Not likely to verify, but a wonderful map (but, “trending up” in twitter-speak)

This is definitely not the same title as was a few days ago for a similar map, one also valid for Nov 3rd-4th.  That title was quite different:  “Not likely, but a wonderful map.”  The  rainy Arizona map back then from our best model showed a tropical storm and moist plume being drawn northward into AZ.

Almost the exact map as that one a few days ago has shown up again out of the blue, if you can say that when you’re talking about clouds and precipitation.  There’s been nothing like that former map since that first time it showed up, and, in view of how odd it was, you tend to write it off as something you’ll not see again.  But there it was again, now only 10 days out.

Below, the happy, rainy AZ map churned out by last night’s model run based on global data taken around 5 PM AST yesterday ( from IPS MeteoStar):

MOdel outpur valid for 5 PM November 4th. Shows tropical storm remnant being sucked up toward Arizona with lots of rain already here.
Model output valid for 5 PM AST, Monday,  November 4th. Shows tropical storm remnant being sucked up toward Arizona with lots of rain already here.  Green blobs denote where the model thinks rain has fallen in the prior 12 h, which here is the entire State of AZy!

Below is the pattern aloft that steers (hahaha) all that moisture into our water-challenged State, one that has a lot of steers.

HOWEVER, this rainy situation requires a lucky conjunction of a Pacific trough coming in out of the Pacific onto the southern California coastline, while a tropical storm/former hurricane is off Mazatlån at that same moment.  If these two features of interest are just about anywhere else than is shown here in these model projections, forget it.

The flow pattern in the middle of the troposphere, around 15,000 to 20,000 feet above sea level. Yep, that's right, half the air is gone by the time you get to only about 17,500 feet!
The flow pattern in the middle of the troposphere, around 15,000 to 20,000 feet above sea level. Yep, that’s right, half the air is gone by the time you get to only about 17,500 feet!

The first time this rainy map was shown for Nov. 3-4th, back about five days ago, the chances of it actually happening were probably somewhere around 0.2 percent.  Just too much had to fall into place.  Coming up twice, however,  jacks the lucky numbers up to, oh, maybe to an 8 percent chance of actually happening as a wild guess.  Not a great chance, but one that’s trending upward.  You know, after the rainless October that’s about to finish up, we really deserve this storm in early November.  The NOAA spaghetti factory has good support for a trough along the California coast at this time, so its likely THAT ingredient will likely be in place on November 3rd-4th.

Yesterday’s clouds; yes, there were a couple, some patchy Cirrus and a little band of Altocumulus, some of the latter trending toward lenticularis-ee ones. later on.  Here they are.

2:37 PM. Patches of Cirrus drift across the southeastern sky.
2:37 PM. Patches of Cirrus drift across the southeastern sky.
SONY DSC
3:51 PM. Lines of Ac perlucidus streaked across the sky in the afternoon, soon to disappear.
SONY DSC
4:52 PM. Ac len below a patch of Ac perlucidus.

 

The End

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.