Cloud-maven – Page 25 – About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno

2015-16 water year, Oct-Sep, off to good start in Catalinaland

2.83 inches of rain fell in October in Sutherland Heights, Catalina, Arizona, a little more than twice normal for here (based on Our Garden’s record dating back to 1977). Our Garden is located off Columbus and Stallion here in Catalina, some 2 mi and a bit lower than this site.

The greatest Oct rain at Our Garden or here?

The year was 1983, of course, with 5.61 inches, for perspective. Nearly all of that fell in the first four days!

Will November continue the above normal rainfall here?

Nope¹.

The End

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¹Wanted to be particularly decisive today. As a matter of fact, women love decisive men, FYI, to spice up the blog with some life knowledge outside of clouds and weather, besides this being a cheap trick to attract more readers of gender.

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Huh? New thought. Advice columns have millions of readers! A cloud blog like this one, 2. Wonder if I could do advice, to help people live better? Oh, here’s one that’s just come in:

“Dear CMP: I want to cut my long hair because I LOVE the convenience of having short hair, but my boyfriend won’t let me. What should I do? Gale.

Dear Gale. Your boyfriend is right. No woman should have short hair. Best of luck, CMP.”

Gosh, that was pretty easy… I think I could do it!

——-

COntinuing WEATHER discussion….

Sure, we got us Big Niño now, but they don’t have much effect in November unless some TS² comes up from Mexico way. Niñoes effect more of the later winter and spring, as a rule.

^1addendumLong period of “troughiness” is still in the works for the first half of November, but the amplitudes of the troughs will not be great enough to give us much in precip. Remember, gotta have the jet stream in the middle levels (i.e., at 500 millybars pressure, 18 kft or so) over us or south of us this time of the year to get precip. About 95% of our rain in the cool half of the year has to meet that criteria. Therefore, it takes high amplitude trough with the jet stream in the middle levels of the atmo curling around us to bring us rain.

Now wind, we’ll have lots of that from time to time as those troughs go by.

²“TS”–not in the colloquial sense of the expression, but rather in the tropical sense. Well, I guess if it was a HUGE TS that came up, the colloquial sense might be OK…

Raining in puddle just ahead, but not on car; also, a horse picture

This was amazing. I approach one of the puddles on Equestrian Trail. I see that its raining HARD in the puddle. I am only 20 feet from it, but its not raining on my car! Here’s what that scene looked like:

3:26 PM. Equestrian Trail road puddle outbound from Sutherland Heights.

How could this be? Of course, we’ve all seen heavy rain on the road and drove into it. But the illusion here that was so striking is that it only SEEMED to be raining in the puddle, not around it since the drop splashes were not obvious as I drove up to it.

The rest of yesterday was pretty great, too, lots of rainbows, brilliant clouds and skies, too photogenic for a neurotic-compulsive photographer. However, one of 221 photos was of a human, a neighbor, not of clouds and rain shafts.

Here are a few too many cloud photos; excess is kind of a specialty of mine:

11:58 AM. Cumulonimbus cloud boils upward upwind of Catalina.

12:25 PM. Getting closer.... — 12:25 PM. Getting closer….

12:51 PM. Lightning strikes not that close... — 12:51 PM. Lightning strikes not that close…Hail up to pea size, though.

1:10 PM. Backside of storm looked pretty good, too, quite firm and protuberant. Note whitish fallstreak, likely graupel and or hail. — 1:10 PM. Backside of storm looked pretty good, too, quite firm and protuberant, indicating updraft still intact. Note whitish fallstreak, likely graupel and or hail.

1:43 PM. Crepuscular rays due to rain, not haze. A pretty scene sez me.

2:36 PM. Biosphere 2 hit by light rainbow.

2:42 PM. For the sharp-eyed, bit of arcus cloud below Cumulus bases shows the northwest wind and cold front about to hit Catalina. Hit over there by Marana first. Was minutes away here.

2:46 PM. Something akin to an arcus cloud is just about on Catalina. Remember, the shift of the wind precedes the cloud, and lifts the air above it. Did you notice how the whole sky began to fill in with clouds as the windshift hit and for the hours after that? Pretty cool, huh?

3:56 PM. Awful dark out for this time of day. And yet another rainbow! Is this Hawaii, or WHAT? Rainbow colors end where snow is falling, not rain.

4:05 PM. Day closes with more storms drifting toward Catalina.

Lightly looking ahead

Still a lot of “troughy” weather ahead, and chance for decent November rains in the first half of the month after cold one goes by, followed by a short dry spell.

The End.

Troughy air flow aloft to rule the period of 9-20 days from now!

A dollop of rain is on the doorstep, the 29th-30th, but what is intriguing to this cloud maven person is not the EASY forecast of a trough in a few days with some rain, but rather passing along the fun and excitement of “troughy” flow overhead of the SW US in the longer forecast range, between in 9-20 or so days from now, a period so FAR in advance that few dare to go there.

Of course, if the air is “troughy” aloft, our chances of rain are up, though not guaranteed.

What WOULD be guaranteed by troughy air over us is a lot of middle and or high clouds like Altocumulus, Altostratus, and Cirrus, kind of like we had yesterday during that upcoming 9-20 day or so period. And with those clouds, if that’s all we get is clouds, comes great sunrises and sunsets from time to time.

So, CMP is predicting at least some nice sunrises and/or sunsets in the period of 9-20 days from now¹.

And of course, ANY credibility for such a profound forecast so FAR in advance with such specificity borders on the unprofessional and shouldn’t really be done, but 1) by examining the NOAA spaghetti factory output, say from last night we can get a tiny bit of credibility, and 2) we don’t worry about professionalism here. If you want really great professionalism, see Bob’s forecasts.

Here

and here:

Valid 15 days from now, whatever date that is. Oh, November 9th, 5 PM AST.

See red lines and how they bulge southward just off the southern regions of the West Coast and Baja.

I hope you’re happy now.

As you will also likely conclude from these plots, it looks very Niñoish due to the bunching of the red lines in the southern latitudes, those associated, in this case, with the southern branch of the “SJS” or, “sub-tropical jet stream. Remember how important “bunching” is on these plots! Bunching is a measure of confidence on these plots.

Recall, too, that Jacob “Jack” Bjerknes and Pyke (1960s) first hypothesized from the 1957-58 Niño event that it had caused a strengthening of the southern region of the jet stream; made storms stronger, farther south in the eastern Pac which is what happened that winter and spring. We expect some of that strengthening of the southern portions of the jet stream this year due to the HUGE Niño now in progress. I think I will make some toast now.

That strengthening is because the temperature gradient from Equatorial regions to mid-latitudes is greater during Niñoes, as you would guess. Extra warm air is rising up in the eastern Pac where lines and groups of deep Cumulonimbus clouds are forming, transporting heat and moisture upward in regions where they usually don’t exist without a big Niño with extra warm ocean water.

The End.

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¹Remember our motto: “Right or wrong, you heard it here first!” Forecaster: “Alive and local”, too.

Hurricane “Q” to slam Tucson in a coupla weeks (in model run)

Remember Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and the “Q” character? Well, this has nothing to do with that TEEVEE show, though I liked the opening theme song. Very majestic; truly a gigantic feel to it, as is needed for outer space travel. Too bad Aaron Copland couldn’t compose something like that.

Well, as with the character Q in Star Trek, who was imaginary¹, not real, I have just learned that there is no “Hurricane Q” after “Patricia” (P). If you don’t believe me, check this out while also learning how to pronounce words.

I think its WRONG to skip a letter in the alphabet, and skipping a letter in the English alphabet as though it didn’t exist, could be confusing to those learning English, when naming hurricanes. So I am going to call the next eastern Pac hurricane, “Q”². “Q”, after slamming Baja Central, is forecast to cause an imaginary flood in Tucson (see maps below). Also, since “Q” moves really fast, we probably wouldn’t get more than a few inches of rain here.

BTW, these output maps are from the WRF-GFS model run from global measurements taken 5 PM AST last evening. The WRF-GFS model is deemed the USA’s best, though its not as good as the ones in Europe as we know.

Also, these maps are valid in about two weeks from now, so the placement of “Q” on them is truly imaginary.

Anyway, I thought I would waste your time with this interesting model scenario. “Q” looks awfully strong, maybe a 3 or higher category hurricane, too. That will probably verify I think.

Will waste more of your time if more of these kind of maps below show up (maybe 5% chance) since they excite.

Valid in 360 h! Getting more excited and enlarged annotation font.

The End.

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¹Well not so imaginary that he doesn’t have a Wikipedia page all to himself.

²The authorities will call it “Rick”, NOT “Q”.

Augustober weather continues on October 18th

Truly LATE breaking news, untimely really, but Augustober 18th was too special a day to ignore:

Giant clouds, dense rain shafts, frequent lightning in the area throughout the afternoon, dewpoints in the high 50s to 60 F; can it really be after the middle of October? Or, is this some kind of preview of climate change we can look forward to in the decades ahead, that is, if you’re thunderphilic?

5:05 PM. An amazing scene, and thunderstorm with such powerful updrafts that when those updrafts are blocked by the inversion at the base of the Stratosphere, they force the winds at that level to slow or backup and the anvil protrudes upwind (center left), something that is common with severe thunderstorms. This was significant here because the winds at 40,000 feet were around 50 kts, far stronger than anything we have here during a typical summer rain season. Summer Cumulonimbus cloud anvils can splash outward easily against weak winds up there in summer when they hit that barrier at the top of the tropopause. This just in from Mark A: severe thunderstorms, I have just learned here on the 20th , were observed in the PHX, and the NWS has a great link going describing all the mayhem it produced. I did not know this until just now in the middle of writing this first caption when I read Mark’s e-mail.

: 1:56 PM. Anvil of the Cumulonimbus over west Tucson, drifts overhead of Catalina, and in three minutes, rain drops started to hit the ground. This is amazing because those drops had to fall from at around 20, 000 feet above the ground (estimated as bottom height of this thick anvil) and could only have happened if those isolated drops had been hailstones ejected out the anvil, something that also only occurs with severe storms with very strong updrafts in them. So, if you saw those few drops fall between 2 and 2:05 PM you saw something pretty special.

6:26 AM. Early portent: Cu congestus, aka, “heavy Cumulus) piling up this early.

6:29 AM. Mammatus of the morning., an extraordinary scene for mid-October, pointing to the possibility of an unusual day ahead with strong storms. as was the scientific basis for giant clouds on the 18th in the amount of CAPE predicted, over 1,000 units of Convective Available Potential Energy, later that day from computer models. That is a lot for mid-October, take my word for it.

3:45 PM. Strong storms did not form over or near the Catalinas yesterday, but they did get something. As you can see the top of this guy (Cumulonimbus calvus) is very subdued compared to the giants that formed elsewhere.

5:53 PM. Peakaboo Cumulonimbus calvus top east of Mt. Lemmon provided a nice highlight after sunset. And to have convection like this going on this late was remarkable. Some heavy showers and a thunderstorm formed downwind of the Catalinas about this time,, too.

5:51 PM. Pretty nice, summer-looking sunset that day, too.

The weather just ahead, and this might be it for precip for the rest of October

A nice-looking upper level trough is ejecting over us from the SW this morning but the computer model says its going to be a dry event. A second low center forms just about over us in the next day. AZ model doesn’t see much rain for us throughout these events, and rain doesn’t begin here until after dark today.

I think that is WRONG; bad model. Watch for some light showers this morning, then a break and rain overnight (which the models do predict). Due this quite bad model forecast, as seen from this keyboard, I feel must interject for the blog reader I have, an improved rain prediction for Catalina over that rendered by a computer model.

Feel like guesstimating a minimum of 0.25 inches between now and Thursday evening, max possible, 0.60 inches, so the median of those two, and maybe the best guestimate being the average of those two, or 0.425 inches here in Catalina. When you see a prediction of a rainfall total down to thousandths of an inch, you really know that the person predicting it knows what he is doing…..

Below, your U of AZ disappointing, but objective, take on the amount of rain based on last evening’s data and one that is the result of billions of calculations. One must remember that cloud maven person’s calculation of the rainfall amount for Catalina is only based on three.

From the 5 PM AST run executed by the U of AZ Beowulf Cluster. Billions of calculations were involved with this model prediction; it should be kept in mind that cloud maven person's prediction is only based on three when he opines that this is not enough for us here in Catalinaland. — From the 5 PM AST run executed by the U of AZ Beowulf Cluster.

The End.

Nice weather we’re having….

Has added up to more than an inch here in Sutherland Heights/Catalina after last night’s MCS went by (Mesoxcale Convective System), aka, “doozie”. Looks like almost three inches has fallen on top of Ms. Lemmon, too!

This MCS blew up out there late yesterday afternoon to the southwest and west of us, and then the blast of wind, estimated here to over 40 mph in the strongest puffs, roared in about 8 PM last night.

Would have seen a nice “arcus” or line cloud with that wind, too had it been daylight.

Squall lines in the Plains States are often like that, the wind, the pounding rain/hail, then a few hours of “stratiform rain”, after the wind dies down and the arcus cloud and heavy rain have ended. Even looked like an eastern Plains State evening in July, if you’ve ever been there with the leading heavy ice cloud ejecting toward us as the sun went down.

4:49 PM. Classic appearance of an incoming squall line, as so often seen in the summer months in the EASTERN portions of ND, SD, NE, KS, OKC, etc, where nighttime rain and thunder occurrences rule at that time of year. In the higher western portions of those states, the storms occur earlier in the afternoon, often starting out there, then merging into lines as the late afternoon progresses. Nice if you like lightning at night, and you’re in Sioux Falls, SD, or OKC.

5:27 PM. Getting closer. Local tragedy was occurring as a home off Lago del Oro was burning up, left foreground. — 5:27 PM. Getting closer. A local tragedy was in progress as a home off Lago del Oro was burning up, left foreground.

We interrupt this presentation for a public service reminder concerning some drops that fell yesterday afternoon:

“Its not drizzle, dammitall!”

3:32 PM. As the drops began to fall in a 5-minute shower, I thought about those wrongful people out there that might have called this "drizzle" as the first few drops fell. — 3:32 PM. As the drops began to fall in a 5-minute shower, I thought about those wrongful people out there that might have called this “drizzle.”.

OK, something like the above is probably a little too adult for children to say, but, of course, we adult cloud mavens we like to say it whenever we can to educate people in an emphatic way.

Drizzle drops, which have to be very close together unlike these, would not even be large enough to cause visible spotting on pavement, and barely, or don’t make a splash at all in a puddle of water. Too, drizzle falls from SHALLOW, low-based clouds with a broad droplet spectrum. It doesn’t fall from Cumulonimbus clouds, or Altocumulus castellanus virgae, Altostratus, etc.

This oft repeated message here is repeated again because a meteorologist friend of mine repeatedly called the “sprinkles” we had here two days ago, “drizzle.” As a result, our friendship is on “hold” for time being. You really have to clamp down on the errant things that people say about weather phenomenon. I try not to say too many myself.

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Had a nice rainbow after that afternoon period drizzle (hahah) went by that dropped 0.03 inches:

5:48 PM. Nice shaft and rainbow toward the Gap. Was hoping to get a LTG bolt infused with the rainbow, make thousands of dollars on it, but, it didn't happen. — 5:48 PM. Nice shaft and rainbow toward the Gap. Was hoping to get a LTG bolt infused with the rainbow, make thousands of dollars on it, but, it didn’t happen. But, a terrific scene anyway.

See some LTG off to the NW now. Should be more of that around this afternoon.

The End.

Traces of rain and a Lemmon rainbow

DSC_0612-1 — 6:25 AM. Altocumulus perlucidus. According to my cloud chart, informally known as “America’s Cloud Chart”, it could rain within 6 to 196 hours. Its quite useful.

DSC_0617-1 — 10:24 AM. Altocumulus opacus. Note the rumpled look of the sky. Indicates that the clouds are rather shallow and composed of droplets rather than a mix of ice crystals and droplets. However, if you strain your eyeballs and look to the horizon, you can see a smoothing and a little virga showing that the cloud tops are rising and they’ve gotten cold enough to produce ice. According to my cloud chart, when you see “Ac opacus” it could rain within 6 to 196 hours.

1:44 PM. While the clouds are pretty much the same gray color as in the prior photo, they’re much thicker here and are “Altostratus opacus”. “opacus” because the sun’s position is not visible, though it wouldn’t be in this direction anyway, but to the right. The bottom of this is smooth due to widespread, light falling snow, though it not in a localized area enough to be called virga in this shot. The lack of bunched or heavy virga somewhere tells you that the cloud tops are pretty smooth, too, not a lot of variation in height. The base is really determined by the point that you descend out of this precip, in this case up around 10 kft above the ground over Catalina.

4:12 PM. Altostratus opacus praecipitatio or Nimbostratus, either name will do. Recall the quirk in our cloud naming system that makes, "Nimbostratus" a middle-level cloud. The base of these clouds is the general level where the snow falling out has evaporated. Due to bulging tops, and stronger updrafts, a little of the precip was able to fall out because the snowflakes coming out the bottom had grown larger and were able to survive the dry air below cloud base. — 4:12 PM. Altostratus opacus praecipitatio or Nimbostratus, either name will do. Recall the quirk in our cloud naming system that makes, “Nimbostratus” a middle-level cloud. The base of these clouds is the general level where the snow falling out has evaporated. Due to bulging tops, and stronger updrafts, a little of the precip was able to fall out because the snowflakes coming out the bottom had grown larger and were able to survive the dry air below cloud base.

Some rain fell about this time in Catalina. Not enough to darken the pavement completely at any time. The main thing to take away from that hour of very light rain is that it was not “drizzle” as even some errant meteorologists call such sprinkles.

You will be permanently banned from attending any future meetings of the cloud maven club if you refer to such rain as we had yesterday afternoon as “drizzle.” Drizzle is fine (200-500 micron in diameter drops that are very close together and practically float in the air. Because they fall so slowly, and are so small to begin with, you can’t have drizzle at the ground from clouds that are much more than a 1000 feet or so above the ground because as soon as they pop out the bottom, those drops start evaporating and fall slower and slower by the second, and in no time they can be gone even in moist conditions. That’ s why its somewhat hilarious and sad at the same time, when, in particular, military sites for some unknown reason, report ersatz “drizzle: (coded as L, or L-) in our hourly aviation reports from clouds that are based at 5000 feet or something CRAZY like that.

This band of Nimbostratus/Altostratus had a backside that approached as the sun went down, and as you know, that clearing let some sunlight enrich and dramatize the views of our beloved Catalina Mountains:

Finally, dessert:

5:47 PM. Rainbow lands on the University of Arizona Wildcat’s Skycenter atop Ms. Mt. Sara Lemmon.

The amazing rains ahead

Nothing that you don’t already know about, so no use me blabbing about it too much. But in case you haven’t seen it, The Return of Joe Low (after over-hydrating over the warm waters of the eastern Pacific), is expected over the next couple of days, with a little help from another disturbance, to bring colossal rains to eastern Arizona and especially New Mexico.

Below, from our friendly U of A Wildcat Weather Department a model run from yesterday’s 5 PM global data (the Wildcat’s downsize the US WRF-GFS model in this awesome depiction).

Check out the totals expected by the evening of October 23 rd. Stupendous. Usually these totals are a bit overdone, but even so…… Will take a nice bite out of drought.

Precipitation totals expected by 5 PM AST October 23rd. Looks something like a tie-dyed Tee.

The End

Jumbo package

Through deliberate deception, the title is likely to bring in quite a few football-centric people, since “jumbo package” is a term used when an offensive team bring in all the “Sumo wrestlers” they have, usually in attempts to score a touchdown from 6 inches outside the goal line.

The “jumbo package”, however, is about some weather, essentially at “mid-field” rather than on the goal line (i.e., just ahead):

A large and very strong upper low center is forecast to arrive on Sunday, October 25th, football day, the last reference to football in this blog. As it passes over Arizona, the first snow of the year would likely fall on the ‘Frisco Peaks by Flagstaff.

Tremendous rains, too, would occur here in AZ with this low, espepcially² here the SE corner, should it happen. See WRF-GFS model outputs below, as rendered by IPS MeteoStar:

Valid on Sunday, October 25th at 5 PM AST.

Valid on Sunday, football day, October 25th at 5 PM AST. The bluish regions denote especially heavu rains having fallen in the prior 12 h.

But does it happen?

Let’s check the spaghetti from NOAA for a hint about whether this weather happenstance has much chance of occurring:

Same map as above, except annotated for those who find the map geographically challenging. — Same map as above, except annotated for those who found the first map geographically challenging.

You, too, as an expert on spaghetti now, are as crestfallen as I was to see this spag output from last night, showing that the espepcially strong low is, in fact, an outlier; a not impossible situation, but an unlikely one since we don’t have the bunched blue contours where the jet stream is strong, down thisaway. Rather, those blue lines are grouped over the Pac NW, and only one or two bluish contours are down here, ones that would be associated with that upper low on the 500 mb map above for Oct. 25th

Still, even when you know its an outlier, it brings hope for a bountiful rain, which is good. Will monitor this as the days go by, in case the outlier spaghetti output is an outlier.

The weather just ahead

Of course, as all weatherman know, we still have our boomerang friend Joe Low returning with rain; that’s in the bag, and has a little “friend” following behind him. These, combined, should bring substantial rains overall in AZ and in the Catalina area, in the form of scattered showers and TSTMs that persist over several days beginning later Thursday through Monday. Joe et al. are slowpokes, which is good.

Haze and smoke are up, if you’ve noticed that our skies have been not so blue, but whitish. Stuff is coming up from Mexico it appears; (Smoky) Joe will bring more of that before it gets here. So, look for a hazy patches of Altocu and/or Cirrus in the next couple of days. Maybe a small Cu off in the distance.

2:06 PM, October 11th. Shows the kind of hazy, smoky conditions we've been having lately. There is also some delicate Cirrus up there contributing to the whiteness. — 2:06 PM, October 11th. Shows the kind of hazy, smoky conditions we’ve been having lately. There is also some delicate Cirrus up there contributing to the whiteness.

The End

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²“Espepcially” is a word I made up via some inadvertent key strokes, but I kind of like it: “In particular, but with some energy.” BTW, Coke tastes better than Pepsi, if that new, unexpected word made you think of a soft drink.

Bye-bye Joe low, see you in a week or so; remembering the 1962 Columbus Day storm

Joe is pretty dried out after dumping so much rain on AZ and NM, and will be spinning around northern Mexico before heading back out to sea off Baja to re-hydrate before coming back with another round of rain for AZ and Catalina in a week or so, maybe as much as 10 days before he gets back.

In the meantime, let us remember the Columbus Day storm, whose anniversary is coming up. The remnant of Typhoon Freda (not Olga!), infused the westerlies with extra energy, to produce one of the greatest tempests of all time when it struck the West Coast and passed inland over the Willamette Valley on its way to Seattle. It kept an extremely intense center having winds well over 100 mph, some estimates to over 150 mph; in essence equivalent to a Category 4 or 5 hurricane passage sans the torrential rains.

Below, the National Weather Service Remembers, in a reminder that it can, and will, happen again.

Recently, the jet stream has swept up the remains of Typhoon Oho and that triggered a strong “extratropical” cyclone in the Pacific, though far from shore. More tropical cyclones are forecast to form and be swept up by the westerlies in the next two weeks…..

NOUS46 KSEW 091729
PNSSEW

PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SEATTLE WA
1030 AM PDT FRI OCT 9 2015

..COLUMBUS DAY STORM ANNIVERSARY IS MONDAY OCTOBER 12TH…

MONDAY OCTOBER 12TH IS THE 53RD ANNIVERSARY OF THE 1962 COLUMBUS DAY STORM…THE STRONGEST NON-TROPICAL WIND STORM EVER TO HIT THE LOWER 48 IN AMERICAN HISTORY. AS THE GRANDDADDY OF ALL WIND STORMS…ALL OTHER WIND STORMS ARE COMPARED TO IT.

THIS STORM WAS EXTRAORDINARY. WIND SPEEDS EXCEEDED 150 MPH ALONG THE OREGON AND WASHINGTON COASTS AND TOPPED 100 MPH IN THE WESTERN INTERIOR VALLEYS FROM EUGENE TO BELLINGHAM. SINCE EITHER MANY WIND INSTRUMENTS LOST POWER OR WERE DESTROYED BY THE STRONG WINDS…THE ACTUAL HIGHEST WIND SPEEDS WERE NOT MEASURED OR KNOWN.

THE STORM KILLED 46 PEOPLE FROM NORTHERN CALIFORNIA TO WASHINGTON AND INJURED HUNDREDS OF OTHERS. IT BLEW DOWN OR DESTROYED THOUSANDS OF BUILDINGS AND KNOCKED OUT POWER TO MILLIONS OF PEOPLE FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO SOUTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA. THE WIND STORM BLEW DOWN 15
BILLION BOARD FEET OF TIMBER FROM THE COAST TO AS FAR EAST AS
WESTERN MONTANA…ENOUGH LUMBER TO BUILD A MILLION HOMES.

COULD ANOTHER STORM LIKE THIS ONE OCCUR AGAIN? THE ANSWER IS YES. AND NOW MANY MORE PEOPLE LIVE IN THE REGION THAN BACK IN 1962 ALONG WITH ALL THE ACCOMPANYING INFRASTRUCTURE SUPPORT. FOR INSTANCE…THE 1962 POPULATION OF WESTERN WASHINGTON WAS ABOUT 1.5 MILLION. TODAY IT IS OVER 6 MILLION.

IMAGINE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THAT STORM STRUCK
AGAIN TODAY?

WIND STORMS OCCUR ALMOST EVERY YEAR IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. SOME OF OUR REGIONS STRONGER ONES OCCUR ABOUT EVERY 10 YEARS SUCH AS THE HANUKKAH EVE WIND STORM OF DECEMBER 2006 THAT KNOCKED OUT POWER TO ABOUT 1.5 MILLION PEOPLE IN WESTERN WASHINGTON.

SO IT IS PRUDENT TO PREPARE NOW FOR WIND STORMS OR ANY OTHER
HAZARDOUS WEATHER OR OTHER EVENTS THAT CAN OCCUR SUCH AS
EARTHQUAKES…TSUNAMIS AND VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS. HERE ARE A FEW KEY RESOURCES TO HELP YOU GET READY AT HOME…AT WORK OR SCHOOL…OR IN YOUR VEHICLE. WHEN YOU ARE PREPARED…YOU ARE NOT SCARED.

I was a small child, but 21 years old, when the infamous Columbus Day storm of 1962 hit the upper West Coast. I hoped it would come down my way, there in Reseda, California. It didn’t, only got as far as ‘Frisco.

I wrote out the weather reports for this storm from Short Wave Radio (SWR) with my best fountain pen. Here they are, because I never throw anything out. These transcribed weather reports were broadcaset twice an hour, five after.

Weather text, in ink, for the October 12, 1962, "Columbus Day" storm as compiled from Oakland Radio via SWR. — Weather text, in ink, for the October 12, 1962, “Columbus Day” storm as compiled from Oakland Radio via SWR. SFO-Frisco, S-T, SEattle Tacoma AP; POR=Portland, OR; STK=Stockton, CA; LAX=LAX; RSA=Reseda, CA. The last three digits is the altimeter setting, with the first digit missing. Note that at 6 PM PST October 12th, SFO is having near hurricane force gusts, and at 8 PM PST, Portland is reporting gusts to over 90 mph. The 9 PM PST ob for Portland was missing!

12:23 PM. Cumulus mass over the Catalinas.

1:47 PM. When I wasn’t watching, this broke out!

1:48 PM. Looking SSW. Looked awesome, but only heard one rumble of thunder.

1:48 PM also, looking SW. “Spin move” used to get sky shots from all quads pretty much all at once. Those shown are the best. It was clear to the NW-N.

1:55 PM. Dark base to right begins to unload on some lucky person.

2:06 PM. Told ya! Nice addition to the prior day's storm. — 2:06 PM. Told ya! Nice addition to the prior day’s storm. Raining here now, too.

2:32 PM. Nice line of Cumulus humilis or mediocris trailing off the Tortolita Mountains W-NW of Catalina.

: 2:35 PM. A well-known, de facto livestock pond was enhanced by that afternoon’s rain on our country access road. “Do not enter when flooded”, but everyone does anyway.; The End.