Cloud-maven – Page 49 – About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno

Let’s look a ahead to the 2014-15 winter, which might be one; Feb to close out on a cool note

We got a El Nino in the works, to be colloquial there for a second. Will take a bite out of drought, and the California coastline due to big storms and waves next winter when it happens. See old graphic below. Supposed to develop during the next few months, and then be full blowed by fall, to continue a western dialect. Pretty exciting, thinking about an El Nino. This word, BTW, from Nate¹, or rather, indirectly, from his El Nino expert forecasting buddies.

Summer rain’s not so much affected by an El Nino, but it could mean a better chance of a rogue tropical storm affecting us in the fall because they’re stronger/longer as they sometimes push northward at that time of the year, and then our chances to get substantial rains during the winter season are pretty good , particularly late winter, Jan through May. Obviously, pretty desperate, talkin’ about next fall and winter here in summer’s February.

1997-98 version, which was really a huge one!

Just ahead, a cold one (or two)

Check these out, spaghetti people:

Valid 5 PM Feb 20th. Guaranteed in the cold trough bowl. — Valid 5 PM Feb 20th. Guaranteed in the cold trough bowl this day. Get jackets ready.

Valid Feb 26th at 5 PM AST. Pretty strong signal that we’re still in at least a cool trough. Rain, “iffy” in these situations but can’t be counted out.

The End.

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1Now with the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Monty (Monterrey, CA)

This page intentionally left blank due to a lack of measurable rain last night

OK, its not completely blank…

Only a couple of drops here overnight. Measured around Reddington Pass and in the other Catalina Foothills, the well-to-do one, but that’s not good enough for a post. Hell, the Altocumulus/Altostratus clouds weren’t even that interesting yesterday, but if you do want to see them again, go here.

Nothing in the way of rain in sight now for another two weeks. Ugh.

Also, I am against “geoengineering” where you mess with low clouds like Stratocumulus via aerosols to make them brighter on the top, thus, darker on the bottom, to reflect more of the sun’s light back into space. Thought you would like to know that. Lotta money about to head into crackpot (IMO) preliminary study schemes like that now days. Haven’t we made a big enough mess without making more of a mess with some ludicrous attempt to change clouds over vast regions of the earth, as would be necessary to have the “desired” effect of cooling it?

Light rain to fall in Catalina tonight

Don’t take my word for it; take this, from the University of Arizona’s Beowulf Cluster (BC) mass of computations:

: Total precipitation predicted for Catalina (0.01 to 0.10 inches) ending at 5 AM tomorrow morning. Some to the north fell yesterday afternoon, but it wasn’t that much. Sure, its yesterday’s model crunch based on data that’s almost 24 h old, but its got some rain in it, and glimpsing the incoming cloud mass, now located in western AZ and southern Cal, this looks a little reasonable to even a little low now. thinking now that it will be more than 0.10 inches; might get 0.11 inches here in Catalina. Have dip stick (rain gauge one) ready. A new set of computations is not yet ready, but by the time you crawl out of bed and while I’ve been working, the link above will have new information that might be a little different than what I am looking at here at 4:10 AM AST. But I have to move on now!

So, look for lots of middle clouds (Altocumulus/Altostratus) again today, but likely bases lowering during the day and looking pretty threatening by evening. Check this sounding sequence from the BC and how the dewpoint and temperature lines come together at lower heights during the day today. So lots of clouds to write about in your weather diary today, pretty much like yesterday¹.

No rain and lots of warming ahead after this.

Yesterday’s clouds

Perhaps first, before moving on to something as ephemeral as clouds, we should start with something contemplative; an aphorism written by a man who compared humans and their lives to the activities of arachnids. Pretty effective I thought.

Chief Seattle, too, by his very namesake, reminds us of the recent big Superbowl victory, after which 700,000 Chief Seattleites gathered in the streets yesterday to see the parade of players and other festivities, weaving their own distinctive strands of life.

Sanctuary Cove Park, Marana, maybe. Then again, it might be in Tucson. Nobody really knows where these towns start and end.

Day started with an overcast of Altostratus with mammatus/testicularis (which I showed yesterday) that devolved into an Altocumulus overcast most of the rest of the day, example below:

12:45 PM. Altocumulus opacus. No virga evident.

2:52 PM. VIrga and light snow top Mt. Lemmon. Hope you logged it. I did and I was about 15 friggin' miles away. — 2:52 PM. Thin wisp of vIrga and light snow top Mt. Lemmon (center peak). Hope you logged it. I did and I was about 15 friggin’ miles away. But don’t feel bad. I sometimes miss things myself. You just have to bear down, as we say around here, and be fanatical about it. That’s the strand I want you to weave in this life.

3:46 PM. Altocumulus lenticulars form under an Altocumulus perlucidus layer. View from Sanctuary Cove Park, very nice little loop walk there.

4:14 PM. More isolated examples of Altocumulus lenticularis near the Tucson Mountains.

Inappropriately blooming wildflower. Global warming hitting hard in AZ this winter so far. — Seen in Sanctuary Cover Park, inappropriately blooming wildflowers. This MIGHT be a purple “brown-plumed wire lettuce”, best match I could find in Wildflowers of Arizona by Rick and Nora Bowers. Message sent: global warming hitting hard in AZ this winter so far.

On the other hand, to be fair to the earth, global warming’s on the run in the Great Lakes area. Check this “find” out, courtesy of that big troublemaker and former WA State Climatologist, Mark Albright who enjoys finding discrepancies in fashionable postulations, causing people to think, maybe explain things they weren’t expecting:

20140203180000_CVCSWCTGL_0007500871 — The green line is the median ice coverage for the Great Lakes. Good grief, has it been cold around there or what? I guess it all evens out, and for some folks, that’s a problem these days.

The End.

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¹I did notice that the big clearing didn’t get here yesterday as early as was thought, that clearing between yesterday’s trough and clouds those in this incoming one today and thought I would hide the discussion of that forecasting error in a footnote. But, maybe the whole point of life is learning from your mistakes, taking them head on. Then at the end, when you’ve finally think you’ve got it all right, you die. Doesn’t seem right.

Smoothies

7:46 AM. Stratocumulus lenticularis castellanus (has spires), an oxymoronic cloud. You would call this Stratocumulus because its low enough to top Ms. Mt. Lemmon. While some turrets can be seen, others are causing shadows. Have never really seen something quite like this and I look a LOT.

10:35 AM. Stratocumulus lenticularis on the Catalinas. The moist air is resisting like mad being lifted over the Catalinas. Oddly, once condensation occurs a bit of heat is released and on the left you see that it was enough heat to allow a Cumulus turret to rise out of the smooth cloud. This is pretty darn rare site, seeing such smoothness AND Cumulus rising out of the same deck.

3:46 PM. Cumulus humilis, no ice, except in those Cirrus clouds on the right.

5:28 PM. Sun dog, or mock sun, also “parhelia” in natural Cirrus and in a contrail. The parhelia is likely brighter in the contrail since the simple hexagonal (six-sided) plate-like ice crystals that cause parhelias are smaller and more numerous in the early stages of a contrail.

Today’s clouds

Much like two days ago. Higher based Stratocumulus/Altocumulus with patches of heavy virga and sprinkles around.
Back edge of the cloud mass times in around 2-4 PM. Might be a little early for a great sunset, but just in case, have camera ready.

Looking farther ahead….

Still mainly dry through the next two weeks, though close call on the 7th, a situation that appears much like today, That close rain call NOW appears in both the Canadian and US WRF-GFS models (yesterday they were vastly different). So, with that, a chance of a few hundredths here after nightfall on the 6th into the morning of the 7th.

Spaghetti, in a dismal series of plots, also shows little hope for rain here through the 20th. So, even with mistakes in the initial analyses, deliberate ones to see how different the forecast maps turn out, we still can’t exit our drought! Oh, me. Poor wildflowers.

The End (did you see the giant mammatus/testicularis to the north this morning? If not, here it is:

7:15 AM today. Altostratus opacus mammatus.

Hydrometeors shower down on Catalina

Note redundancy in title. A “meteor” is already going down, so you don’t need the word “down.” Hahaha.

They were small drops, some were as small as drizzle-sized (500 microns in diameter or smaller) and too far apart to be called an occurrence of “drizzle”, but they fell throughout Catalina allowing Catalinans to register a trace of rain yesterday, a trace that was not predicted by the best model we have around these parts just hours before the “rain” occurred. It’s not clear what the benefit of a trace of precipitation is, but we are sure some ants and other insects were made quite happy yesterday as a virga from a higher level snowstorm spit out a few drops.

Drops that reach the ground in these kinds of situations are due to melted aggregates or clusters of single snow crystals locked together that most people would call “snowflakes.” Single crystals can never make to the ground on a day like yesterday. And, “yep”, that “fog” you saw drooping down on the Catalinas from time to time yesterday afternoon was due to light snow.

No Catalina, Arizona, rain in US mod forecasts through the next 15 days (!–just horrible) as the US models continue to evaporate rain chances on the 6th-8th. A few days ago the system going by then was supposed to bring a substantial rain to most of Arizona. Now its just a dry trough passage in the model, like at watering trough¹ with a hole in the bottom. Phooey.

Oddly, the Canadian model, which first calculated a bust for rain here on the 6th-8th when the US model had lots, now has MORE rain in it near us here in Catalina on the 6th-7th than the lugubrious US model. The US model has NO RAIN whatsoever in the WHOLE State of Arizona ending on the morning of the 7th! How odd is that?

Below is the salubrious Canadian depiction for Arizona rain by the morning of the 7th, a rain that could be good for health of all of us and our desert:

Valid at 5 AM February 7th. Ttrough is already past us, but the Canadians believe that widespread rain will have occurred in Arizona during the prior 12 h as the trough went overhead. No such widespread rain in US model based on the same global dataset, the one based on 5 PM AST obs yesterday. — Valid at 5 AM February 7th. The upper level trigger for clouds and rain, a trough, is already past us and in western New Mexico, but the Canadians believe that widespread rain will have occurred in Arizona as it went by during the prior 12 h ! See lower right hand panel green and blue areas; use microscope.

Its interesting how you still can remember with fondness those people who affected your life so much, even if for a short time.

Below, after an important aside, your cloud day picture jumble, one that began with a brief, but memorable sunrise “bloom”, and one that also ended with great sunset color on the Catalinas.

9:43 AM. A brief clearing of a couple of hours duration led to pretty scenes of Altocumulus floccus trailing virga.

8:21 AM. Altocumulus floccus/castellanus trailing long trails of snow virga trails.

The End.

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¹Images of watering troughs, in case you’re from out-of-state and a city person and unfamiliar with western culteral expressions and don’t know what a watering trough is.

————–sports cultural note re Seattle—————

The polite, law-abiding folk of Seattle, celebrating Super Bowl victory at an intersection, waiting for the light to change.

Cool and pretty

I’m talking about your clouds and weather day yesterday, and definitely NOT about someone whom I shall call, “Sharon¹“, that happened to me 33 years ago and whose birthday was yesterday, Ground Hog Day, a day commemorated by a 1993 movie about a weatherman. Seemed “right”, too, to be a weatherman with a girlfriend whose birthday was on Ground Hog Day. I loved her so much! Was definitely in the first stage of the psychologist’s lab standard, the Passionate Love Scale² ; euphoric when things were going right, and also a stage characterized by delusional and obsessive thinking. (Haven’t we all been there at some point?) Had a great sense of humor and playfulness about her, too. As it turned out, though, I wasn’t good enough for her. (I really wasn’t; she was a med student and all that; very brainy, so there was quite a mental contrast.)

Oh, yeah, NOW for the clouds yesterday on a cool day which is what I was talking about to being with; high only 55 F here in the “Heights”:

6:06 PM. Altostratus, of course, with slight virga consisting of very light snow. Too thick to be Cirrus.

3:18 PM. Altocumulus perlucidus. What the temperature? In the middle of the photo there’s an ice canal–hoped you logged it in your weather diary. That ice canal was caused by an aircraft passing through a cloud that’s well below freezing. The exact reason for the sudden freezing of drops in that cloud is still being investigated. However, when you see this phenomenon, an ice canal or hole punch cloud, I want you to FIRST think of ME, because our paper on this phenomenon was rejected twice back in the early 1980s before being published, and second, when you see this happen, estimate that the droplet cloud was probably at -20 C (-4 F) or colder. Yes, THAT cold and still composed of droplets! Therefore it produces a buildup of ice on an aircraft when one flies through it, but then the aircraft changes that by converting to ice behind it! How strance is that?. (I deliberately misspelled “strange” to see if anyone has read this far.)

3:19 PM. Frosty the Lemmon. Good sign of rime icing on those trees up there. You see how frosty they look? Likely because of supercooled cloud droplets hitting the trees and freezing during all the low clouds of the previous day. Very pretty.

2:19 PM. “Angel’s hair”, Cirrus fibratus. The delicateness of those striations are amazing when you think that they are traveling in air moving at around 80 mph up there around 30-odd thousand feet above us.

The weather ahead

Can this really happen when such a great trough goes by as later today and tomorrow? Check out our missing rain, being in a rainless “sandwich”, from the U of AZ fabulous Beowulf Cluster run from 11 PM AST just last night, though not so great an output.

Below, the predicted total rain in Arizona as this great trough goes by. NIL in Catalina! The map below is a forecast of all the rain areas and their amounts expected by 2 PM AST tomorrow afternoon. Fortunately, it has been, as in basketball, “rejected.” Read details in caption.

As happens in basketball, I am rejecting this, sending it to the floor! Expect a trace to maybe a tenth. No drop will escape my attention! — Expect a trace to maybe a tenth. No drop will escape my attention!

The End. I hope you’re happy now since I have titillated you with a personal story in a cheap attempt to raise blog ratings. Haven’t broke into the top 10 million blogs yet. But maybe if min is more like “Entertainment Tonight”, I make that breakthrough.

———–

BTW, if you haven’t heard yet: “Seattle Celebrate (sic) SB Win!”, a title and article written by a possible drunken AP writer after the SB, if you’re interested.

————–
¹Defintely NOT a picture of “Sharon”, but its how she MIGHT have looked had she been in my Seattle living room with her son, New Year’s Eve, 1981. And, of course, I found someone I loved just as much later…

²Don’t believe me that such a thing exists? Read the first column of SCI CLIPPINGS CAUDATE OVER HEELS IN LOVE 001, no less. Probably goes farther in its discussion of these kinds of things than we really want to know about and how they came to know them…be advised.

Interesting sights; rain still on the Catalina event horizon

Too dark for the best sight, our 14-year old flat-coated retriever mix dog, at first seeming to be walking slowly up the dirt driveway in back of the house with another dog. I could just make out two outlines. I wondered whose dog had gotten out and was in our backyard? Moving closer, I see that our dog is walking side-by-side up the dirt driveway, not with another dog, but with a javelina, like they’re buddies! Then two more javelinas came out of the brush to join the slow walk uphill forming a peccary herd containing a dog! After about 10 yards of this group slowly ascending the driveway toward me, the javelinas turned off into the brush. Too dark for photos; dang.

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Next, its raining in Tucson and I am eastbound on Prince Avenue about to turn left on to Oracle. I was feeling good that its raining downtown, and it was not just here in Catalina that rain had fallen. A car swerves across a lane in front of me to turn left on Oracle, and it turns out to be the best car ever evaluated by Consumer Reports! Its the all electric Tesla Model S!

I am not a car buff, but this was a very great sighting for anyone knowing much about the direction cars are taking! Its made by a tiny company in Fremont, California. No gas used of course, its not a hybrid; you have to find a charging station. But those stations are increasing pretty fast. You can go about 200 miles or so on a charge.

Anyway, if you have $90,000 or so, I think you should buy one right away. No, really. It would be worth it to be an “early adopter” and drive the market forward so that the price descends rapidly.

Yesterday morning in the rain, on Prince Avenue, a Tesla pulls in front of me! From the "Not-taken-while-driving" collection; this photo yours for $11,000. — Yesterday morning in the rain, on Prince Avenue, a Tesla pulls in front of me! And, like me, they’re from Washington!
From the “Not-taken-while-driving” collection; this photo entitled, “Tesla in the Tucson Rain,” yours for $11,000 due to rain falling in Tucson simultaneously with a Tesla Model S sighting, an extremely rare combination of sights that your friends will envy.

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Sports AND clouds….

The Seattle Seahawks are in the Superbowl today. The city where I worked is going bonkers over this because besides the team, they really like some of the players, like Russell Wilson whose really too small to be an NFL QB, and hasn’t been in jail ever. The entire city has come together, including liberals and conservatives to root on the Seahawks! Reminds one of the afterglow of the first Gulf War when Arab cars were sporting American flags!

Cells in the rain

7:50 AM. Rainsahft indicates a buildup in the tops above. These were the kinds of cells that moved over Catalina during the early morning hours. Likely would have looked like soft Cumulonimbus clouds if on top in an aircraft. — 7:50 AM. This well-defined rainsahft indicates a buildup in the tops above. These were the kinds of cells that moved over Catalina during the early morning hours. Likely would have looked like soft Cumulonimbus clouds if on top in an aircraft.

9:43 AM. Reflected light from the rain drops lingering on this blue palo verde gave it something of a lighted Christmas tree look.

10:44 AM. As the sun launches convective currents on a breezy day, and with some resistance to cloud top heights, lines of clouds form, something we call a "cloud street." This one came all the way from the Tucson Mountains to the SSW of us. When showers start to fall from these clouds, the downdrafts in them usually dissipate the line and it become chaotic, as happened over downtown Tucson later that morning. — 10:44 AM. As the sun launches convective currents and Cumulus clouds on a breezy day, and with some resistance to cloud top heights due to a stable layer, lines of clouds form, something we call a “cloud street.” This one came all the way from the Tucson Mountains to the SSW of us to just about over Catalina. When showers start to fall from clouds lined up like this (because the tops have gotten high enough to form ice), the downdrafts in those showers usually dissipate the line and it becomes pretty chaotic and broken up into cells, as happened over downtown Tucson later that morning.

5:26 PM. By late afternoon there were some fabulous lighting scenes on the Catalinas, here looking NE toward Charouleau Gap. — 5:26 PM. By late afternoon there were some fabulous lighting scenes under the Stratocumulus clouds on the Catalinas, here looking NE toward Charouleau Gap.

The weather ahead…

Looks like a minor rain in the works for Monday into Tuesday evening. Probably will begin in the mid-day hours and probably will only produce a few hundredths to a tenths is all here in Catalina. There’ll be more snow in the mountains, so that will be good to keep some of the creeks running.

The following storm, the one that looked substantial, has been diminishing in the model runs of the past day or so. Dang. The Enviro Can mod has given up completely on rain here in this trough that moves in on Thursday and Friday, the 7th and 8th. Then, voila, the US one began to follow suit, though showing a less bountiful rain, but at least still has some beginning Friday the 7th and then has it dribbling into Saturday, the 8th (this from the 11 PM AST global run from last night). Looking more like maybe a quarter inch of rain here in that one, but very dicey now in view of those Canadian calculations. Sometimes their model does better than ours.

Still looking like a LONG, warm dry spell after next Saturday….

The End.

0.05 inches falls in Catalina!

Just when you thought it couldn’t rain anymore, blammo, three, no, FOUR, no FIVE hundredths fall! Started just after 3 AM this morning, than another hundredth just now before 7 AM. How great is this! Didn’t see it coming, either.

From the Pima County ALERT gauges:

Gauge    15         1           3          6            24         Name                        Location
    ID#      minutes    hour        hours      hours        hours
    —-     —-       —-        —-       —-         —-       —————–            ———————
Catalina Area
    1010     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.12         0.12      Golder Ranch                 Horseshoe Bend Road in Saddlebrooke
    1020     0.00       0.00       0.12        0.12         0.12      Oracle Ranger Stati          approximately 0.5 mile southwest of Oracle
    1040     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.00      Dodge Tank                   Edwin Road 1.3 miles east of Lago Del Oro Parkway
    1050     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.00      Cherry Spring                approximately 1.5 miles west of Charouleau Gap
    1060     0.00       0.04       0.04        0.04         0.04      Pig Spring                   approximately 1.1 miles northeast of Charouleau Gap
    1070     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.00      Cargodera Canyon             northeast corner of Catalina State Park
    1080     0.00       0.00       0.16        0.16         0.16      CDO @ Rancho Solano          Cañada Del Oro Wash northeast of Saddlebrooke
    1100     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.00      CDO @ Golder Rd              Cañada Del Oro Wash at Golder Ranch Road

Santa Catalina Mountains
    1030     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.00      Oracle Ridge                 Oracle Ridge, approximately 1.5 miles north of Rice Peak
    1090     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.00      Mt. Lemmon                   Mount Lemmon
    1110     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.00      CDO @ Coronado Camp          Cañada Del Oro Wash 0.3 miles south of Coronado Camp
    1130     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.00      Samaniego Peak               Samaniego Peak on Samaniego Ridge
    1140     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.00      Dan Saddle                   Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge
    2150     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.00      White Tail                   Catalina Highway 0.8 miles west of Palisade Ranger Station
    2280     0.00       0.00       0.04        0.12         0.12      Green Mountain               Green Mountain
    2290     0.00       0.00       0.00        0.00         0.00      Marshall Gulch               Sabino Creek 0.6 miles south southeast of Marshall Gulch

Generally these kinds of amounts were observed over most of Arizona north of Tucson. More chances for brief rain today, too, all of a sudden. Mods had nothin’ yesterday, and YET, here it is, a rain.

Great sunset last evening, too, in case you missed it. Me, too. Forgot my camera when going out, but did glimpse it as we drove home.

When you’re in the bowl, the “trough bowl: that is, good things happen, and like this morning’s surprise rain, being in the bowl means more rain might fall than expected, since those upper level troughs and all the good things they do, get stronger when they’re approaching the place where the “bowl” is, technically in the “mean trough position” where troughs reach their most southern latitudes. And this is where we will be for at least the next week.

We therefore have three good rain possibilities, today, Monday night into Tuesday morning, and then something substantial on the 6th-7th, and the spaghetti plots make that last one look like a fairly confident forecast. Here is one of those latter rainy maps for Arizona, ones we hope verify, because there because it looks grim for February after this:

Valid at 5 PM AST, February 7th. Those green areas denote regions where the model has calculated that precip has fallen during the prior six hours.

Your cloud day yesterday, more or less:

The End.

Trough bowl relocates to Arizona

Since the Big Bowl is just ahead, featuring our Seattle Seahawks, a team that played their games right near the University of Washington where I worked, it seemed like a good title, one that ordinary, football-loving peoples could identify with. But, of course, I am talking about “trough bowling” and the inclement weather that goes with them, right here in Arizona, not in New Jersey.

Models are foreseeing a spell of upper level troughs collecting in the SW US in the next week. In the map below from the NOAA “spaghetti factory“, you will see a great example of the best chance for a halfway decent rain in AZ as these several troughs march through, including one today (but too far north). All we get today is clouds, mostly middle and high ones, too high above us to rain on us, then later in the day, lower ones like Stratocumulus, but with tops too warm to form ice crystals, necessary for rain here in old Arizony even though it may look pretty gray at times.

Back to the maps….

In the map below, the red, yellow and gray lines all bulge southward toward the Equator in our area. The wind at this level (500 millybars, around 18,000 feet above sea level) travels along the lines going toward the SE off’n Cal, then bend back to the NE over Baja.

The air tends to sink and dry out in flow going to the SE, but tends to rise and moisten as it bends back to the NE. So, as troughs come and go, with the SW winds ahead of them pass by, there’s a chance for rain each time one goes by.

The third one that passes by, later on Thursday, February 6th, gives us the best chance for widespread rains, as foreseen for AZ by last night’s 5 PM AST model run.

How great would that be?

If you don’t believe me that widespread rains are forecast for AZ, you’ve given up on rain here after weeks of drought, I’ve added a map from last night’s model run. Its OK. I’m a weather forecaster and there’s a certain degree of incredulity, an aura really, that goes along with this occupation. We get used to it, kind of like economic forecasters do.

You can go here to poke around the NOAA model.

Valid February 6 at 5 PM AST. I've annotated it so you will know where Arizona is. Its shocking to me that I have to keep putting arrows on maps showing where Arizona is to my readers. — Valid February 6 at 5 PM AST. I’ve annotated it so you will know where Arizona is. Its shocking to me that I have to keep putting arrows on maps showing where Arizona is to my readers.

Valid at 2 PM, February 7th, 2014. — Valid at 2 PM AST, Friday, February 7th, 2014. The green areas denote where the computer model thinks rain has fallen in the previous THREE hours. There are several maps like this after this one for 2 PM, ones that extend the AZ rain into early on the 8th. Who knows at this point, but maybe half an inch could fall here in Catalinaland. Hoping so.

Mods are grim after this storm passes on the 7th, with the jet stream staying north of us, maybe for the rest of February, and that means chances of rain are nil. No jet, no rain.

Oops, I forgot to show you where Arizona is….here’s that same map again.

Same prog, valid for 2 PM AST, Friday, February 7th, 2014. Recall that this storm has been predicted, more or less, for about two weeks. — Same prog, valid for 2 PM AST, Friday, February 7th, 2014. Recall that this storm has been predicted, more or less, for about two weeks, as has the pattern change.

The first real chance of light rains here is just ahead, that on late on MONDAY! Looks like only a tenth of an incher, though, right now.

BTW, poppies in bloom (!) are being reported by hikers here in the Catalina area. Wonder if this has happened before in January?

Looking ahead to rain and other weather mischief in the days ahead.

The End.

Rainless January ends with a few drops

Sure, it was only a “trace”, less than 0.005 thousandths of an inch, but it counts as a rain day! Those drops fell just after 5 AM and the rain lasted for almost 6 minutes. Think I will call that patch of middle cloud that did this, “The Terminator”, to add a little drama to this event. “The Terminator” is passing over Oracle now at 5:55 AM. I also said I would check back with you when the drops started falling, too. So, here I am sitting here trying to think of things that would kind of get you excited about clouds and weather.

Recall it was posited here that rain was “likely” in January as January began. And now we have had that “rain”! Total and complete verification of a long range forecast! Looks like my forecasting accuracy will now go over 50% with this verification, too. So, I am pretty happy this morning, if you care, which I doubt.

BTW, this is part of the same system that was initially supposed to bring rain on the 27th, foretold about 10-12 days in advance. Often the day is not quite right that far in advance, but the event was captured. It wasn’t foretold to be much back then anyway.

Of course, today we remain in the same droughty, comfy-temperature pattern as we have been in the past few weeks; no surprises there. This standing pattern, the extreme cold in the East and toasty in the West, has been well foretold by our illustrious computer models.

But what’s ahead?

This, just in….. Big rains and even, big snows in Arizona here in Catalina, too! That’s my read. I am going with the very latest depiction of weather from our “gargantu-brain¹” model, the Weather Research and Forecasting-Global Forecast System model, “WRF-GOOFUS” for short.

Here are some great depictions from our equally great NWS NCEP WRF-GFS site which you might want to explore MORE than can be displayed here. Here we go, you drought bustin’, wildflower fluffin’ maps:

Stage 1) Actually setting the stage for something big here, valid at 11 AM, Thursday, February 8th:

Notable features, record cold in the Pacific NW and northern Rockies as a gigantic trough and pile of cold air marches down the West Coast. If this verified, temperatures would likely be in the single digits in Seattle, low teens at best. And this cold air and trough are headed this way, according to the predictions from last night’s global data taken at 11 PM AST.

Stage 2): Valid 24 h after prior map, 11 AM Friday, February 9th: Rain moves in to Catalina; reoord cold advances into southern Oregon and northern California.

Stage 3, day 3: Valid at 11 AM, Saturday, February 10th. In this depiction the cold air is arriving in Catalina, rain likely changing to snow. Record low temperatures likely in Cal and NV on this day. A day or so later in AZ.

Overall summary

Naturally, such extreme maps as these incorporating record low temperatures have to be considered somewhat suspect. But, from a risk standpoint, you have to be aware that they might well happen. This is the first series of maps to show such brutal cold in the West, and does correspond to a vast change in the circulation of the jet stream that will be under way as January comes to a close.

So, while the chances are low that this will play out exactly as shown, with all those record low temperatures, you have to be ready for something brutal even here in Catalina just in case. As I heard yesterday concerning planning for the virtually certain “megadroughts” in the future of the SW, with or without the aid of global warming since they are in the proxy data going back thousands of years, you have to plan for bad stuff anyway. But in this case, even while uncomfortable, it would be a good series of storms for us in just about every way except comfort.

Going out on a twig, not just a limb,

The End.

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¹ A phrase stolen from Douglas Adam’s, “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (theme; long version)