There are a lot of photos here of yesterday’s clouds, considering it was a day with no rain. Oh, well, pretty normal for a cloud-centric person where the least cloud minutiae is somehow “interesting.”
8:13 AM. Very gratifying and a little surprising to see the first tiny Cu spring up so early in the morning off’n Lemmon. But, would it be only shallow moisture?10:13 AM. Also a promising sign, a thin turret rising out of a blob of small Cu. Mr. Cloud Maven Person apologizes in advance if this shot is somehow offensive by suggesting a middle finger.10:52 AM. Clouds mass above Ms. Lemmon, BUT, can they reach the ice-forming level where the temperature is as low as -10 C (14 F) or lower so that they can rain? I’m thinking it’ll be close, but was not real hopeful.11:19 AM. Amazing! On this expected to be dry day, Ms. Lemmon and her environs have created a Cumulonimbus cloud! Nowhere within a hundred miles was there another cloud like this!11:19 AM. Zoom of the icy “calvus” top in the middle (its not very fibrous yet, but is clearly loaded with ice, unlike the crinkly turret at left. Sometimes that “calvus” look is compared with the look of “cotton candy.” Within about 10 s, there was a rumble of thunder! You remember, cotton candy don’t you?12:56 PM. Pretty obvious here that the day was done as far as Cumulonimbus clouds over the Cat Mountains are concerned as the drier air moving in the from the west began to take its toll, as well as the cooling of the mountains by the prior thunderstorm. Or was it done? CM thought so, but maybe I shouldn’t tell you that, causing you to lose confidence.1:50 PM. A truly shocking sight to CM. The Cumulonimbus clouds were able to start up again!2:04 PM. Mr. Cloud Maven Person enjoys showing you how fast cloud tops can glaciate, and this was a nice case (Cb calvus stage here).5:23 PM. Well, it was all over by this time, no more Cbs, but here’s a Cumulus mediocris showing crepuscular rays (ray features due to high aerosol loading of the air).7:32 PM. Nice pastel-colored Cirrus spissatus cumulonimbogenitus (I couldn’t stop with just “Cirrus”, I had to ruin it with a long unpronounceable part. Oh, well, that’s what cloud-maven person does.
Next and maybe last rain of the summer (kidding only a little) looks to be around August 3rd still. Flow aloft looking awfully grim overall for summer rain in Catalina mod longer term predictions… This may be the worst thing I have ever said to a desert people during their “wet” season. Let’s hope we have about 5 inches on August 3rd or so!
Check the starting conditions on the US Drought Monitor Map below for July 22nd. Then look at the next map showing the 7-day radar-derived rain totals (from WSI Intellicast), ending at 5 AM AST today that hit those red and brown areas of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
What a great 7 days it has been, even if us here in Catalinaland haven’t been as fortunate.
Didn’t group together as hoped, though a wind shift aloft did happen last evening (from SSE to SSW, seen here). But there was nothing with it. Too dry I guess, too stable, viz., air locked into place near the ground. Boohoo. When the venerable U of AZ model outputs came out later yesterday morning finally, they knew that virtually nothing was going to happen beyond isolated thunderheads yesterday during the day. Well, you can’t wait that long, until late morning; you have to go with your gut sometimes, even if it might be wrong.
Some photos from our quiet day:
9:34. Cumulus began massing over Ms. Lemmon 3 h earlier than the prior day, a good sign for much more action than the prior day, which had none.11:58 AM. A Cumulonimbus was in progress (note frizzy, icy top at left)! View zoomed here to make cloud appear larger than it really was. But, ignoring that trickery, it did rain over there underneath it.. Was very hopeful at this point since large clouds were shooting upward S-W, too (see below).12:19 PM. Cumulonimbus and Cumulus congestus pock the SW-W horizon. Maybe they’ll form a line as that upper level windshift approaches….4:19 PM. Yes, finally, it appears that a line of Cumulonimbus and heavy Cumulus clouds are organizing upwind as I drove steeply downhill on Oracle Road.4:42 PM. But the clouds were also speaking to me, as they often do, sending a different message: “Help me! I’m drying up! Dry air is right behind me.” So, too much dry air, no clustering factor, in fact, and we were left with isolated, though pretty clouds at sunset (see below).7:22 PM. Shadow from a distant, lonely Cumulonimbus clouds provides a shady relief for a patch of Cirrus. Very dramatic scene, even if it was now obvious that the thought of a line of clouds moving in with rain was highly bogus. HOWEVER, an amazing amount of instability (as measured by CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) went overhead quietly last night (over “1900”) as the wind shift aloft approached; had it happened during the daytime, I think we might have had something to talk about. Hardly goes over “1900” in the daytime! Darn. You’ll know that something changed when you see the anvils go off toward the east, and not the west as happened yesterday.
Today’s clouds
Enough water in the air yet for isolated Cu and a Cb, probably much like yesterday. U of AZ mod sees a little afternoon rain in the Catalinas. But, really nothing good in sight now with the exception of around August 3rd. Poor desert. The Canadian model has a Big Rain Day (BRD) on August 3rd as remnant tropical storm moves up the Baja coast and the US model, too, has rain chances picking up then for just a day or two (only). This is getting to be a hard summer.
Another “awesome” display of lightning flashed over the Cat Mountains east of Catalina early last evening, accompanied by gusty northerly winds, but that fierce thunderstorm couldn’t make it over those mountains, but rather died on the way. Only sprinkles occurred here, giving us yet another “trace” of rain day. Kind of discouraging after the prior night’s nice little rain of 0.18 inches, one that also occurred after night fall. But as we know, weather never repeats itself exactly.
———-Yesterday’s major cloud mystery———–
Many of you, I am sure noticed the remarkable cloud scene below, perhaps as you came out of the house, or during your lunch hour, and likely puzzled over it the rest of the day. I, too, wondered how that little dot of cloud got so separated from its early Mt. Lemmon spawning grounds and brothers and sisters hovering over the mountain, trying to grow up. Notice that it seems like a puff of cloud, ragged on the bottom, a little rounder on the top. Could it be the top of a “smokestack” Cumulus that somehow we missed, whose connecting parts to Mt. Lemmon have evaporated? Its an important question that we shall try to answer.
12:51 PM. Cumulus humilis and fractus begin gathering over Mt. Lemmon. Recall, btw, that this kind of cloud scene began a little after 8 AM on the thundery day before, for perspective–we’re late here, not a good sign of active rain day.)
To solve this mystery, Mr. (he’s not a doctor, nor does he have an advanced degree of any kind!) Cloud Maven Person went to the U of Arizona Department of Atmospheric Meteorology and looked at yesterday’s cloud movie. These are top rated movies, and, if you’ve ever looked at them, you can understand why clouds and what the weather does can be hard to predict; locations of storms missed, etc. No computer model can see all the remarkable little cloud wiggles, sudden comings and goings, that you see in these movies, thus introducing slight errors that tend to degrade those model predictions over time. And lots of the time, the locations of the clouds at the outset of the model run is even markedly off! Below, yesterday’s complex cloud movie linked for you in the word, “Movie”:
You will barely be able to read the time of the day in the lower left hand corner, which adds further complexity in solving this problem, but if you look closely you will see that a minute or two BEFORE the shot above at 12:51 PM, and slender tower rose up from Ms. Lemmon, its trunk evaporating almost immediately, but the last thing to evaporate was the little puff above that sped westward toward Samaniego Ridge.
In conclusion, I think we have solved yesterday’s cloud mystery.
——————-end of cloud mystery module——————–
That such a cloud could shoot up and out from Mt. Lemmon like this one did was a sign that there was great environment for much larger clouds, at least in the fall of the temperature with height (lapse rate), but that more humidity was needed to keep them from evaporating as they tried to grow. It wasn’t long before the hopeful sign of a Cumulonimbus calvus (anvil not formed yet) appeared beyond the Catalina Mountains, and the chance of evening rains, as the models had predicted, began to look better.
2:05 PM. Cumulonimbus calvus top makes its appearance to the SE, likely 70 miles or more, and hours away.
5:33 PM. Threatening clouds and thunderheads were now moving into the Oracle/Mammoth areas, and the chances of a significant rain here were growing by the minute as major radar echoes approached from the east. I remember thinking how how happy I was that such a dreadful Cumulus day over the Catalinas was now going to be reversed by this onslaught of storms as the U of AZ model had predicted.
7:05 PM. Thus far, only “debris” clouds from the thunderstorms upwind had crossed the Catalinas, spreading westward toward the setting sun. But those dark clouds did provide the contrast as the setting sun lit up the Catalinas for this great scene.
7:22 PM. Multiple layers of clouds provide multiple sunset colors.
7:32 PM. That extra brightness in the center of the photo, if you noticed it, is called a “sun pillar”. Its due to a fall of plate-like, hexagonal ice crystals that fall face down and that enhances the reflected toward us. The sun set exactly below this bright spot. For a bit more on sun pillars, go here.
What seems to be ahead…..
The U of AZ mod hasn’t been updated as of this hour….so, being in a hurry, we’ll do an “SOP” forecast (you have to see Bob for a good one. I like Bob, too) but we have plenty of lower level humidity, and there appears to be a weak upper trough passing over us today, and that “should” help to collect storms into larger masses instead of just isolated ones. Oops, let me not forget our TUS NWS computer forecast for the Catalina area, too.
So, today might be the last day for a reasonably good chance of a major rain here in Catalina. After today, and for the next two weeks, the circulation pattern is not so great for summer storms, according to the NOAA spaghetti factory plots, seen here.
It seems more and more like we’re doomed to a drier than normal summer, darn it. (Missed those first great storms, too, that started our summer rain season.)
That’s about it for my cloud world. Camera will be ready for the black shafts of summer today!
Thin Cirrostratus overspread the sky at dinner time from the east, thickening into Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus mammatus (you can breath now), toward the Catalina Mountains and in the direction of Oracle. What a gorgeous sight this was!
While the storms that spawned this icy blob were mostly dead by this time, undercutting Altocumulus castellanus below the mammatus formation (barely visible in the photo below) gave hope that the day was not done as far as rain was concerned. And it wasn’t.
Round about midnight, the wind and one of the more intense lightning shows of the summer crept over the Catalinas and into Catalina, sparks flying. Strikes too close for CM to feel comfortable on the front porch in metal lawn furniture.
Sutherland Heights was watered with 0.18 inches, an OK amount, enough to revive some of the wilting desert weeds of summer. The Cat Mountains, not surprisingly, got the most. Ms. Sara Lemmon got 1.02 inches, Sam Peak, 0.83 inches. Hope they weren’t having an astronomy show at the Sky Center!
You can see the list of Pima County gauges here. LTGICCCCG1 still out there to the distant SSW at this hour, and major rains are still in progress in western Arizona, all good. (Those low lying areas of western Arizona such as along the Colorado River, have a “bi-modal” peak frequency of late evening and early morning rains, btw. Not much happens in the middle of the day to mid-afternoon out there.)
No clouds during the day yesterday, even over Mt. Lemmon, was a surprise, and is rare in my seventh summer here, and is a testimony to how dry the air was aloft over us even with some humidity near the surface. Things quickly changed during the night, and this morning, we’ve got it all, significant humidity at the ground all the way up to Cirrus levels. Perhaps due to the low starting temperatures associated with the rains in the area, the U of AZ mod doesn’t think Cumulonimbus clouds will form over our mountains until late afternoon into the evening hours.
In any case, should be a great day visually; lots going on. Thinning clouds this morning, then the rise of the Cumulus, and we hope, as the mod projects, another blast of rain in the evening and early nighttime hours.
7:26 PM.
6:00 AM. In case you missed it just now, this beauty.
The Weather WAY ahead
The NOAA spaghetti factory still is not showing patterns that are fruitful for generous rains overall in the next 15 days or so. So, anything we get should be considered quite a blessing during this time. Another giant trough is going to affect the East Coast and Midwest (the last one, a couple of weeks ago, brought the coldest July day in the 140 year history of Memphis records where for the first time the high temperature did not reach 70 F in July! Wow.) Those east of the Rockies may well wonder in the times ahead, what happened to summer? Of course, those cool temperatures might well be welcomed in late July and August, but the circulation pattern that brings them is also not so great for summer rains here. Oh, well, hoping for the best.
Sincerely, your CM.
——————– 1Weather text for “Lightning in the cloud, cloud-to-cloud, and cloud-to-ground.” A weather report amended with this comment, LTGICCCCG, was always one of the most exciting that you could see reported from a station, especially if you lived in lightning-deprived areas like California and Washington as did CM.
6:22 AM. Ridin’ tall on “Jake” yesterday morning with riding pal, Nora B, on “Dreamer.” It was a pretty dusty ride1 due to all the dust in the air, to be redundant. We set out around dawn. It was a ride amid the sad summer grasses and weeds we now have due to the “furnace” weather of late. Can they come back with a some decent rains? Hope so.
Now for some clouds, ones that spurted up awful fast yesterday. Movie here; still shots chronicling your cloud day below:
8:42 AM. First cloud shred forms over Ms. Mt. Lemmon. This early shred is a good sign for large buildups to develop early in the day.
10:06 AM. The vertical rise of this small cloud is another good sign that the atmosphere is “cocked” so to speak, to produce large storms. Got pretty excited and hopeful seeing this tower shoot up from The Lemmon.
11:04 AM. The top of this Cumulus congestus overhang began to show ice about this time and a few drops fell out here.
11:34 AM. First cloud to ground strike just about the time of this photo and came down from the overhang directly down in the center of the photo to that slanting ridge lline. Now here’s an example where the LTG strike is not where you might think it should be, perhaps closer to the lower cloud base to the right. Sometimes when the tops lean over as much as they did yesterday (see prior photo), it has seemed like you can get some rogue strikes way out away from the rain areas upwind. And so great caution is required when you see our tops streak out away from the main body of the rain and lower cloud; you might think you’re safer than you really are under that non-precipitating overhang.
2:01 PM. Cumulus congestus top with ice top tip just behind it, and an converting-to-ice Cumulonimbus calvus (“bald”) top in the upper center. Can you pick them out? Next photo has writing on it for clarity.2:01 PM. Same photo as above but with writing on it.
3:43 PM. Scene of the day, the “waterfall” near the Charouleau Gap. Lightning was extremely frequent, and thunder continuous.
3:52 PM. A similar dump hit Marana Avra Valley with one gauge reporting 1.97 inches!
Today?
U of AZ mod run from last night, surprisingly, has showers around today, but nothing near Catalina. Hmmmm. Can that be right? Hope not. In fact, I am going to wish that it is totally wrong! Don’t forget to check out what Bob says, too. He’s our resident expert on storms, and a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, a huge honor.
Tomorrow will be better, the model sez.
———————-
1“Dusty Ride”? Hmmmm. Once again, another great name for a western singer–I can’t believe how many I have come up with! “Dusty” this, “Dusty” that! The creativity just goes on and on.
With a high in Sutherland Heights/Catalina yesterday of 107 F, maybe fully baked is more appropriate, though “half-baked” does align itself pretty well with this blog. It was so hot in TUS yesterday, the venerable U of AZ sounding plot, constructed on a “Skew-T” diagram, was not able to capture the surface temperature at the time of the balloon launch in Tucson. Don’t see that too often. Looks like the horizontal scale (abscissa) needs to be extended to 50 or 60 C (113 to 131 F). Hahaha, sort of. See below:
The 5 PM AST balloon sounding launched from Tucson yesterday. Note white line for the temperature and how it goes “out of bounds.” Penalty!
The moist air surge predicted by the models yesterday, the one rushing up the Gulf of Cal, is happening, though maybe at a walk or trot instead of the “gallup” foretold by the models. So, if you get up and notice that the dewpoint is over 50 now, that why; you’re experiencing the rush of humidity from tropical sources.
And with the half-baked air by afternoon, why it makes sense to anticipate a full-growed (as we westerners would say) Cumulonimbus cloud in the vicinity today, yay. BTW, if would be even that bit hotter without all the haze due to dust, and maybe some smoke, since the sun was dimmed that bit glaring down at us through that stuff.
Your clouds from yesterday, such as they were:
1:40 PM. As humilis as humilis can get. Prescott was having a thunderstorm at this time, and you can’t even see its top, that’s how bad the visibility was. (Of course, in LA, or Bakersfield, yesterday would have been a stupendously clear day!)
7:00 PM. The clouds filled in a little toward sunset, and some anvil Cirrus from Cumulonimbus clouds in the western part of the State, blocked the sun as it set.
Its 86 F at 4:21 AM… Yeow! Has this happened before? I’m feeling like a Phoenician, where with all that pavement up thataway, they have the hottest nighttime temperatures, biggest “urban heat island”) of any city in the land. Often 15 degrees cooler in the country outside that vast sprawl of pavement.
Started to get real discouraged yesterday as afternoon started with nothing beyond Cumulus mediocris over the Catalina Mountains as of 1:30 PM; where were those growth spurts predicted by the model over the Catalina Mountains?
1:28 PM. Cumulus humilis collect over the Catalinas. It was a shocking sight.
Looking downstream from the Catalinas and over Oro Valley, where a cloud street was trailing off, finally one turret climbed high enough to produce a little rainshaft! Wasn’t even sure that even rain would fall until I saw that shaft.
1:47 PM. A slight rainshaft was beginning to fall from the clouds streaming away from the Catalinas! I was so happy since I had purported that there was a 100 % chance of rain in our area that very morning. So my happiness was really all about ME.
In case it was the only shower of the day, I zoomed in on it to make it look bigger than it really was for my reader. Its an old photography trick I learned early in my weather forecasting career.
1:47 PM. As you can see, up close its quite a large rainshaft…. Perhaps there would be thunder, which was also predicted in that morning’s clever title, “Thunderbrew on tap.”
This meant that tops had ascended through a slight inversion, capping yesterday’s clouds and had climbed to at least 22 to 23 KFT above sea level yesterday where the temperature was at least a low as -10 C, necessary for ice formation on most days in Arizona. Ice, as you know, is almost always required for rain here, even on the hottest days, strangely believe it.
Finally, within another hour, thunder began to be heard from enlarging clouds around us:
4:38 PM. Thundershowers, pretty weak ones, were now falling close to us, down there on Catalina State Park, and on this side of Pusch Ridge.6:17 PM. More thunder rang out to the north, if thunder can ring. Was feeling great by then, except that it had not rained on me, though it looked like it could. Ended up with just a sprinkle after dark.
6:52 PM. Scene of the day might have been this thundery cloud “orifice.”7:28 PM. The day ended with a fairly dramatic, “pastelly” sunset.
Today’s clouds?
Gee, mods have dried us out today, so only heat, almost no chance of rain here today! As with yesterday, that easterly wind will cause clouds, once formed late this morning, to drift downwind off the Catalinas and over Catalina and the north portion of Oro Valley. So, if you want to find some cloud shadows to be under, those are the places to be at the hottest time of day. Could be some virga, but likely little if any will reach the ground today due to the “deep frying” aspect of the air below cloud bases.
Way ahead?
Spaghetti makes it look like very few good summer rain days in the next two weeks since it indicates that our big upper high will be close to overhead rather than to the north of us. Darn.
100% chance that those of us domiciled in Catalinaland will hear thunder today. Rain-cooled air blowing at us? Yep. Rain? Maybe, 60% chance at my house; 100 percent chance between the Catalinas and the Tortolitas up toward Park Links Road somewhere. Namely, there will be TSTMS, but exactly where no one knows. Clouds should pile up early on the Cats in more or less a line during the late morning, early afternoon, then as yesterday drift off toward the west-northwest, taking their rain with them, spawning more developments. The summer rain season begins anew!
Check out this for the depiction of hourly rain situations predicted for today, courtesy of our U of AZ Weather Department.
4:10 PM. Coming at you! Something like this, what we saw yesterday, should happen today, except they should blossom into full Cumulonimbus clouds. Dewpoints are up! Surf’s up! (Somewhere.)7:32 PM. Nice sunset consisting of Altocumulus cumulogenitus clouds (originated with those mountain Cumulus clouds earlier in the day).
Many of you are starved to see some low clouds rather than a few Cirrus or Altocumulus clouds under a blazing sun, about 27 million degrees F in the core, only 10,000 F at the surface we call the “photosphere”, what we see up there. (And you think its hot in Arizona!)
So, I thought I would provide some relief in this time lapse video of the clouds of Seattle from yesterday, as provided by the University of Washington’s Weather Department. You’ll see some great Stratus, maybe some Stratocumulus, and later, little bulging Cumulus that rise up to as much as 5,000 feet (!) above the ground. Maybe some of your neighbors are temperature refugees in Seattle now, so it will be great to see what they are experiencing and logging in their cloud diaries. And, we’ll be checking this day when they get back, for sure.
The current dry spell begins to fade as the days go by now.. In the meantime, since this site is mainly for the display of pretty clouds and not of any other value, here are some shots from the past few days. Have left the captions for you to formulate in silence.
