I am thinking we will see some virga today.
The End
The wetness ahead
The most wetness I could find for Catalina residents is in this here model run from last evening, 11 PM AST. Rains on the 27th into the 28th, as was mentioned as a possibility here some days previously, then it rains from the 29th into February 1st (new!) Prior model runs before this one last last night are much drier; are not shown, nor will they be discussed.
Gut feeling, which is what we meteorologists went on before the era of computer models, and frankly, its a feeling coming from a forecaster who suffers from “desert precipophilia1“, makes me think this wetter model run will be more correct than the bad, drier model runs that preceded it.
However, the rain in the first episode, 27th-28th, this from that system deep in the tropics, looks awful light, probably from mid-level clouds. Just looks like its not going to have much left when it gets here. An awful of rain, however, will have fallen on the ocean west and southwest of Baja California, though, before it arrives.
The later storm at the end of the month looks stronger. See the panel below, which I have pinched off IPS MeteoStar and have placed here since I suspect you won’t really look at it and I have to do pretty much everything for you:
Is spaghetti supportive of a wet Catalina in the near future, this latest off-the-computer-presses-to-you model run?
Not so much.
But then spaghetti let me down when I told a friend that “it was in the bag” for rain in Monterrey, CA on the 17 or 18th of Jan, about 12 days ahead of time, based on spaghetti. Didn’t rain at all. “Hey, take a bite out of credibility.”
So, we’ve been chastened royally here, as a British citizen might say; the deliberate errors in the “ensemble” plots sometimes aren’t big enough apparently compared to the goof ball measurements that sometimes come in. So, I’ve downplayed the idea that spaghetti is all knowing. It could be WRONG/misleading at times, anyway.
However, to balance the spaghetti picture, the encroaching trough coming in over us tomorrow WAS well predicted, long in advance. Unfortunately, it looks a little too dry to produce measurable rain, just a drop in temperatures. But, there should be some nice cloud scenes.
Some recent clouds
The End
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1Does not appear to have a biogenic culprit. The origin of this affliction is currently unknown.
Diggomg deep
I accidentally mistyped “Digging” and that’s what came out, Diggomg.” I can’t pronounce it either. Then I thought, you know, that it could be quite a hook for a blog, a word no one’s seen before, and would want to know more about it. Maybe more than the two general readers I get would want to look into what “Diggomg” is. So, I have left it intact as an cheap blog attraction strategy.
Besides, things happen for a reason, even if its just a mistyped word due to sloppy fingering…
Here’s the “dig”:
“Digging”1 is a common phenomenon in weather and jet streams, that’s usually the way storms get all the way down to Arizona because storms and jet streams plunge southward or to the southeast from the Pacific and that process we call, “digging.”
But here, an extraordinarily narrow current filled with little disturbances (kinks in the winds aloft) goes all the way from Spokane to Socorro Island in the tropics off Mexico, and that makes this map so unusual. You won’t see this everyday. You might want to archive it.
Here’s the next panel, 24 h later, and, as the current going to the south ends, it does so with a very strong current passing over southern Cal.
What’s the portent for Catalina weather?
Plenty!
The End
Hahaha—Just kidding. Ending right there would be cruel. It would be like TEEVEE people do, as in, “Will it be cold tomorrow? Stay tuned for a few hours and we’ll tell you!” We don’t do that here. Read on…..
Low pressure centers form in response to all this current plunging south off Baja, and those centers that form are WAY down off southern Mexico where its so unusual to have that happen in the wintertime. Down there, they get loaded with water and then begin moving north, almost like tropical storms, though having far weaker circulations.
That, my fellow weather friends, is the excitement ahead: plunging jet, surface low pressure centers forming deep in the Tropics, ones that then move north and are likely to affect the Southwest with generous rains. Its not in the bag, though, since lows like that are not well handled by the models, seem to have a mind of their own. So, in the end, the models are pretty clueless about where these juicy systems will end up.
HOWEVER, if you do rummage through the IPS MeteoStar progs, and I strongly recommend that, you’ll see that the rains begin affecting us possibly as early as the 27th. All in all, an unusual situation is unfolding in front of us over the next few days, more clouds and rains to dream about helping to spike our wildflower bloom that bit more.
BTW, that mod run from last night also had quite the Cal rain blaster beginning on the 30th, likely leading to flooding. Presently, none of that rain gets far enough south to affect us.
The Real End
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1Many of you probably won’t remember the little known, but nevertheless classic Bob Marley take on digging:
Who can forget those classic words, “Archaeologists are no wacko scientists.” (“Wacko” in the reggae dialect is pronounced like “waco”, as in Waco, TX.)
A pretty trash Wednesday
Wednesdays here in Catalinaland are, of course, trash and recycling days. And, along with T and R day, we found ourselves amidst some pretty pretty scenes, and in some cases, extraordinary ones,….and a little rain (a trace here in The Heights). I reprise those scenes in case you missed them; you probably did because you’re not some kind of photonut like the writer.
However, be advised that some of the mid-day photos will show smog, smog that was ingested into our poor clouds.
That smog bank, emitted from the Tucson area, almost reached Catalina yesterday during the day. It came up around Pusch Ridge and up along the west side of Samaniego Ridge and almost reached Catalina before its advance was halted by a north wind push and it retreated to the the south. My heart was beating so fast that it might overrun us! Marana and Oro Valley were heavily contaminated for awhile. And smog is like a cloud cancer1.
The weather ahead and way ahead
Well, RIP El Niño, an EN expert has written me just yesterday. Not much left of it he says, having a attached a map of ocean temperature anomalies to kind of rub it in. So we can’t count on hot water in the eastern Pacific to help fuel Southwest storms as was expected by the CPC and others last spring. But, that doesn’t mean that there can’t be a juicy late winter and spring, but the odds are down.
And, we won’t see clouds like yesterday until the long-foretold-by- spaghetti trough arrives around the 22nd of January, and with it some chance of rain. Doesn’t look like it could possibly be very much. BTW, Only 0.02 inches total in three days of light showers in the current situation. :{
BUT…..in the longer term, spaghetti is once again HINTING at a break-on-through-to-the-other side situation, your writer’s favorite as a kid, 10-14 days from now. A high builds up along the West Coast and in the eastern Pacific, gets too big for its britches, can’t maintain its giant north-south range, drifts farther and farther north and begins to break up, kind of looking like a horseshoe with the open end down (toward the south) as the jet stream “breaks on through to the other side” and “underneath”, that being a jet stream comes through from the warm subtropical central Pacific to the southern areas of the West Coast.
The north part of the West Coast and Gulf of Alaska are dominated by higher pressure with lower pressure to the south, so its kind of an upside-down-from-normal looking weather map, pretty rare, and that’s why its cherished by yours truly.
The End, at last!
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1As you know, when clouds are heavily contaminated with air pollution, they can’t rain as easily because the droplets are smaller inhibiting rain in two ways: by preventing the formation of drizzle and rain drops, and making it more difficult for ice to form since the formation of ice happens at higher temperatures when cloud droplets are larger. So, clouds have to be taller when they are polluted to produce rain, either way.
The rains (plural) ahead; reviewing “Lorenz” plots
It doesn’t get much better than this plot below for our Catalina weather 10-13 days ahead, which is always pretty fuzzy-looking as a rule. “Better” means for rain chances here, which is not everyone’s “better.”
Here’s the excitement:
Note blank area, that is, an area free of lines area centered on the gambling and other mischief-permitting State of Nevada1.
Note how the red lines dip down into Mexico, whilst the blue lines bulge northward into Canada along the West Coast. 
This error-filled plot2 tells us that it is almost certain that a trough will be in the lower middle latitudes where we are on January 22nd or so. Just about guaranteed.
In the meantime, those blue lines indicated that a ridge of high pressure is going to divert northern storms into Canada and southeast Alaska. Sometimes we refer to situations like this as “split flow”; the southern portions of storms in the Pacific move ESE toward southern California and the Southwest, while the northern portions split off to the NE, as is happening now. Weak upper level disturbances pass overhead, the next one tomorrow, and with it, a little more rain, the models say.
U of AZ mod has rain moving in toward dawn tomorrow with totals here amounting to about like that last rain, 0.10 to 0. 25 inches. Given model vagaries, probably the lower and upper limits here are likely to be 0.05 (worst case scenario) and 0.50 inches (best case scenario), so a best guess would be the middle of those, 0.275 inches, not too much different from the AZ mod. This is the sports-like part of weather forecasting. What’s your estimate, fantasy or otherwise?
BTW, there were quite a few stations reporting over an inch of rain in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties during the past 24 h, and so while weak, this system is pretty juicy, lots of liquid water as measured by dewpoints which should rise into the upper 40s to low 50s here during the next day. Also, there have been some embedded weak Cumulonimbus clouds and that’s a possibility here tomorrow, too, as the rainband goes by. You’ll be able to tell that by strong shafting below the clouds. As always, hoping we here in Catalina get shafted tomorrow.
But the ones these days are weak, while the split ahead in 10-13 days is likely to contain much stronger disturbances, well, at least ONE before it gives out.
Yesterday’s clouds
————————
1What a great and honest state motto that would be! “Nevada: That US State where gambling and other social mischief is OK with us!”
2Don’t forget that due to growth in computer capabilities, we can now have many model runs from the same data and be done with them in a timely way. These “spaghetti”, “ensemble” or better yet, “Lorenz” plots are computer model runs with deliberate (!) slight errors introduced to see how the model forecasts of high and low pressure centers changes, given a few slight errors. This is because there are ALWAYS errors in the data anyway, there are always error bars on measurements, etc. By doing this, only the strongest signals in the forecasts remain, indicated by grouping of lines these two colors of lines, red and bluish. So, the forecast of the jet stream coming out of Asia is very, very reliable. Things go to HELL, downstream (toward the east), but some likely patterns can still be seen, such as the one over the Southwest US where a trough/low is almost certain in our area then. Will it bring us rain in Catalina? Hell, I don’t know because if the trough is a little too far to the east of us, we might only get cooler. However, since Cloud Maven person has a postive rain bias, he will say, “Absolutely. There will be rain in the Catalina area on January 22nd or so”–the actual timing might be off by a day or so.
Water continues to flow in the Sutherland Wash!
It was a great day to hike to that wash, too. Began with a nice sunrise; missed the nice sunset, darn. Hope you didn’t.
But the highlight of the day was seeing that water was still running in the Sutherland Wash, some eight days after our great snow. Like so many things that happen to meteorologists, I didn’t expect it.
Your cloud day yesterday
Was an interesting day because at times it looked summer-like due to Cumulus formations over the high terrain, Kit Peak to the Catalinas. The scenes below are mainly from a hike1 out to some native rock etchings.
Detecting ice module below. I hope most of you logged this as your first ice sighting of the day.
While waiting for still more rain, The End.
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1Two of the people I was hiking with are very important meteorologists; faculty members at big universities with big Ph Ds, Wikipedia pages, give lectures all around the world about what they know. While I myself am not important, if you can align yourself with important people, befriend them in some way, and then go on to tell your friends that you have befriended that kind of person and do things with them, YOUR own mediocre life seems greatly enhanced. Let us not forget the guiding words to a peaceful, successful life as told to us in “Deteriorata.”
Computer model produces “monster” storm later in month
From yesterday’s 18 Z, or 11 AM AST WRF-GFS model, this behemoth. Seems to be reaching up to grab something! Millions of square miles affected! This is the SAME giant storm you saw predicted in an earlier prog and displayed here yesterday from the prior evening’s run, just more ominous-looking here in the run some 18 h later. Will it happen? Comes and goes in the mod runs, but “spaghetti” hedges it to happen, at least some rain.
In the meantime, we received 0.09 inches here in Catalina/Sutherland Heights last evening, another shot of rain, with more little systems like that one predicted to affect us during the coming week. If you were watching, you saw that you could see blue sky on the NW horizon while it rained steadily, most of the day to our S. Go here to get the Pima County ALERT totals, the greatest about a quarter to a third of an inch.
Cloud bases were pretty high all day, around 11,000 feet above sea level (8,000 to 9,000 feet above ground level). Some boring photos:
The End for now, more later
Testing 1-2-3 photo uploading in WP; today, snow photos from January 1st
In our last chapter, we saw that photos, perfectly fine ones here on the computer, were ending up corrupted when they arrived at WP for some reason. Unlike many computer problems, re-booting my own computer did not cure it. The next best thing to do, of course, is to wait and see if it just goes away2. And today, waiting has seemed to have cured the problem, since all the test photos up loaded got in OK. Check below.
Looks like our thick mid-level clouds overhead now have enough depth and moist air below them to drop measurable rain over the next 24-36 h. Will be happy if we get 0.10 inches here in Catalina. U of AZ mod total (last night’s 11 PM run) for here is more, 0.10 to 0.25 inches category, even better.
Some January 1st, 2015 snow photos. 3 inches total; 2 inches depth on ground at dawn (due to melting and settling).
OK, one more…. So far so good, suggests file corruption problem, wherever it came from, has been rectified somehow.
The weather way ahead
Ignoring the very light, sprinkly rains1 in the area now, ones that won’t amount to much, and since seeing predicted rain for us in the models is something like a little Valium for you, I thought I would post a couple of recently predicted Catalina rain boppers.
Of course, if we got all the rain forecast in the medium range, 10-15 days, that the models predict, we could grow pineapples and mangoes here without irrigation, so you have to keep that in mind as you look at these maps.
HOWEVER, CM, your own Catalina Cloud Maven person, DOES think that substantial rain from one of these is ahead for us, even if they come and go on the model runs.
Why?
Those “Lorenz plots” from the NOAA spaghetti factory. Of course, you knew I would say that, because you would say that, too.
Those plots are indicating a great chance for troughs in the lower flow band of the jet stream to be here in the Southwest in the middle to latter part of January. So, its not certain, but you lean that way. This is something you’ll also want to pass along to your less weatherwise neighbors today. To be wise in weather is to be great in a small way.
The End
PS: 3 F now in Asheville/Fletcher, NC, where bro lives. Man, they got kudzu there, too. How bad is that?
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1“Showers” is not the correct terminology for the of rain we have in the area right now. “Showers” of rain are marked by sudden changes in intensity since they are associated with cumuliform clouds that vary greatly in the horizontal, while light rain that changes intensity gradually falls from mostly flat or stratiform clouds that change gradually in the horizontal.
2I think it was Bob Metcalf, the inventor of the ethernet, who said:
“Good things come to those who wait.”
Rain changes to snow; 2 inch snow depth in the Heights
The total was likely more, but at 3:30 AM it was 1.5 to 2 inches in the deepest spots, and likely had melted down to those levels overnight. One report, down Swan and Golder Ranch Dr way, was 3 inches on a deck after midnight! And its so pretty with all the Christmas lights around!
What a great rain and snow storm, too! It fell so gently, and at the same rate, R- to R– (“light rain”, and “very light rain”, as we used to code it) for a total of at least 0.59 inches–some snow in the gauge has to melt before the final total is known. While it seems a little high, the Bridge at Golder Ranch Drive and the CDO wash is reporting 0.98 inches!
The regionwide amounts are at the Pima County ALERT gauges rolling archive site.
Here’s the unusually steady way that our rain/snow fell. Normally a storm system is composed of “rainbands” with higher intensities, and lower intensities, or even no rain in between them (see Elliott and Hovind, 1964, Journal of Applied Meteorology) if you think I made that up for some reason.
All of the high gauges had snow, and the snow has clogged the gauge so that there are a lot of bogus zero or tiny amounts in our mountains. It would appear that the liquid water totals will be an inch or more when its all melted and gone into the gauges today.
Yesterday’s fast moving middle and high clouds; about 100-120 mph with delicate patterns
In case you don’t believe me, here is the text version of the TUS sounding at 5 AM AST, yesterday morning, December 31st, last year. I thought maybe seeing some numbers would do you some good. Remember what Lord Kelvin said: “He whose knowledge cannot be expressed in numbers has but a meager, insufficient kind.”
Also, Kelvin-Helmholtz waves1 are named after the famous physicist; the surfers at The Mavericks, and other big wave locations like to see giant K-H waves roll in and break.
72274 TUS Tucson Observations at 12Z 31 Dec 2014
—————————————————————————–
PRES HGHT TEMP DWPT RELH MIXR DRCT SKNT THTA THTE THTV
hPa m C C % g/kg deg knot K K K
—————————————————————————–
926.0 751 11.8 -8.2 24 2.23 0 0 291.3 298.1 291.7
925.0 748 11.6 -8.4 24 2.20 0 0 291.2 297.9 291.6
918.0 812 14.2 -9.8 18 1.99 58 3 294.5 300.7 294.8
909.0 895 14.0 -11.0 17 1.83 132 6 295.1 300.8 295.4
906.9 914 13.8 -11.0 17 1.83 150 7 295.1 300.9 295.4
874.3 1219 11.2 -11.5 19 1.83 180 15 295.5 301.3 295.8
850.0 1454 9.2 -11.8 21 1.83 180 17 295.8 301.6 296.1
819.0 1760 6.4 -12.6 24 1.78 184 26 296.0 301.6 296.3
812.1 1829 6.1 -13.6 23 1.65 185 28 296.3 301.6 296.6
782.3 2134 4.7 -18.2 17 1.17 200 41 298.0 301.9 298.2
772.0 2242 4.2 -19.8 16 1.04 202 43 298.6 302.1 298.8
762.0 2348 4.2 -32.8 5 0.32 204 46 299.8 300.9 299.8
753.6 2438 3.4 -33.6 5 0.30 205 48 299.8 300.9 299.9
728.0 2717 0.8 -36.2 4 0.24 210 48 300.0 300.8 300.0
725.6 2743 0.7 -33.1 6 0.33 210 48 300.1 301.3 300.2
714.0 2873 0.2 -17.8 24 1.33 212 48 301.0 305.3 301.2
700.0 3031 -1.3 -16.3 31 1.54 215 47 301.0 306.0 301.3
690.0 3145 -2.3 -15.3 36 1.70 216 49 301.1 306.6 301.4
673.0 3343 -2.9 -15.9 36 1.65 217 52 302.6 308.0 302.9
662.0 3473 -3.7 -14.7 42 1.86 219 55 303.1 309.2 303.5
654.0 3569 -4.7 -9.3 70 2.90 219 56 303.1 312.3 303.6
646.6 3658 -5.1 -9.8 70 2.82 220 58 303.6 312.5 304.1
644.0 3690 -5.3 -10.0 70 2.79 221 58 303.7 312.6 304.2
638.0 3763 -5.3 -13.3 53 2.16 223 59 304.6 311.6 304.9
631.0 3850 -4.9 -33.9 8 0.35 225 59 306.0 307.2 306.0
621.0 3975 -5.5 -43.5 3 0.13 228 60 306.7 307.2 306.7
606.0 4166 -6.9 -32.9 11 0.40 233 61 307.2 308.6 307.3
598.2 4267 -7.2 -41.0 5 0.18 235 61 308.0 308.6 308.0
592.0 4348 -7.5 -47.5 2 0.09 235 62 308.6 308.9 308.6
552.5 4877 -10.8 -48.1 3 0.09 235 68 310.8 311.1 310.8
510.0 5491 -14.7 -48.7 4 0.09 231 70 313.3 313.6 313.3
500.0 5640 -16.1 -48.1 5 0.10 230 70 313.4 313.7 313.4
498.0 5670 -16.3 -45.3 6 0.13 230 70 313.5 314.0 313.5
495.0 5716 -16.7 -36.7 16 0.33 231 71 313.5 314.8 313.6
487.0 5838 -17.9 -32.9 26 0.50 232 72 313.5 315.3 313.6
474.0 6041 -19.7 -31.7 34 0.57 234 74 313.7 315.8 313.8
472.0 6072 -20.1 -28.1 49 0.81 235 74 313.6 316.4 313.8
470.5 6096 -20.1 -25.8 60 1.00 235 74 313.9 317.4 314.1
467.0 6151 -20.1 -20.5 97 1.61 235 75 314.6 320.1 314.9
Begin 100 mph winds at these levels (444 mb, and 6525 meters) where the Altocumulus/Cirrocumulus were and over 120 mph where the Cirrus was (289 mb, and 9551 meters). The “82”in the first line is the wind speed in knots, which is 100 mph.
444.0 6525 -22.7 -24.5 85 1.19 235 82 315.8 320.0 316.1
433.2 6706 -22.7 -24.7 84 1.20 235 86 318.1 322.3 318.3
431.0 6744 -22.7 -24.7 84 1.21 235 86 318.5 322.8 318.8
417.0 6987 -24.1 -26.3 82 1.08 235 85 319.8 323.6 320.0
400.0 7290 -26.1 -30.5 66 0.76 235 83 321.0 323.8 321.1
392.0 7436 -26.9 -31.4 66 0.71 235 82 321.8 324.4 321.9
381.9 7620 -28.4 -32.5 68 0.66 235 81 322.2 324.6 322.3
345.0 8342 -34.5 -36.7 80 0.48 235 86 323.4 325.3 323.6
337.0 8505 -35.9 -39.2 72 0.38 235 87 323.7 325.2 323.8
324.0 8777 -38.3 -40.0 84 0.36 235 89 324.1 325.5 324.1
307.0 9144 -41.9 -43.8 81 0.26 235 92 324.1 325.1 324.1
305.0 9188 -42.3 -44.3 81 0.25 235 93 324.1 325.1 324.1
300.0 9300 -42.7 -44.9 79 0.23 235 96 325.1 326.0 325.1
293.0 9459 -43.3 -45.8 76 0.22 236 97 326.4 327.3 326.5
Cirrus likely here:
289.0 9551 -43.7 -45.3 84 0.23 236 98 327.1 328.1 327.2
287.0 9598 -44.1 -47.7 67 0.18 236 98 327.2 327.9 327.2
283.0 9692 -44.7 -48.6 65 0.16 237 99 327.7 328.3 327.7
281.0 9739 -44.7 -47.7 72 0.18 237 99 328.3 329.1 328.4
275.0 9883 -45.7 -50.1 61 0.14 237 100 328.9 329.5 328.9
261.0 10228 -48.3 -51.5 69 0.13 239 102 330.0 330.6 330.1
255.0 10381 -49.5 -53.0 67 0.11 239 103 330.5 330.9 330.5
250.0 10510 -50.5 -55.5 55 0.08 240 104 330.9 331.2 330.9
246.0 10615 -51.5 -57.5 49 0.07 240 104 330.9 331.2 330.9
231.0 11019 -55.5 -58.8 66 0.06 242 106 330.8 331.1 330.8
224.0 11214 -56.1 -63.1 41 0.04 243 107 332.8 333.0 332.8
211.0 11592 -58.3 -66.3 35 0.02 244 108 335.1 335.2 335.1
206.0 11743 -57.5 -65.5 35 0.03 244 108 338.7 338.8 338.7
201.4 11887 -56.3 -68.9 19 0.02 245 109 342.8 342.9 342.8
201.0 11898 -56.2 -69.2 18 0.02 245 109 343.2 343.2 343.2
200.0 11930 -55.9 -69.9 16 0.02 245 109 344.1 344.2 344.1
191.9 12192 -57.8 -74.0 11 0.01 245 98 345.1 345.2 345.1
189.0 12288 -58.5 -75.5 10 0.01 345.5 345.5 345.5
185.0 12422 -58.5 -76.5 8 0.01 347.6 347.7 347.6
OK, images being corrupted again as they are imported into Word Press, something that started a few days ago. You can see the corruption by the linear shadings in these first two photos
Quitting here. This is pretty frustrating when you put in so much work trying to be silly, but at the same time also want to have great, and interesting photos!
May resume blog someday when this problem is fixed.
Just cold ahead for the next 24-48 h followed by a nice warming trend. No rain now in sight over the next two weeks, outside of a few mountain snow flurries tomorrow. “Trough Bowl” seems to be shifting eastward, which means repeated cold snaps east of the Rockies. It be replaced by a humping ridge over us, something that means the storm track is bumped up to the Pac NW and northern Cal.
The End
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1K-H waves:
Phenomenological extravaganza
First you had the rarely seen “Aircraft Produced Ice Particles” (APIPs, or “High Temperature Aircraft Contrails” (HTACs) in supercooled Altocumulus in the afternoon. Contrails were being produced in clouds that were “only” -20 C to -30 C (-4 to -22 F) and aircraft contrails were thought to be impossible at those temperatures, but rather, only at much lower ones, below -40 C (-40 F) or so.
Then, just after sunset, the heavy layer of Altocumulus produced a sun pillar! I was out in Saddlebrooke having dinner with friends after sunset, so had to leave dinner for about ten minutes, but I was so excited for you that I had to see it for myself, too. Since it would have been obscenely rude to tell my dinner friends the true reason why I left, when I got back after many minutes I told them I had to pee, and that seemed to go over pretty well I thought1.
Below, a coupla shots of that sun pillar I got while “peeing” on your behalf:
Let us look at our sounding and see if we can see how cold those Altocumulus clouds were:
Here are some of the magical, rare scenes from aircraft making ice canals in those very cold supercooled Altocumulus clouds:
Skipping to the chase, as hard as that is to do, this trail really lit up as it got to the 22 degree point from the sun, where mock suns and such happen, producing a rainbow of colors due to iridescence, a rainbow producing by very tiny ice crystals in this case, of the order of a few microns in size.
Guess about today’s clouds
Maybe a few Cirrus, patch or two of Cirrocumulus, and likely lenticular clouds, particularly off to the north.
The End
The big storm everyone’s talking about?
Oh, yeah, baby, its still comin’, begins on Wednesday, New Year’s Eve in the afternoon, continues for about 24 h off and on.
Bracketing possible precip totals: still 0.25 inches on the bottom (10% chance of less), 1.50 inches on the top (10% chance of more). Average of those two often brings the best estimate, which would be about 0.87 inches, somewhere in there. You know, when you deal with wobbly cut off lows, you just can’t be real confident in how much rain they’ll bring. However, it looks like the north part of the State will get the brunt in snow, which will be great for the water situation.
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1It would be fun to hear what your excuses were as a “CMJ”–Cloud Maven Junior, if you were in a similar predicament last evening and HAD to see that rare sun pillar, rather than meet new people at dinner who wouldn’t be able to understand you anyway because you are compulsed like that; leave a great dinner to go outside in cold air to take cloud photos.
Well, nobody really understands a CM.
I remember in grammar school and Junior High in Reseda, CA, when kids teased me on clear days , saying, “Hey, Artie! Is it gonna rain today?” Then they would laugh at me for being a CM before I even answered the question, knowing all the while what the answer was going to be. Still, out of civility, I would answer them: “No, we’re having Santa Ana conditions now and it can’t rain for at least five days”, but they would still be laughing in the midst of my explanation about why it wasn’t going to rain. Kind of a sad scene when you think about it, that is, how mean kids can be to kids who are different. Later, when I became a pretty good athlete, they liked me, which shows how important athletics is over knowing stuff, and helping you “fit in.”
2 “Pristine” means that can’t be gunked up by having collected cloud droplets on their faces because then the optics, like sun pillars, mock suns, that kind of thing can’t happen if the crystals are messed up with droplets on them or a lot of extra hexagonal arms sticking out of them, as in bullet rosette ice crystals.