About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
Lots of interesting clouds yesterday; partial double rainbow, too
Light rain showers overnight, just before midnight, and again just after 1 AM AST, raised our Sutherland Heights storm total to 0.33 inches, decent but disappointing in view of model and personal expectations (0.60 inches).
What was especially interesting is that those nighttime light showers didn’t show up on the TUS radar, suggesting very shallow tops, perhaps a “warm rain” event, one not having ice, or an “ice multiplication” event with tops warmer than -10° C, about where the tops were on the 5 PM AST TUS sounding.
By this morning, the tops were barely below freezing (about -3° C). Don’t expect to see ice today, except at Cirrus levels!
5:53 PM.
5:52 PM. Drawing back a little. Pretty dramatic scene I think with that sun break running along there underneath the Stratocumulus clouds.7:06 AM. Had another round of amazingly shallow Stratocumulus clouds precipitating on the Catalina Mountains. Hardly any depth at all to this cloud, and yet there the precip on the mountain! Tops were hardly higher than Ms Mt Sara Lemmon! Must have been drizzle. Let’s check the sounding nearest this time, see what’s up:The NWS at the U of AZ balloon sounding, launched around 3:30 AM. Seems to indicate cloud tops were colder than -10°C, plenty cold enough for ice formations, so not as exciting as if they were, say, at -5°C. So, I retract my excitement excitedly!11:00 AM. Still overcast with Stratocumulus clouds, but occasionally ones showing precipitation, making them the whole scene, Stratocumulus stratiformis (covers a big portion of the sky) “praecipitatio” (is emitting precip, here maybe drizzle) or it may be very light snow. You can just make out the snowline (center), around 6,000 feet on the Cat Mountains.2:01 PM. Eventually the sky broke open to reveal that deep blue we see in the wintertime as Cumulus clouds began to take shape. Aren’t these scenes tremendous, so clean looking, like you’re out at sea, far away from land?3:51 PM. Gradually the tops of the Cumulus clouds reached up to lower temperatures where ice could form and something resembling our summer rain shafts began to appear here and there.5:12 PM. The front side of somebody’s nice rainbow over there toward Marana.5:45 PM. And a little before the rainbows, some nice, dramatic lighting on our desert vegies under a dark overcast of Stratocumulus.
Last of the Cal rain blasters is making its way across the State today, with another 5-10 inches expected in favored Sierra and coastal ranges in the next 24-36 h. Numerous sites north of SFO have now logged over 100 inches since October 1st! Imagine. Great to see that Cal drought vanquished in a single year, so unexpected. Let’s hope the Oroville Dam, N of Sacto, holds.
The End
PS: Using point and shoot cam now with “real” camera in the shop for awhile.
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.
Art: have you ever seen more than two rainbows in the sky at one time? Secondary rainbows are quite common(I usually see them with the primary) but if my memory serves me right, way back in my childhood days I once saw 3 rainbows. the tertiary (3rd) one was quite some distance from the other two, near the opposite horizon from the others.
Art: have you ever seen more than two rainbows in the sky at one time? Secondary rainbows are quite common(I usually see them with the primary) but if my memory serves me right, way back in my childhood days I once saw 3 rainbows. the tertiary (3rd) one was quite some distance from the other two, near the opposite horizon from the others.