6:09 PM. Not so long ago, this kind of thing happened at 7:09 PM… Altostratus here; too thick to be Cirrus.
Some rain to fall on Thursday, most likely between 5 AM and 11 AM. Both the US models and the Canadian one have rain for us now, not much, but likely measurable. Best personal guess from the “pattern”: between 0.02 and .20 inches. This “pattern” is one where the Catalina Mountains are at the southernmost extension of much heavier rain/snow to the north, the clouds bank up on the west side of our mountains, and little Catalina-its-not-Tucson gets measurable rain whereas Tucson and places south do not. Jet core at 500 millibars (18,000 feet or so above sea level) will be passing just about overhead Thursday morning, and the wind at cloud levels during precip southwest to west-southwest. In the cooler half of the year, that jet core usually demarcates a sharp line between no precip (to the south) and precip on the north side of it when the core is oriented west to east. From IPS MeteoStar, this rendering for mid-day Thursday for illustrative purposes:
From last evening’s 5 PM AST global data, the WRF-GFS model forecast winds at 500 millibars at 11 AM, Thursday, October 10th, Julie B’s birthday. I liked her a lot (late 70s) but it didn’t work out. Recall sea level pressure averages 1013.6 mbs and so this level is about halfway through the mass of the atmosphere above us, and around 18,000 feet above sea level. Likely that any precip here is ending here about this time as the trough over us shuffles off to ‘Braska and vicinity.
Adding to the rain excitement in the meantime will be scattered interesting clouds, windy conditions in the afternoons, and much colder air arriving during the daytime on Thursday.
To keep you occupied while waiting for rain, I now present an enigma. I shot this during a return flight from our B-23 aircraft as it ferryied back to Paine Field in Seattle after a study of emissions from the Mohave Power Plant near Kingman, AZ, September, 1983. Not sure of the location, might be eastern California or southern Nevada. On these kinds of ferry flights after a big field project, often with two bumpy, low-level flights a day, you don’t care where you are on the way home, you just wanna be home!
Might be a satellite calibration field of some kind. Even today this grid in rough terrain still amazes:
Late September 1983, over eastern California or southern Nevada. Not sure; half asleep.
Hot off the Canadian presses from last evening’s global data from 5 PM yesterday, this exciting depiction (from Enviro Can) for Friday afternoon, the 10th. Note green and yellow regions in all of the SW, lower right panel! Note big upper trough over Vegas, upper left panel. Its all good, and, this being the 5th, its only a few days away!
Valid Friday afternoon at 5 PM AST. Note “tropical river” emanating from a tropical storm or depression off the tip of Baja (colored regions in lower left panel). No reason to be depressed if this happens.
But let’s look deeper….deep into the heart of the US WRF-GFS model for the exact same moment in time, shown below:
Also valid at 5 PM AST on October 10th from IPS MeteoStar. Perhaps the US model is sequestering rain for Arizona…. NONE, as in nil, is indicated from a model run generated at the same time as the Canadian one above! As you can see from the arrow, there is NO RAIN indicated for most of Arizona as a very strong upper level trough goes by. How bizarre is that? Something’s goofy here and its not just me.
What caused this model bifurcation?
For one thing, the US mod sees no tropical depression off Baja, and our hurricane center is very skeptical that any tropical development will take place south of Baja, one that would move NW or N and send a moist plume up into a trough positioning itself over southern Cal on the 9th. US mod has NO tropical moist stream coming out of the eastern Pac ahead of a trough over southern Cal at all, whether there is a low down there or not. Boohoo.
So, any rain here in Catalina would be with the usual passage of the jet core and in the cold Pacific air behind the cold blast headed our way on the 10th-11th. And that rain would be very light, likely less than a tenth of an inch.
The Canadian model, sadly, has to be considered a little goofy right now with its copious SE AZ rains, and widespread rain/snow over the rest of AZ, too. It would be good to inform your neighbors that you are thinking the same thing about the Canadian model, i.e. that its a bit looney as well in case they saw it and are touting a lot of rain on the way without really looking into things. Embedded editorial note: A lot of people vote like that, too, I think; also read health claims in magazines without looking at the peer-reviewed literature, taling with their doctor, examine the results of double blind, randomized trials, that kind of thing on which we base the whole edifice of medicine on. No, they’d rather read on the side of a health pill food, “these claims have not been evaluated by the FDA” and then take the stuff anyway and enjoy the effects of a placebo, which, if you believe in it, can be pretty good.
No doubt the reports of low temperatures in Arizona with this coming big upper trough on the 10th-11th, and snow in the high mountains, will spur a flock of snowbirds to migrate south. It’ll be windy and dusty, too, as it usually gets ahead of the passage of the cold front with these big troughs. That will be interesting, as well as all the cloud forms that start to show up with it.
Note: I’d show you some NOAA spaghetti so that we could get a little more on this model discrepancy, but its been sequestered from me, as you will see here. In the meantime, will hope for Canadian vindication in the days ahead.
Here are the updated plots from the Our Garden location on Stallion where a continuous record has been maintained since way back in 1977 when the Sex Pistols, led by Johnny Rotten, were beginning to alter the face of pop music and pop culture and trigger an alternative music and fashion scene called “Punk.” Let’s see what John Lyden (aka, Johnny Rotten) had to say some years later after the SP years…
Below are the water year data for 2012-2013 ONLY from the Our Garden site, not a mixture of obs from MY gauge and theirs (which could cause “heterogeneities”, as I have posted before. Not much difference, really, between our sites, but it makes for a cleaner dataset, a “homogeneous” one. Thanks to the folks at Our Garden, Jesse, Wayne and Jenny, for letting me update their precious data into a spreadsheet lately. State climo wants it, too.
One difference that stood out this year was that Our Garden was clobbered by a few summer storms that we didn’t get and their water year total is 2 inches more than here (11.08 inches) in Sutherland Heights/Catalina, just a couple miles away.
So, here are the “homogeneous” data back to 1977 FYI:
I don’t place too much credence in a continuation of a downward trend, lately obdfuscated some by juicy summer rains. These kinds of things, even assuming some slight GW influence, usually reverse themselves rather suddenly with a burst of wetter years such as we see at the beginning of the Our Garden record in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Some of that was fueled to some degree by El Ninos, sometimes called “Eel Nino” due to its monstrous effects on Cal coast and the SW in general. Here’s what “Eel Nino” looks like when it occurs:
I wonder if you caught it? Fell between 8:10 and 8:12 AM. Very isolated, and pretty small drops. If you weren’t driving in it, or outside, you would never have known this happened. But observing and reporting events like this is what makes us who we are, you reader of CM. We take pride in seeing and observing what others don’t.
8:12 AM. Photographic documentation of the total rain event on a car window, zoomed view. The largest raindrops are about 1 mm in size.
Before the rain hit, some two or three RW– (weather text version of “very light rainshowers”) began to fall to the SW of us from that deck of Stratocumulus clouds. Must have been where the tops were higher than anywhere else. Here’s the first sign, and upwind of Catalina, that you, as a CMJ (cloud maven junior) know to pull your car out of the garage. (BTW, thinking about having a CMJ cookie drive next month…so look around for your best recipes.)
7:42 AM. A full 30 minutes before the trace event in Catalina, a weak shaft of rain is observed on Twin Peaks, part of a broken line of sprinkles-its-not-drizzle rain.
It may seem strange, a non-sequitor, for those blog passersby to be talking about taking your car out of the garage or carport if a slight amount of rain might occur, as was the case yesterday. Here’s the “skinny”, as we used to say in the last century when we were young and could do things: a “clean” car, one that been wiped of all evidence of prior rain drops, but one having a thin coating of dust (you don’t have to apply a thing dust layer, its goes with the territory here) is great as a “trace detector.” And for us, CMs and CMJs, observing a trace such as yesterdays, when ordinary observers miss it (fumble the ball), is like hitting a low outside slider from former Husky pitcher Tim Lincecum, for a game winning touchdown. Or Boise State beating Oklahoma in a bowl game.
Why not just use the radar instead of parking your car outside and if the 24 h depiction of precip shows an echo over you, just mark yourself down as having a “trace”?
That would be cheating! Besides, some echoes seen on radar are only aloft.
And what if you’re in a “data silent” zone, where the radar beam is blocked by terrain, or is too far away? You’re adding unique information with your trace. Sure, nobody around you really cares if you had a trace or not, but, what the HECK.
8:01 AM. Heavy looking cloud produces sprinkle on the Tortolitas. Looks so dark partly because of the time of day, and partly because there was a fair amount of aerosol in the air. When higher aerosol concentrations get into clouds, it causes the drops in them to be small, and when small, they reflect more light off their tops and the bottoms appear darker. But it also indicates that the clouds are thicker than surrounding clouds, there’s a mound on the top. Still, among those higher droplet concentrations must have been drops large enough to collide and stick together and become small raindrops.
Did the tops reach -10 C or so to form ice and cause this shower? Nope. Capped out at 0 to -5 C, so almost impossible to have had ice form to cause our sprinkles. Check this sounding from the WY Cowboys, who are off to a good season BTW.
The Tucson sounding for 5 AM AST yesterday morning during our cloudy conditions.
In examining this TUS sounding closely, its good to remember that we are NOT Tucson, but in Catalina. We are 14 miles from the city limits; have a road sign that sez so. “Hey”, we aren’t even on the same side of the mountains as is “Tucson.” In fact, you have to go through the city limits of Oro Valley to get to Catalina! Only the Post Office thinks that Catalina is in “Tucson.” OK, got that in…
And, during the cooler season when troughs go by, as yesterday, the temperature profile from Tucson balloon is not accurate for us here in Catalina; its always that bit colder to the north and west of the balloon launch site for days like yesterday. So, like a chef, adding that bit more of butter or garlic, OUR sounding should be tweaked from the TUS one to show slightly higher and colder cloud tops, probably near – 5 C, not at ZERO or slightly cooler in overshooting Cumulus/Stratocumulus tops as would be expected from the Tucson sounding. Also, since it sprinkled at 8 AM, and not 5 AM, its also likely that clouds tops were going up some as the trough from the west approached yesterday. So there are lots of possibilities.
Sure wish we’d had a PIREP! (Texting form of, “Pilot report”). Any CMJ’s out there have an aircraft that we could take up and kind of poke around up there, see for sure what really happened instead of “hand waving”?
Absent aircraft reports, I am going to say that almost certainly yesterday’s sprinkle was a case of rain formed by “collisions with coalescence, or via the “warm rain” process (called that because it doesn’t have ice), sometimes called here, “coalision” rain. Very unusual in Arizona and, you can see that if you have to park your car outside to see how much came out of a cloud producing rain through “coalision”, it doesn’t amount to much.
You know, this is a great story for you. First, you observe rain that no one else did, or even cares about, until maybe you tell them it was almost certainly caused by collisions among cloud droplets, and then watch their eyes bug out!
Had some spectacular highlights again on the Catalinas, and also evidence of the aerosol loading as we say, in the crepuscular rays (colloq., crepsucular) shown below.
8:03 AM. Evidence of smog, maybe some dust, too, aka, aerosols that were getting into our clouds yesterday.8:04 AM. Gorgeous highlights continuously moved across the Catalinas. Hard to stop watching, snapping photos like mad, HD filling up, not much room left, gasping for more empty sectors now.
1:39 PM. Its all over. Only a field of small Cumulus (“humilis”) are left. Photo taken from inside a horse corral to give it a western flavor, make it more accessible to reader, maybe make you feel more comfortable after a heavy dose of “science-hand waving” today. Note rust on panel piping; adds artistic content. “Rusty corral and Cumulus humilis”; yours today only for $2,000.
Since there is STILL no rain indicated for the next 15 days in the models, just dry (for now) trough passages, I may have to discuss yesterday’s sprinkle again tomorrow. Thinking of a title even now: “That sprinkle; more insights on what happened.” Yeah, that should do it.
Breezy, deep blue skies were pocked with Cumulus humilis (“humble”) but as the afternoon wore on, they became more numerous, and spread out to nearly fill the morning’s clear sky, while remaining “humble”; about the same depth, 1,000 to 1,500 feet, max. Cloud tops were above freezing, so no chance to form ice and snowflakes, which would have fallen out as virga. Nor was there a single Ac lenticular, as opined here that there might be one yesterday.
These kinds of days with scattered clouds producing shadows on our spectacular Catalina Mountains is one of the most mesmerizing. If you can, you want to be somewhere where outside where you can see those shadows trek across our mountains, their rocky faces highlighted and then dimmed, while another portion lights up highlighting some other characteristic of those mountains, particularly in the late afternoon when the sun light is that bit richer (due to traveling through a greater path of the atmosphere as it sinks toward the horizon and more of the harsher, shorter wavelengths of white light are scattered out). Ask any photographer or artist.
And its no wonder we draw so many visitors in the cooler half of the year when there are so many days like yesterday; no rain, pleasant temperatures, but astounding, simple beauty just in the passing of a cloud shadow on a mountain.
3:11 PM.3:11 PM, looking farther toward the north. So pretty. You can just sit there and watch these ever changing scenes for hours. “Less doing, more watching.”5:15 PM.5:33 PM. Even our dreaded cholla cactus can have so much beauty in the right light.4:19 PM. Wonder how many of you noticed this line of small Cumulus clouds, called a “cloud street”? At first I thought it was caused by a bounce of the air going over and around Pusch Ridge, but later it was clear it had origins far to the south.5:29 PM. “Cloud street” still going, but you can see the origin is not much related to Pusch Ridge as it shifted westward and extended overhead and downstream into Pinal County. The clouds were filling in pretty fast at this time, but barely deepening.6:07 PM. While the sunset itself wasn’t spectacular, the lighting on the mountains was. Aren’t you glad you live in Catalina?
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In spite of overcast Stratocumulus clouds right now in the pre-dawn hours, there are no echoes on the radar anywhere near us. Boohoo.
And, if you’ve read this blog, and studied its contents, taken all the quizes, you know its because the tops aren’t cold enough to form ice (generally requires -10 C, 14 F here), pretty much required for rain here in old Arizony. Of course, some of our citizens are older than “old Arizony” as a State, which is pretty darn amazing, so maybe it should be, “not-that-old-Arizony”, to depart from whatever it was I was going to say before thinking about “Arizony.”
Now, back to weather…. Looking at the satellite and radar from IPS MeteoStar, it would appear that there are enough clouds around that a sprinkle is possible before noon as an upper trough goes by today. The air will be getting colder aloft, and there appears to be a line of colder clouds in a band right now in western Arizona, maybe ones cold enough to do that. Measurable rain is a very remote possibility, however.
Another trough, very similar looking to this one today, with a blast of cooler air comes through on Friday, October 4th, but like this one, looks dry. So, we have two pretty nice weekends in a row ahead of us as far as moderate temperatures go, and more great cloud shadows.
No rain for SE AZ in models for the next 15 days. Dang.
You probably don’t believe that I went all the way to Douglas yesterday to see weeds from excessive, once-in-a -hundred years, record-breaking summer rains (16 plus inches). I think you’ll find my activities in this matter quite interesting. First, the documentation:
11:11 AM. The Douglas Visitor’s Center, Douglas, Arizona, fronted with manicured, non-native plants and grasses. Quite nice, really.
I thought I would do a comprehensive survey, radiating outward from the VC in all directions as far as I could go, even if it took several hours. But after that thought, I decided to just go across the street into a vacant lot right there in front of me, and shoot some weeds there; maybe that would be enough. It was getting pretty warm.
11:15 AM. Weeds in a vacant lot across from the Douglas VC. Took a few minutes after the prior photo. But, while the weeds were nice, they didn’t “pop” enough for a news and survey report about the effect of a lot of rain, so I looked around for better angles and bigger weeds. I think you’ll find I was successful. The plastic cup is for perspective.Looking back at a sidewalk along the SAME vacant lot as above. Much more dramatic. However for the best/biggest weed displays, you need areas where the water puddles some. And I found that by going just a little farther.
11:18 AM. A low spot at the end of the SAME where the vacant lot was street showing how the excessive rains in Douglas led to massive weeds. What appears to be oat or wheat stalks ten feet high with heads protrude in the background. Where’s my camera crew?! I could be standing in front of this scene giving a report!11:27 AM. The best is always last, it seems. In finishing up my comprehensive survey of Douglas 2013 weeds, this metaphor for life and all the different pathways we could take, and at the same time, a perspective on how high the weeds were where the water collected some. It doesn’t get better than this. I stared at this sign for many minutes, wondering if I should have gone into weather after all, maybe done something else to the right. But what would it have been?
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On the way to Douglas from little Catalina, I passed through the tourist mecca of Old Bisbee. A sign called out as I approached it, “Scenic View”, and I am kind of a sucker for those. Thought I’d check it out.
10:34 AM. Scenic view sign right next to Old Bisbee, in case you didn’t believe me that there was one.
I walked over to see what it was:
10:35 AM. The “scenic view” was this giant hole, an old mine, that apparently reached all the way down to the water table, or maybe initially clean rainwater had formed a small lake. Scenic? I guess it shows we can dig huge holes, make a LOT of money, and leave a big mess. Hmmmm. Too, I’d be concerned about the water I was drinking if I was a Bisbee-ite. Of course, maybe this water flows underground and downstream from Bisbee, for others to drink…so maybe it’s OK for Bisbee-ans. Sure glad we don’t do that anymore!
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Being a CM, I should report on the clouds of the day, Altocumulus ones:
12:08 PM. On the way to Benson, this line of Altocumulus floccus with tiny Ac lenticulars around, too. The shadows the clouds were causing made it a real nice scene.2:24 PM, near the J-Six Ranch turnoff of I-10, this pretty “front row” of Altocumulus castellanus, in effect, miniature Cumulus clouds.
Not much weather ahead except breezes and temperature changes, hardly anything for a CM. Maybe a lenticular with the winds aloft getting so trough with our incoming trough. Will be watching.
Our WY total has crested over 11 inches now. Its at 11.08 inches for the water year ending on September 30th, still about 5.5 inches below normal with only dry days ahead. Still it was nice to see a great thundersquall come through on the last day of the summer regime, though I was about 12 miles away from Catalina when it hit. So, I missed the last summer-type rain of the season with its momentary blinding rain and 40 mph winds; I had to be told about it. That season will be just a memory now.
If you’re a reader of this blog, and I know who both of you are, you MAY recall that yesterday, off-handedly really, it was written here that, “I don’t think it will rain today.” But it did rain, which is pretty remarkable in itself. It has previously seemed that if I think or say something, that’s what happens, almost like a supernatural connection of some kind with the future. Some of the astrologers out there know what I am talking about, maybe palm readers, too.
I will go through what happened just that bit, well, quite a bit, while I display some photos and our thinking was about what we were seeing. I know that our thinking would be exactly the same since you read this so much.
Now, when I started yesterday morning on this blog, the dewpoints were very high around here, 60s, and there was a little line of clouds in the satellite imagery on our doorstep to the west. Part of that north-south oriented cloud line is what you saw when you got up yesterday morning.
However, the dry air was already into central Arizona, with dewpoints in the 40s at PHX and Yuma; it was coming fast as the trough above scooted over us dragging a cool front. Behind the cool front would be the dry air.
So what are you and me looking for when we think an LL Cool Front is approaching, along with its wind shift?
A line of clouds, solid, broken or even scattered. So, when you saw that line of heavy Cumulus piling up in a line, SW to NW from Catalina, you and me were both thinking, “Droop, there it is!1“, to recall a song first heard on the TEEVEE show, “In Living Color.”
8:26 AM. Front on the doorstep or not. Looking west toward the Tortolitas. Even though the clouds are piled high, notice that there are NO rain shafts. No ice, and even with the warm bases at about 10 C (50 F), rain from drop collisions with each other also did not form. See smog shots later; smog is an impediment to that process.
8:24 AM. Heavy Cu line extends off to the N as well, strongly suggesting a wind shift is causing it. Again, no rain shafts are seen from these large clouds.8:20 AM. While the sights to the west were promising, the amount of smog (not dust here) was deafening. Sure there were pretty highlights as the crepuscular rays focused on our still green mountains, but still, its not a good sign for precip; works against it by causing the drops in clouds to be smaller than they would be in “clean” conditions.8:38 AM. Eventually those tops did reach ice-forming levels, those likely colder than -5 to -10 C yesterday, and rain shafts began to emerge, as here. But, that was off to the north beyond S-Brooke, and the clouds to the SW of us were turning ragged, drying out.9:06 AM. By 9 AM, any hope for rain here had seemingly vanished as the clear signs of dry air moving in, along with subsidence aloft, were now clear to you and me. It hadn’t rained, and though I always hope it will, I was amazed at how my risky forecast of “no rain” had magically occurred, leading to a slight case of megalomania, grandiosity, if you will. It was though I had spoken to those smoggy clouds directly. It was finished. I thought I might as well leave and go on some errands; no chance of rain now! I also think of myself as kind of a Garrison Keillor of clouds, tellling stories about them, and continuing a megalomaniacal theme here. “I try to tell the truth”, Garrison once said, then continuing, “but the truth doesn’t always take you as far as you need to go.”9:03 AM. Looking NW. Those huge clouds of just a few minutes earlier are gone, and now only suppressed versions of Cu are seen.
Then, the transformation back to what we had just seen earlier that morning! It was amazing, with HUGE Cumulonimbus clouds arising from the same appearing line of heavy Cu. Here we go into “error”, and I would add, humility:
9:49 AM. Was in route to Marana at this time from SH, but stopped to take a photo. Though these Cu had fattened up from nothing, thought they would be dessicated by the dry air moving in, that is, would look ragged and shredded and not amount to anything.10:14 AM. What? This was a shocking view, this Cb and rain shaft, upwind of Catalina. I still had to keep going to finish an errand though; not race back and enjoy what could be the last storm of the summer rain season.11:15 AM. Your storm, about to strike. Those clouds on this side of the giant, mounding Cb were the ones that done it, ones that exploded upward a few minutes later. Fortunately, I got some first hand reports from neighbors and used some imagination to experience how bad it was for a few minutes.11:57 AM. Just back in SH country, and the showers are still around, here to the NW.11:58 AM. But this view to the SW and upwind, is really The End, its over, it is finished, etc. The summer rain season has ended for us. The dry is moving in now, the clouds will wither and die even as the afternoon warms up some.
The only weather ahead now for the next couple of weeks is temperature changes. That’s about it, so will take a little break here, maybe only post once in awhile, and more on climo or science stuff.
The End.
————————— 1Modified for baseball to, “Bloop, der it is!”. A “bloop” is a weakly hit ball that falls for a base hit.
Yesterday, in a ploy to get some rain, I “dared” it to rain on the water year data I presented for Catalina. I didn’t think it would, to be honest, and also wanted a data “scoop” over other presenters of data who might be too shy to present data prematurely. Remember, the rubric here is, “Right or wrong, you heard it here first!”
Yesterday, the water year total I presented has ended up being slightly wrong.
It did rain. Furthermore, the 0.08 inches, is the heaviest amount around if you check our Pima County ALERT gauge data.
Our new Catalina water year total is 10.91 inches after a hard, few minute rain just after 8:30 PM. Mountains to the east were obscured, too, in a whitish haze so quite a little Cumulonimbus cloud emerged from that evening cloud deck, so rain-free for so many hours.
All in all, it was a dramatic day yesterday since the U of AZ rendering of the GTS-WRF had showers developing quickly in the middle of the afternoon and it was SO CLEAR, the sky SO BLUE for so long (a deep blue sky suggests dry conditions aloft), and I wondered if I hadn’t seen an obsolete model run (while out tramping around on a horse yesterday morning)1.
Finally, just before 11 AM some Cumulus started to form on the Catalinas, but more on the north sides. But then clouds slowly started to form everywhere and they gradually filled as the day went on, but were precip-free. Cloud tops remained too warm to form ice, which as you know is the -10 C level (with some exceptions; very warm cloud bases, or, very cold ones).
So, while the sky was very pretty, thank you, there was no virga, or showers visible, at least until very late in the afternoon after I had pretty much given up on seeing precip or ice, though came out to look every 8 minutes to make sure I didn’t miss any surprises. Diligence was to be rewarded; yours, too, I hope. I might also note that the U of AZ Beowulf Cluster run from 5 AM AST, available by mid-morning, also saw that the inversion capping cloud tops was going to be eliminated by 5 PM yesterday; this as a major trough in the westerlies cruises into Arizona from California today. It was just about as perfect a forecast as you can get, since it was just after that time, that cloud tops were able to sprout that bit higher and form ice, and an icy top appeared east of the Catalinas, and showers and virga appeared off toward the N.
Today?
Bye-bye, tropical air and summer-like clouds by later today (dry westerlies blasting in behind cool front). I will miss you terribly, summer clouds, but will have to wait until next June or July to see you again. Boo-hoo. Will be a very pretty day, but, rain not likely with front.
Below, your cloud pictoral for September 21st:
11:13 AM.11:12 AM.1:33 PM. If you’re like me, and I REALLY hope you are or you’re not going to get much out this blog, yesterday you were straining your eyes for an icy sprout upwind. But, it never happened. I don’t know how many good plays I missed during football day because I kept coming out to look upwind; all over really, for some ice. The Washington Huskies won, my former company team, BTW, taking care of “cupcake”, Idaho State. Its great when you play non-competitive teams and don’t have to worry about anything, like so many teams do these days. Oh, BTW, the clouds are coming right at you here.4:47 PM. By this time, several Cumulus in the area began to bulk up to congestus size, reflecting the loss of that capping stable layer up top. View is looking N across SaddleB.5:07 PM. While the Catalinas were still pretty “quiet” as far as producing clouds goes, the passing shadows on them were fabulous.5:20 PM. By this time, several light rain showers were visible to the N-NNE due to ice developing in the fatter Cu.6:05 PM. Wonder if you logged this first visible icy top, beyond the Catalinas? It was only visible for a minute or two before being obscured by the clouds in the foreground. You were probably watching football, maybe even “Johnny Football”, and letting your cloud obs slide I bet. I’ll get over it after awhile.6:15 PM. By this time, clouds were beginning to mass in over the Catalinas in the upwind direction and, with ice around, you began to wonder, well, maybe not YOU, because you’re probably still watching football, but I began to wonder, “Could it rain here? Could these reach up to the ice-forming level? And they did as little radar echoes began to form over and downwind of the Catalinas as night fell, preceded by a nice sunset.6:25 PM. Another in a long series of nice sunsets that occur in Arizona. Here, Stratocumulus clouds are under lit by a setting sun.
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9:03 AM. In case you didn;t believe that I could be a weatherman and also be able to ride a horse. Been bucked off a few times, too, though I don’t recommend it. Here, weeds of Catalina Regional Park. which most of us hope will be completed before the year 2150.
Add to text box, lower left, the words: “….unless you’re quite young.”
Looked like there was a leveling off during the past 15 years, along with the “puzzling 15-year hiatus1” in global warming, coincidentally, so I used a “poly” fit instead of a linear one that would reflect the “stabilization” of water year rainfall in these latter years. Those early wet years in our record are now associated with a big change in the positions where the lows and highs like to be in the Pacific, one that comes around every few decades called the “Pacific Decadal Oscillation” (PDO). The change to a new regime occurred in 1977-78, just when the Catalina rainfall records started at Our Garden down on Stallion where you should buy some stuff. There was also a gigantic El Nino in 1982-83 that contributed to that early wetness. Remember all the flooding in September and October of 1983?
You may notice that I have posted this some ten days before the end of the water year. I dare it to rain on this year’s data! (And I hope it does, given our meager total.)
Yesterday’s clouds
Many more and thunderstorms much closer than expected from this keyboard (heard thunder just after 12 Noon!) Here’s our day in pictures:
8:15 AM. Altocumulus perlucidus provides some nice lighting effects on the Catalinas.10:03 AM. Early risers, like that middle one, suggest tremendous instability up there.10:31 AM. See excitement note.
12:06 PM. Cumulonimbus/thunderstorm forms NE of Catalina. Due to high and cold cloud bases (at and a little below freezing later) this cloud has a high preponderance of ice compared to our more tropical Cbs.12:38 PM. Eventually becomes the “Dump of the Day” over there by the town of Oracle as it recedes (boohoo).3:44 PM. As noted in the title, yesterday’s clouds with their cold bases had a LOT of ice in them, and in most cases, not a lot of rain fell out. Here, an example of a dissipating Cb that didn’t produce much more even in its peak than what you see here, a VERY slight shaft.6:24 PM. Still, some nice color at sunset. That’s what this blog is mostly about, pretty pictures, in case you missed those scenes of the previous day..
Today…. Dewpoints are up from yesterday over much of southern Arizona, and mods suggest a similar day to yesterday, scattered to broken Cumulus clouds with an isolated Cumulonimbus, with more coverage in rain than yesterday. Whoopee! Rain is actually predicted here! How fantastic would that be? And I would have to update my opening just graph just that bit, an enjoyable task, really.
Mods are also indicating that some rain may leak into tomorrow as our first tentative cool season-style trough and front pass by. We’ll see. In any event, should be a pretty day today and tomorrow. Try not to be inside the WHOLE day watching football!
If you were on Ms. Mt. Lemmon, or just in Tucson yesterday taking your wife to the airport for some reason, you would have seen a line of large Cumulonimbus tops lining the east through southeast horizon in a broken line. It was pretty impressive, and demonstrated how close our summer rain regime still is, astronomically speaking anyway.
2:37 PM. Distant Cbs dot dot dot the horizon beyond the Rincon Mountains to the east. Photo taken while not driving; it just looks like someone held a camera pointed out a side window while driving and also not looking to see how the camera was pointed. Its a photographic niche I’ve developed. Lightning was being reported at Douglas at this time, too, though they did not add to their once-in-a-hundred-years summer rain season total yesterday.
There is still enough heat and moist air around for some small Cu around here, but that’s about it for today and tomorrow, though the Canadian model still thinks there will be some big enough clouds for them rain in the general area of SE AZ today and tomorrow.
But, just small Cu can produce dramatic scenes on the Catalina Mountains, much better ones than just a clear sky, so that’s SOMETHING to enjoy before the long clear days following the complete end of our summer rain season and the desiccating air that follows by Sunday and Monday.
About the most we can expect after the Cu are gone is the occasional appearance of CIrrus clouds once in awhile as storms in the westerlies track across the West, but to our north.
Next, I thought I would post a map of global ocean temperature anomalies for September 19th, in case you were thinking about going to the beach somewhere. Seems like most of the ocean is slightly warmer than normal for some reason, except around Antarctica.
The presence of an El Nino, as you likely know, can help jack up precip totals in the Southwest in the late winter and spring. So, its likely that official predictions will be for another drier than normal cooler half of the year (October through May).
Global ocean temperatures on September 19th.
Will have some additional Catalina climo charts in the next day or so, maybe an erroneous personal prediction of the October through May precip like last year’s…hahaha, sort of.
