjoyment

  • Valid on Thursday, September 4th at 5 PM AST.
  • Valid on Thursday, September 5th at 5 PM AST.  This map suggests, with moderate confidence,  that a trough will exist along the West Coast, something that if in that location, will steer storms into Mexico or the SW US as they drift up the coast of Baja. The blue circles along the Baja coast clusters the position of the hurricane/tropical storm whose remnant may be steered thisaway.  That yellow contour (5760 m) is the actual prediction that was made by the model of the “contour of interest”), and it shows that there was a little too much amplitude in it compared with what might actually happen (blue lines are generally not to far to the south.  Please ignore the slight time offset (1 day) in the two maps.  Its seems to be all that’s available…

So lots to be happy about this morning after a disappointing trace of rain yesterday here in The Heights of Sutherland.

 Yesterday’s clouds

Boring, for the most part, though that clear slot to the west near sunset provided some nice lighting around.  To wit:

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8:16 AM. Overcast in Altostratus opacus, with some areas of Altocumulus.
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3:00 PM. Some excitement down the road over there by SaddleBrooke Ranch. One or two cells developed yesterday afternoon, in spite of the low temperatures (that’s 80s here in Arizona).
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3:14 PM. Other than a couple of shafts, the day looked pretty much the same on the way out as it did on the way in. Overcast Altostratus opacus with shreds of Cumulus fractus here.
6:28 PM.  Get cameras ready when you see a slot like this!  The clouds are Altocumulus opacus, some virga off in the distance suggesting higher tops.  Also, to the east, the clouds were Altostratus, a mostly ice cloud while here the cloud is mostly supercooled liquid water. How's come?  Frequently top tops of Altostratus, often at Cirrus levels, dropped precipitously and when that happens, you end up with a layer that is mostly ice free.  A sharp drop in cloud tops is what happened here.  Those Altocumulus clouds, though dark looking are probably not even 3000 feet (1 km thick).
6:28 PM. Get cameras ready when you see a slot like this! The clouds are Altocumulus opacus, some virga off in the distance suggesting higher tops. Also, to the east, the clouds were Altostratus, a mostly ice cloud while here the cloud is mostly supercooled liquid water.
How’s come? Frequently top tops of Altostratus, often at Cirrus levels, drop precipitously when troughs approach, and when that happens, you end up with a layer that is mostly ice-free. A sharp drop in cloud tops is what happened here. Those Altocumulus clouds, though dark looking are probably not even 3000 feet (1 km thick). Altostratus clouds are rarely less than 2 km thick.
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6:36 PM. Clear slot to the west caused this nice highlight to creep up the Catalinas.
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6:39 PM. The green of the 2014 summer.
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6:45 PM. Was still filled with hope that those distant Cumulonimbus tops would creep in overnight, at least produce some light rain as a stratiform deck. Didn’t happen.

Yesterday’s non-storm:

Dropped a lot of rain down in SE Cal and western Arizona;  I guess we should be happy for them.  Imperial, CA,  at -49 feet elevation, got 1.46 inches! And areas around Yuma, nearly an inch.

But that trough flubbed up moving NE during the night.  Below, the scene from 5 PM AST last evening when “little troughy” looked potent.  From tSan Francisco State U/Haight-Asbury District/, this nice map:

Yesterday at 5 PM, little troughy (LT) full of thunderheads and rain over there by Yuma.  Passed over us last night, but the storms  aged and fell apart overnight.
Yesterday at 5 PM.   Little troughy (LT) full of thunderheads and rain over there by Yuma. Passed over us last night, but the storms aged and fell apart as we do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going back to the possibility of a hurricane remnant hitting Arizona, something I seem to be stuck on, “If the left one don’t get you, then the right one will1”   We’re talkin’ hurricanes here, not about fists and number nine coal.  The many hurricanes and tropical storms that are forming this year, about one every five minutes it seems, including Lowell of late, and the monster that is forming now, will be moving too far to the “left” of Arizona, out into nowhere in the eastern Pacific to die with their life sustaining rains.  But ….our day will come this year I think!  remember our logo:  “Right or wrong, you heard it here first!”

In the mid-60s this morning.  Can it feel any more that fall is upon us this morning?

The End.

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1Sixteen tons of number nine coal, paraphrased, Tennessee Ernie Ford.

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.