Miscellaneous stuff; also, regime change now in progress!

Haven’t had much weather/clouds to gab about; maybe I’ll help reader with some extra material today, not usually associated with a site about clouds; kind of go outside the lines a little.

Miscellaneous item 1

The Oracle Road report.  Thought you’d like to see that.

Yesterday afternoon report.
Yesterday afternoon’s report.  Seem to be some people working.  That’s good.  You can see some curbing going in, too.  Kind of reminds me of how high pressure has been “curbing” our storms lately, to introduce a weather theme.  Photo not taken while driving, of course.

Miscellaneous item 2

This.  Its quite good.  You’ll see people really liking it, too.  It may raise the question in your mind, “How many other people are “‘question marks'”?  Cloud Maven person?

Clouds?

Well, we had some nice Cirrus yesterday, and for the past few days.   Lots more to come, too, but that’s about it for awhile.

DSC_5125
3:19 PM. Pretty CIrrus uncinus.
DSC_5126
3:20 PM. If you on Mt. Everest this would quite a little passing snow shower of tiny crystals, quite fun, because it would only last a minute or so. Well maybe since the wind would be 100 mph, maybe it wouldn’t be THAT fun because the little crystals, likely bullet rosettes, as you would know, would sting your face if it wasn’t protected.

There’ll be a lot of Cirrus over the next two weeks, we hope with some rain underneath, with the best chance being

For yesterday afternoon, 5 PM AST. The green areas represent moist conditions at Cirrus levels, here for about 300 mb or 30,000 feet. Streamers of Cirrus are coming at us for awhile from the sub-tropics.
For yesterday afternoon, 5 PM AST. The green areas represent moist conditions at Cirrus levels, here for about 300 mb or 30,000 feet. Streamers of Cirrus are coming at us for awhile from the sub-tropics.  You can see a lot more green in this two week forecast from IPS MeteoStar.

Regime change?

Yep, mostly for Cal, though, as far as rain and snow go.  Folks in Cal are quite excited about the drought they’re having, but this April will put a damper on that excitement as the storms roar in from the Pac like they should have all winter.  It won’t end the drought, but it won’t be quite as dire, either.  You can read about direness here from the LA Times.  You’ll read that Governor Brown1 has declared a water emergency in California.  Of course, most of the water use is in sometimes inappropriate agricultural practices, like growing rice around Bakersfield in the San Joaquin desert, that kind of thing, not by home owners.

California can be very wet in April.   For example, in 1926, and in 1965, Los Angeles got over seven inches, and five inches, respectively.   So, “It ain’t over til its over”, the Cal rain season that is, as they say.  It  will be interest to look back as May arrives, and see how much the drought was alleviated.

You can see all the storm set to pound Cal here, plus our own chance around April 12-13th from this rendering of last evening’s global data.

How does Cloud Maven know for sure there is a regime change taking place that will help Cal? From a helping of spaghetti.  Lets look at spaghetti two weeks out, way more longer than weather models can be considered reliable.  Cloud Maven person was VERY excited when he saw this, as you will be as well!

Valid on April 17th, 5 PM AST. Note how the red lines (contour number 576 dm) are squished in the Great SW, drooping southward into Mexico! This is tremendous, since it virtually guarantees a trough in the SW. The other plots are similar.
Valid on April 17th, 5 PM AST. Note how the red lines (contour number 576 dm) are squished in the Great SW, drooping southward into Mexico! This is tremendous, since it virtually guarantees a trough in the SW. The other plots are similar.  You just don;’t see this much in squished contours very often this far out in the model run in our area.  Usually these contours are like the ones off Africa.   I hope you know where Africa is….  Those blue lines (number 552 dm contours) are in the heart of the jet stream, really on the poleward side, and notice how some of them dip into the SW.  This is good, too.  Now, for California, olden studies have shown that its the contour BETWEEN these (564 decameters) that delineates where rain falls when a trough hits the Cal coast.  That contour is between the red and blue lines, and so there would be plenty of rain falling in Cal during these first two weeks, with no sign of let up here at the end of the model run.   SO, in conlcusion, that’s why CMP is sticking his neck out about a wet, drought-denting April in Cal.

What will our Catalina weather be like in April?

Under this new regime, whether it rains or not, you can expect windier conditions than normal during the month since storms exiting Cal will be close enough to excite not only meteorologists, but a “Tonopah Low” in the lee of the Sierras, something that helps generate wind here as they progress into the Great Basin after forming.

Wow, this is really too much detail for an entire month to come2!  Oh, well.  Remember our motto here at C-M:

“Right or wrong; you heard it here first!”

The End.

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1Remember how we used to call him, “Governor Moonbeam” when he was governor of Cal the first time around in the 1970s due to his quirky,  ascetic lifestyle?  That was fun.  Lots of quirky people in the Haight-Asbury district then, too.  How many question marks were among those folks…and where are they now?

2We’ll be looking back at April come the beginning of May, by which time you will have forgotten anything that was written here, and I could almost anything.

 

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.