Here, in chronological order, yesterday’s pretty sunrise, as today’s wil be, too:
6:46 AM. Pretty Altocumulus just on the other side (downwind) of Ms. Lemmon.
6:49 AM. Walkin’ the dog under pastel skies and virga from Altocumulus at -27 C (-16 F), about 21-22kft above us. 6:57 AM. Dog inside eating while Altocumulus with virga continues to highlight north sky.
7:32 AM. Newly formed Altocumulus perlucidus, sometimes called, “mackerel1 sky”, no ice evident. Even at very low (not “cold”, BTW, to be technically correct) temperatures, ice free clouds can occur. Sometimes its momentary, sometimes not, these clouds appeared to evaporate without producing ice.
More pretty clouds coming in today. Look up now, or see sat images here.
Cold blast dead ahead after warm spell, rain iffy here, pretty certain in Cat Mountains. Cold air arrives on the 16th-17th now. Has very strong support in the NOAA-Lorenz spaghetti plots.
Rain is with another deep trough is shown here in last evening’s model run for the 21st. I’d be VERY excited normally, but when YOU look at the NOAA spaghetti, you’ll see that it has very little support and must be considered mostly fantasy, an outlier model result, one not likely (though not impossible) to verify. Once again, precip center is depicted in this goofy run as over my house (us). Here’s that rain as rendered by IPS MeteoStar:
Valid for 5 PM AST, November 21st. Not where heaviest precip is indicated again (arrow).
…and maybe points north, too. Lately models have been foretelling rain in Catalina on the 17th or 18th. In case you don’t believe me, here’s the precip forecast from last evening’s (00 Zulu) WRF-GOOFUS1 model run for the morning of the 18th as rendered by IPS MeteoStar:
Valid for Monday morning at 5 AM November 18th. The colored areas are those in which the model has foretold rain during the previous 12 h. As usual, the heaviest amount is foretold for my house here in Catalina/Sutherland Heights.
What are the chances this will really happen so many days ahead? Pretty good. Let’s check out the “Lorenz map2” below:
The Lorenz map, a name I made up but he deserves it since he came up with the Chaos Theory due to which such maps like these are produced by our computer models; where little, itty bitty things can feed into the system and alter the whole thing, like the cliche of a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil and affecting a tornado in Texas later, as a friend said in a SEA Times article a few years ago, a friend, BTW, that I played softball with on the Dept team and could really hit the long ball3… Oops, where was I? Oh, yeah, this map is valid for 5 AM, Monday, November 18th.
Cold air in Catalina? Having to put your jacket on for a few days? Its in the bag.
Rain? No doubt showers in the area with a pretty low snow level on the 17th-18th, but, with the long overland trajectory as presently indicated, not much, maybe a tenth of an inch or so, kind of marginal.
Yesterday’s clouds, high ones
There was some iridescence in a patch of Cirrocumulus about mid-morning, and then what might have been a bit of a parhelic circle in a patch Cirrus. That was it. More interesting clouds today as streamers of moist air at high levels sporadically invade Arizona, and today should be one of those. Get cameras ready!
10:56 AM. Sublte bright, slightly curved line in the upper part of this photo of a Cirrus cloud patch may have been a “parhelic arc.”
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1 As the Global Forecast System is affectionately known.
2I think E. N. Lorenz deserves it, a map with his name on it that we currently call “spaghetti plots”, or by the uppity “model ensembles” name. You put little errors in at the beginning of the model run and see how different the end results are. Not too much effect at the beginning because the errors are so small, but usually end up producing a ball of yarn after kitty played with it, as one reader wrote, after a couple of weeks, meaning that the reliability of any specific prediction at that time is nil. You see, all instrumentation has some error factor, so we never really measure the exact state of the atmosphere. This is a technique of adding little errors is to see how much they can affect the outcome. Sometimes, when something really POWERFUL is out there somewhere, those little errors don’t have much of an effect, and that’s when we can make a pretty good prediction for more than a week out.
3In case you don’t believe me again, this time that I actually played on a softball team with someone that might be asked his opinion on something by a newspaper reporter from the Seattle Times, here is a picture of Dr. Nick “Blaster” Bond, my teammate. I took this picture him because I really liked him, and we both liked to play on teams with girls who could really play, too, then we would win co-rec titles because of how well THEY played. It was great! Nick always wore those ripped short-shorts no matter how cold it was, even if it was raining.
Famous scientist, quoted in newspapers, Blaster Bond, looking askance at some lollipop softball pitcher, about 25 years ago. Not the same Bond responsible for “Bond Cycles” in paleoclimate proxies, though I wish he was because then I would be more important as a person having more important friends I could mention.
We have a monthly rain total that’s not zero! But will there be more this month? Stay tuned until November 30th! (Nothing imminent.) In the meantime, a very pretty blue sky day today pocked with residual Cumulus clouds, maybe some virga. There’ll be nice cloud shadows and sun on the Catalinas again today.
In the meantime, here are the Pima Country reports for last evening’s rain. The heaviest amount seems to be at our end of the Catalinas at Pig Spring, with 0.39 inches. Nice.
Yesterday’s clouds and why
Not exactly the way they were supposed to go, the ice cloud shield WAS on the horizon to the NW at mid-day but didn’t advance over us, but rather fizzled out. That’s OK. What was left of it enhanced a spectacular sunset through the rain.
The Cumulus clouds were the stars of yesterday, doing something in the way that the old rock band, Jethro Tull used to do. The members of JT would come out on stage as roadies, fiddle around with equipment for awhile, then suddenly turn around and began playing! Oh, who can forget Jethro Tull and that Aqualung album that roiled the rock waters back in 1971 by interrupting heavy, driving rock with acoustic interludes and flute playing (!!! )? What were they thinking?
Well, our Cumulus clouds pulled a fast one, too, after hanging around, fiddling around not doing much, then blammo, here comes the ice around 4:30 PM, followed by an eruption into an honest-to-goodness Cumulonimbus cloud with a strong rain shaft, sending forks of lightning to the ground, and pea to grape-sized hail bouncing off the roof with winds gusting to over 30 mph. This spectacular happenstance was triggered by a surge of much cooler air in conjunction with the lifting of air associated with our approaching trough just above those Cumulus tops yesterday afternoon. That steepened the lapse rate; spring-loading those Cumulus clouds as it were, allowing tops to rise and still be that bit warmer than the surrounding air and stay buoyant as they rose. Here are a couple of TUS balloon soundings rendered by the Cowboys of the U of WY:
While cloud fattening and ice was expected late in the day with sprinkles and light showers, the U of AZ mod run based on 5 AM AST data was spectacular yesterday morning in foretelling this larger eruption as that cold air moved over us. But were grape-sized hail stones and LIGHTNING expected? Not only “no”, but “HELL no”.
Here’s your day, reprised below, of which the MOST IMPORTANT part was the first detection of ice, very tough yesterday, but a precursor to the rain that began to fall a few minutes later. You can also reprise your day here thanks to the U of A time lapse films. Watch what happens around 5 PM, if you can read the tiny font in the lower left hand corner.
Here is the pictorial of your cloud day below:
12:06 PM. Flatness.3:49 PM. Clouds fattening, no ice visible anywhere yet. Nice cloud street generated upwind of Pusch Ridge, floating over Catalina. Shows wind direction at cloud level is from that direction.4:01 PM. Nice cloud shadows and sun highlights moving along the Cat Mountains, too.4:34 PM. Something’s definitely happening now. Note turret protruding on the left. Clouds evolving into larger masses to the south, the cloud street having broken up. And, those massing clouds are upwind of us. Still, no ice evident.4:35 PM. Ice! I can’t believe it. Its going to rain! Can you find it? This is REALLY tough. 4:37 PM. Close up of ice. A higher top was breaking off to the NE and was converting to ice.
5:07 PM. By this time, ice had formed in cloud clusters all around Catalina, and this beauty erupted upwind.5:22 PM. About to strike with hail, lightning, wind and rain.5:35 PM. While the rain and hail weren’t done yet, it gave this colorful scene reminiscent of summer sunset color except that the sun would be setting WAY over there on the right out of view.5:40 PM. Second thunderstorm with hail in formation upwind of Catalina.
Yesterday was one of those ideal days for us here in Catalina, the kind that draws visitors from all over the country to be together with us. It was also kind of like that space-age, relaxo-elevator music; goes nowhere in particular with a hook or melody, or if there is one, its been eviscerated by sleepy, sedated violin players.
But, going back to yesterday’s weather, you could have taken a nice snooze in the sun yesterday afternoon, with only zephyrs to brush up against you, and with temperatures in the upper 70s, it was perfect for being unconscious for a bit, not having to worry about missing an ice crystal, a patch of virga, or an interesting pattern in middle-level or high clouds that you should write about in your weather diary, or document with a photo.
BTW, tops of the small Cumulus (humilis) were warmer than -10 C (14 F) yesterday, and so not one ice crystal or snowflake fell out of them.
6:52 AM. Residual Altocumulus castellanus from the little rainband that went through the night before last.
2:00 PM, from along Equestrian Trail, these picaresque small to medium Cumulus clouds, hold the ice, with dramatic shadows on the Cat Mountains.
Imagination going dry. I’ve talked about these kinds of days a lot. Will insert cow with cholla ornamentation here as a distraction. Might be best part of blog today.3:44 PM. Cumulus clouds wither to Cu fractus as temperature falls. These days are so clear that it seems the earth ends just over the horizon.
Today’s clouds (should be interesting)
Should see a band of Cirrus and thicker ice cloud, Altostratus, off to the NW horizon by about mid-day. Some Altocumulus likely around, too. That band (you can see it here, courtesy of the U of AZ Department of Weather). should arrive here here during the mid to late afternoon, producing a fair amount of gray. But also there should be thinner portions before the main icy mass gets here. In those thinner portions and leading CIrrus, there could be some some great patterns, like Cirrus uncinus, hooked Cirrus (“Angel’s hair”). Lower Cumulus clouds are likely to form over the mountains during the mid-late afternoon. Could be really pretty overall if you can get out of your windowless office for a moment to take a peak this afternoon.
Freezing level and the critical -10 Centigrade (14 F) level for ice formation in clouds here in AZ will be lowering especially during the evening and overnight hours, and should lead to ice formation/virga as the clouds fill in later in the day and overnight. This means a chance for measurable rain here. Noticed just now that yesterday morning’s U of AZ mod (available after about 10 AM) did have a few hundredths in Catalina overnight tonight. You can also see this progression of clouds, more or less, in the U of AZ model output from that yesterday morning’s run here1.
Will write more about later happenings in November when the prior forecasted rain in the models returns; its gone for now!
The End.
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1The 11 PM AST model run from the U of AZ is not yet completed, so to HELL with it! Hahaha, just kidding, but must move on to other chores, like digitizing old research flight videos from the University of Washington’s Cloud and Aerosol Research Group I was once a part of but now its over, plane gone, group gone. Life changes, not always for the better, I can see that now. I liked flying in clouds, hearing the graupel hit against the bubble where I had my head, standing on a little stool in the back. BTW, here is what the bubble looks like. I like to look at it even now and remember all the great cloud friends I got to know and write about.
The aircraft dome that was atop the fuselage of the University of Washington’s research aircraft. RIP. For awhile after retirement, I felt lost as many do. So, I would put this on my head, maybe while doing yard work in Seattle before coming here. It seemed to help the withdrawal I was feeling in those days. Great as a rain hat, too! It really didn’t look that bad.
Here are the surprising totals from the Pima County Alert gauges. Mt. Lemmon received 0.31 inches from last night’s little rain! And most gauges, except the ones in Catalina, got measurable rain. Very nice NWS radar-derived rain graphic here (and below), something that shows we probably got a sprinkle here in Catalina. (Trace detector was not parked outside last night, a huge oversight caused by too much football on TEEVEE.)
Rain totals from 6 PM to just after 4 AM AST last night. Note how rain streamer just missed us to the east.
Some residual clouds are around and likely will provide some nice sunrise shots, but the rain possibility is over for now.
2:27 PM. Altocumulus perlucidus3:49 PM. Altocumulus, getting fatter here, tending toward castellanus and floccus (tiny Cumulus clouds)5:41 PM. Altocumulus castellanus clouds getting bigger yet, pretending not to be doing anything. No virga showing here, but some was beginning to show up on the extreme SW horizon at dark, as clouds began to fill in toward the S through SW. The appearance of virga would mean that the cloud tops were higher and colder than are seen here.
Next chance for rain is late tomorrow afternoon through overnight tomorrow as clouds fill in late in the day. US mods have backed off rain here, while our Canadian friends with their mod still have some (shown here) as they have calculated a deeper trough; more strength and amplitude (more of an extension to the south of us). However, its a marginal situation and the most that can fall here in Catalina in “Rain 2” would be less than a tenth of an inch.
Way ahead….
Some mod runs still have decent storms affecting Arizona in the 9 to 13 day period, 12th and 17th of November, to be specific, from last evening’s 11 PM run. Not good to be too specific at that forecast range as you know.
While waiting for measurable rain to begin piling up in November, let’s look at no rain so far for the current water year which began October 1st:
The observed monthly rainfall is shown by an adjacent column in yellow on the right… (hahaha, trick or treat, there isn’t any yet)
In fact, speaking of piling up, here’s some rain in this forecast from the Canadian GEM model already for the night of November 4th-5th, and, of course, windy on the 4th before the cold front with this barges in. And, I am happy to report that the USA WRF-GFS model is ALSO showing rain during this time, after being rather reluctant until the run from last night at 11 PM AST, seen here. This is lookin’ good now for our first measurable rain in over a month.
Valid at 5 AM AST November 5th. Colored regions in the lower RIGHT panel are those in which the model thinks it has rained during the prior 12 h (overnight, Nov-4-5). You might have to use binoculars to see it.
But wait, there’s more!
Amajor precip episode has shown up in the 11 PM AST WRF-GRS run from last evening! Check out these renderings from that model run from a site I like, IPS MeteoStar:
Valid for Thursday, November 14th at 11 PM AST. Colored regions indicate where rain should have fallen in the prior 12 h. Note heavier blob over us, indicated by darker green! Valid for 11 AM November 15th. Precip for the prior 12 h ending at this time shown by colored regions. Note bull’s eye in this area (likely associated with mountains around here). So, the mod thinks it could be raining over a 12-24 h period.
In the past we have seen numerous examples of “fantasy rain” produced for us here, often involving decaying tropical storms, that turned out to be completely bogus in this time range, that beyond 8-9 days. Its pretty normal for goofy things to show up in these models beyond that time. Just too much chaos going on and using measurements with their inevitable errors, even if fairly slight ones, not to mention that we don’t really have all the answers to how the atmosphere works.
So, what do we do? We deliberately input errors into a few model runs at the very beginning and see what happens, how crazy the key contours and isobars get. “Pretty cool, huh?”, as Bill Nye the science guy might say if he were writing this. Where they remain pretty steady, that’s where a prediction, even one ten or more days out, is going to be very reliable. Here’s is a sample of one of those crazy results from NOAA:
Valid at 5 PM November 10th
The plot above indicates that there is a very strong signal for a big trough and storms along the West Coast 10 days out. The red lines show that there is a strong signal for the jet stream from the subtropics to be a bit south of us.
The main point here is to point out that while the DAY OF THE RAIN on those forecast maps might change in the models, there are still going to be a number of days where troughs and fronts threaten to bring rain yo Catalina over the next two weeks, and one’s likely to make it as a rainy one.
Thinking now, having a rain bias (“truth-in-packaging” note here), that November’s rain will be near or above normal.
Today’s clouds
Look for a few Cirrus and maybe Altocumulus to appear late in the day with the likelihood of a nice sunset shot.
That’s it. Its a kind of news release, best released on the 1st. Its news, of course, you won’t find on other weather sites because maybe they’re chicken, or prudent. Check back on November 30th, and if its rainless again, there will be no mention of this forecast.
But, after the rainless October (we average about an inch here in Catalina), you probably won’t believe me. Check this out from the NOAA spaghetti factory. I got pretty excited when I saw it. I think, you will, too, maybe mention it to your neighbors over coffee this morning, having been pretty convinced yourself after seeing this that storms are a brewin’ for Catalina and vicinity (all of Arizona) in November:
Valid for November 10th at 5 PM AST. Originates with global data obs made at 5 PM AST last evening, and represents a few key 500 millibar height contours after DELIBERATE little errors have been put in and the computer model rerun with them in it.
Thank E. N. Lorenz, a meteorologist for Chaos Theory and maps like the above that show how little tweaks in the original data can change stuff a lot if things are fragile, but not so much if the signal is robust, and things not so fragile. Here a deep trough along and off off the West Coast on November 10th is virtually guaranteed by the blue and red lines that plunge so far to the south off the West Coast. A trough out there, as you know, gives us the best chance for rain as it progresses to the east. The bunching of lines indicates where the forecast, with baby errors, is strongest, like off Asia, and hereabouts, off Baja. Those red lines are pretty much where the south edge of the jet stream will be at this time of year. As you know, we have to be on the north side of the jet during the winter here in old Arizony to get precip, so it looks good for that to happen as we move forward in the month.
BTW, here’s your official forecast for the whole month of November from the Climate Prediction Center (CPC). As you can see, this November is a tough month for them, no real signals showing up for the month as a whole as indicated by the HUGE areas of “EC”, i.e., “equal chances” of above or below normal precip. We’re kind of on the edge of “we don’t know what’s going to happen” (in the popular lexicon, “clueless”) which is good. The signal for continued drought here is not so strong, though it is there. Poor New Mexico, though.
November precip forecast for North America made on Halloween by the CPC.
Cloud photo op coming up
A weak trough ejects from the Pacific and over us beginning tomorrow, and it should bring some great photogenic Cirrus and Altocumulus clouds tomorrow afternoon and evening, likely some “castellanus” if you care. Likely to be some virga (snow falling from the Ac) too, so could be a great sunset shot coming up. With the virga, always a slight chance of a sprinkle-its-not drizzle.
One of the best, really, never mind all that wind yesterday. No rain, of course, in our future, not even fantasy rain these days.
See usual rehash of yesterday’s clouds, the 60s, in case you forgot, below:
8:49 AM. This Altocumulus perlucidus cloud behaved like a lenticular, holding in place for at least 2 h, but did not have the classic pancake or sliver look of lenticularis clouds. Air likely too unstable (temperature dropped with height rapidly) and allowed tiny cumuliform elements to form. Only on the very right edge where it first formed, did this cloud appear “lenticular” in any way with its smoothness
10:15 AM. More classic looking, sliver Altocumulus lenticularis beyond the Catalinas. Cloud forms on the right edge, dissipates on the left as the air rises and falls slightly.
11:58 AM. Cirrocumulus (delicate granulation) on the fringes of Altocumulus (larger elements on the right). 12:01 PM. These clouds change by the second as the degree of moisture in the air jetting along up there ebbs and wanes. Look how much larger that fine granulation on the left got in just a couple of minutes. 2:09 PM. One of the many examples of iridescence seen yesterday in those Cirrocumulus clouds, or on the very thin upwind edge of Altocumulus lenticularis clouds. Its due to the formation of extremely tiny droplets, a few microns in diameter, that cause diffraction in the sun’s rays (see link for a more complete explanation and nice examples). Do you remember that white light has the wavelengths of all the colors in it? Here you can see some of them, and photograph them by performing a replication of the Black Power salute of Tommy Smith and John Carlos from my alma mater, San Jose State, one that beat the Wyoming Cowboys recently in fubball. I added a link in case you forgot and wanted to get worked up again. Yes I was at SJS when that happened down Mexico way, minding my own business doing weather forecasts with a political slant (left, of course, because that’s what made you popular during the rad lib days) for the college paper. Suddenly, I feel like going to San Francisco, putting some flowers in my hair.…
2:19 PM. Cirrocumulus and Ac lenticularis in the same layer. Recall Cc can’t have shading, not that it matters that much.
4:39 PM. This dramatic scene amid the dust and wind. This would be an Altocumulus lenticularis, one that devolves into Altocumulus perlucidus (honeycomb pattern seen downwind from the distant leading edge).
I was driving down in Tucson yesterday, kind of moping around about all the blogs I had done with little or no interest. You may recall from a blog I did a few months ago I reported to my reader that a business site had evaluated the worth of my blog, and due to the amount of traffic it brought, it was found to be worth $25.
But then as I rounded Campbell and headed northbound from Fort Lowell, I saw this sign exhorting fellow Tucsonians to watch clouds! My mood brightened. Maybe there were a few out there that I had affected after all; a whole cloud watching movement had started! I did see, however, that since the sign maker was wondering whether there were clouds in the sky or not, and there was a lot of Cirrus overhead, I saw that I had more work to do.
This sign seen near Campbell and just north of Fort Lowell yesterday afternoon.
Yesterday’s clouds
9:03 AM. Cirrus fibratus in rolls, undulations, due to waves in the atmosphere associated with the strong jet stream above us.
In case you were asleep, watching Monday night fubball, and NOT watching clouds, here is yesterday’s magnificent sunset as the sun underlit those dense Altostratus clouds that developed from thinner Cirrus ones during the afternoon and evening.
5:44 PM.
Today, more mid-level clouds and with strong winds aloft, we should see some lenticular clouds in the lee of the Catalinas. Videoing them would be a good thing for you to do because you would, in fast playback, be able to see how they keep forming on the upwind side and disappearing on the downwind side while holding their overall position. If the moisture increases, they expand, and if it decreases, they shrink and dry up, something likely to happen later in the day.
While that’s going on, there’ll likely be some Cumulus and Stratocumulus off to the north, and since the air is going to be much colder aloft to the north today, some ice is likely to form in them late in the day in those northern clouds, leading to some virga. Those lower clouds, according to our models, should begin appearing around here, too, in the late afternoon and evening. Alas, measurable rain is very unlikely, and with this, last little threat, October 2013 will go out rainless here in Catalinaland.
Farther ahead…..
More middle and high clouds and great sunrises and sunsets are likely on November 3rd and 4th as a little upper level trough creeps in from the lower latitudes of the Pacific off Mexico. It was once projected by the models to bring rain to here, but now it seems only a sprinkle is possible; most of the tropical moisture shunted to the south and over northern Mexico.
In the longer term, while all “fantasy rain” has disappeared for AZ based on last evening’s 11 PM AST model run, stronger than normal storms are showing up for California later in the first week of November, and with that, we’ll always have the hope that this time, the “fantasy” in that model calculations is no rain shown for here.
My fantasy rain team (I call, “WURF-GOOFUS“) already has FIVE inches of fantasy rain in Arizona for November, and here’s more from last night’s 00 Z model run! In case you went to school lately and have trouble finding where you are, I have added an arrow on the map so that you’ll know where SE AZ is (“hey”, we’ve read those stories about HS students not being able to name states….)
Valid for Wednesday, November 6th at 5 PM.
And its not only this map, but a few after this as well. Here’s 24 h later and its STILL raining in SE AZ, with a rain center right on my house!
Valid for Thursday, November 7th at 5 PM AST. How great is this fantasy rain?
I’m thinking now that my fantasy rain team from WURF-GOOFUS has six or seven inches predicted for just November! OF COURSE, its not real rain, its fantasy rain, but, there it is again.
Losing control, the rainless October, the mostly clear skies day after day getting to brain functions, hallucinating again over model outputs of clouds and rain…. Must seek treatment.
Valid for 5 PM AST, November 21st. Not where heaviest precip is indicated again (arrow).
