Though the the castellanus twins dropped by yesterday:
10:24 AM. After a hazy start, this pair showed up; two perfect examples of Altocumulus castellanus, side by side. Have never see this before. Castellanus indicate a layer of the atmosphere where the temperature declines more rapidly than in other moist layers, allowing little baby turrets to extrude from the base that bit. Sometimes, though, they can reach high enough and get large enough to have virga. But not yesterday. You definitely should not have logged any virga from these clouds.
Altocumulus castellanus, that is. Suggests atmo in this layer ripe for convection, but unless there’s some humidity below these clouds, it can be kind of an old saw that doesn’t work out a lot of times, unless they themselves get overly enthusiastic and begin to shower and thunder. It happens.
While yesterday had these interesting clouds, and a couple of distant Cumulonimbus tops, the only real excitement was this dumpster NW of us shown below. Did any one drive over there to get under it and measure the rain it put out? I would dole out some extra credit if you did. Otherwise, we’re going to have to rely on radar to estimate how much came down over there.
1:50 PM. Surprisingly dense rain shaft to the NW from a rogue Cumulonimbus. Nothing much else really all afternoon. Boring! Remember how we used to yell, BORING!!!!” in that movie when that guy was talking1? You don’t find people/whole audiences yelling at the movie screen anymore because something is going on they don’t like and feel motivated to erupt with a comment. People are more reserved now days and hold in feelings at movies, probably not the best thing.4:46 PM. The Lemmon cloud factory was “on strike” most of the day, and here, that dark blue sky made you think of college football.6:15 PM. Evening clump of Stratocumulus trails a little snow from its bottom. Lately we’ve had “blooms” energized convection, growth of Cumulus, but yesterday was, well, BORING!!!!! Nice little flourish of Cirrus, though.
The week in rain
Since most of Arizona is unpopulated, and even when there are people, not everyone reports rain, so we have to rely on radar-derived rainfall amounts to “fill in the blanks” Are you a “blank”? Think about it. Now looking back at this past 7-days, ending yesterday, and using radar for any sense of what happened all over the State here’s what we get, from WSI Intellicast. We had an amazing 7 days of rainfall, rains that did so much to dent the NW AZ drought with many inches of rain. Need more, of course, but here it is:
Radar-derived rainfall for the week ending August 27th, 2013. Look at those 4-8 inch totals W of Prescott! And indications of over 8 inches a tad west of Needles!
The weather ahead
U of WA mod, and his one, crunching last afternoon’s global data, have the size of clouds picking up today and over the next couple of days. Yay. Need more rain.
The End.
————– 1Furthermore, it was supposed to be a horror movie, and instead it had SINGING! Unbelievable. No wonder people were upset when they saw it!
Trying to adjust “working” schedule to accomodate exede.com data choke hold after 5 AM…
Here in the “The Heights” we’ve only had about 4 inches of rain so far in July and August, compared to a normal of about 7 inches. Still the recent five days in a row of measurable rain have brought life and flying ant swarms back to the desert. Great to see, well, maybe not all of it. From yesterday morning these shots:
7:37 AM. Grasses are rebounding as they can in the free range lands.Height of desert grasses where no cattle can go. Camera hog horse, takes a munching break to insure it gets a face shot.8:10 AM near the Sutherland Wash. Doesn’t compare to last year’s growth with nearly 8 inches of July August rain, still, it was nice to see.8:29 AM. Riparian scene at the Big Rock tributary to the Sutherland Wash. There was no water, though.1:26 PM. Early afternoon downspout mostly N of Saddlebrooke. Another great sight. There were numerous ones around, but as this summer has gone, none blasted “The Heights.” Only a trace of rain was recorded.2:09 PM. Photo of shaft with some ill advised advice written on it along with an arrow.3:07 PM. There were several nice deluges on the Catalinas yesterday. (Can a deluge be nice?). Anyway, this one looks to have inflated the water in the Romero Falls area.4:12 PM. What was especially great about yesterday was that the showers re-building over the mountains. Here, in the same exact spot as the one an hour earlier, a new shower has formed. It was a day that just wouldn’t quit. As darkness fell, still another complex with vivid lightning moved over the same area.4:23 PM. Marana storm trudges westward to bombard Dove Mountain area.5:31 PM. In spite of all the cool air around at this time, the many showers, another complex of thunderheads boils up to the ESE in the upwind direction. It just kept giving yesterday. This is the one that about an hour later produced the vivid lightning, with most of the rain falling again toward Catalina State Park. Shaft pretty much obscured lights down that way when it rolled in.
The End, except it looks a little drier today, but then, it was supposed to be a little drier yesterday, and really wasn’t.
Below a hodge podge of photos from yesterday’s cloudscapes. THought I would see what I could do before exede choked me after 5 AM, share some sights I liked. Running into choke wall now, so can’t move them around in their proper order without pain, have but two minutes left before exede chokes me…I guess I’ve made that point enough.
Drier air moving in aloft…. AZ mod, 11 PM version thinks it will be a dry day here, showers around but not here.
Hmmmm. 5:15 AM. Nothing seems to have changed. don’t seem to have been choked yet.
3:16 PM. Random collection of cloud-centric folk exult over yesterday’s cool day that had some thunderstorms anyway. You can see how happy a cool day with rain makes people here. Wish I’d gotten their names.6:56 PM. A fabulous aspect to yesterday was this re-blossoming of Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds after the brief thunderstorm struck a couple of hours earlier. Often, as you know, the clouds is dead, just debris clouds cover the sky after a good rain.11:06 AM. Cumulus struggle to build off the Ms. Mt. Lemmon cloud factory under an overcast of Altocumulus clouds. After the previous dud day, you wondered if this might be another dull, dank day with no rain or sprinkles.2:54 PM. By this time, with a shallow Cumulonimbus cloud dropping rain near the Gap, you knew things were going to be different yesterday from the prior day.7:30 AM. Would these clouds thin and burn off? Or would they compromise our chances of a rain by keeping the temperatures too low. Dewpoint was 67 F, extremely high, so the amount of water in the air was phenomenal, ripe for a good rain if everything else fell into place.4:22 PM. Just about here. What a great sight this was roaring toward Sutherland Heights! Got 0.22 inches from this.4:53 PM. Had some welcome ponding, too!3:45 PM. Denser shafts, obscuring parts of the Charoleau Gap complex, indicate Cumulonimbus tops are higher than earlier in that direction.4:00 PM. This behemoth rolled over the Pusch Ridge and was heading toward us. Cargodera Canyon, NE corner of Cat State Park, got 0.51 inches as it went by.3:08 PM. Lid busted; clouds deepening to above 40 kft. If you saw this you were likely as overjoyed as I was at this sight, that the cool day was not going to prohibit massive clouds. Here, looking NNW past S-Brooke.
Or rather, I think exede.com, an internet satellite provider arm of Viasat does, so going into hibernation. i thought the title, too, reflected some of the crassness that occasionally appears here, in a kidding way, of course.
After losing Comcast at our previous residence after moving to Sutherland Heights, because C-cast doesn’t serve the rustic Sutherland Heights neighborhood, I signed up with exede.com at the recommendation of a neighbor. I was surprised that I didn’t see much difference in speeds uploading and downloading between Comcast and the satellite pipe. I was pretty darn happy with exede.com
I see a huge difference now.
In only 14 days I have used up an alloted 15 GB of internet activity per 30 days using exede.com, whereas I never exceeded any limit browsing weather with Comcast. I don’t view movies on my computer, except the U of AZ time lapse ones once in awhile, and occasionally a YouTube video of a song.
I had no idea what my usage would be with exede. Didn’t need such a number with Comcast doing what I do every day.
But to add just 1 GB more of browsing capacity with exede.com, will cost me $10 I am informed on its “buy more” web page, and the rate stays like this when adding up to 9 GB more ($90). But even that larger amount would be used up in but a few days I see now, and so it will be prohibitively expensive to continue doing what I have been doing the rest of my 30 day period in a time frame I can work in. This 30-day allotment period ends in mid-September and at that time, I will get another 15 GB. So, between 5 AM and 11 PM, I can do nothing on the internet except maybe get and send e-mail. Gads, hope that didn’t quit too!
There is a free surfing time zone in exede.com, from Midnight to 5 AM Local Time, and that’s why I was up at 3 AM this morning. Since I have never finished one of these blogs before 5 AM, (usually they’re sort of finished between 5:30 and 7 AM) even when getting up around 3:30 AM-4:30 AM, as I regularly do. You end up browsing a lot of weather imagery while putting these together, chosing this or that one that you think someone out there might like to see.
Oh, well. May now picket Comcast down on Cortaro Farms Road for redlining Sutherland Heights…..
In the 50 minutes I have remaining before 5 AM, here are some thoughts on yesterday’s clouds: pumped up and then deflated.
Got pretty worked up when seeing an early riser distant south of us, down I-19 way toward Nogales, a Cumulonimbus protruding above breaks in the Stratocumulus and Cumulus clouds, that demonstrated the air was pretty ripe for some large showers without a lot of heating. Also, it appeared that the sky was going to clear off some more.
12:39 PM.
Had a lot of hope that not much heating was required when this pretty cloud appeared to the northwest of us in the early afternoon.
1:56 PM. Cumulus congestus builds northwest of Catalina, but then fell apart.3:36 PM. Occasional light rain fell intermittently on the Catalinas, though.
3:17 PM. One heavy shaft appeared out of the Seattle-like gloom to the west of the Tortolitas.
Got 21 minutes left now….let’s see….how much rain did the Catalina Mountains get? Looks like the max was 0.47 inches at Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge. The most in the USGS gages for all of AZ was 1.77 inches, over near Glennwood, NM. Both very nice totals. More coming today. 16 minutes left….after checking
U of AZ mod run from 11 PM data not past 11 AM this morning, but sat imagery shows huge stream of clouds heading this way. Have to believe rain chances are higher than yesterday, but I am biased toward rain occurrences, always. Hahahah, sort of.
The title it refers to a flood of water vapor that will cloak the entire State of Arizona, vapor that could condense here and there into a real flood; the “juice” up there, will be “loosed.” Daily rain totals somewhere in the State may rival any in the country for a few days. I am sure most of you know all about this. Let’s hope we get some! Clouds are topping the Catalinas this AM, always a good sign.
Had 0.73 inches here in Sutherland Heights; fell in two episodes during the day and evening yesterday. NE corner of Saddlebrooke really got pounded yesterday late; 1.73 inches at Horsehoe Bend. You can find a roundup of precip here from Pima County, and later, more reports from rainlog. org and CoCoRahs. Another inch fell on top of Ms. Lemmon, too, and 2 inches down there in the Guijas Mountains, just SW of us. It was a good day!
A side bar about golf litter…
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Since we have recently learned that Saddlebrooke golfers seem to run off immediately when sudden downpours and lightning daggers strike at them, leaving golf ball litter right there on the course, look for golf ball-sized golf balls in the CDO wash today. There were dozens of golf balls in the wash right here in Catalina the last time a big cloudburst hit Saddlebrooke. An example of that kind of litter, remaining from that day a couple of weeks ago, is still in the wash:
8:29 AM. CDO wash near Golder Ranch Drive. Golf ball litter can be seen at center. I was pretty upset when I saw it.
The 500 millibar map for 5 PM AST, August 23rd. Note tiny “H” next to Oklahoma! City. Stands for “cloud hell”; its tough having any good ones when you’re under the “H.” Note arc of clouds from about Mazatlan to Laramie, WY. We’re in that moist stream, a kind of moisture river, now rotating around the Big H. Yay.
On to clouds…a good early start, Cumulus clouds were streaming toward the W from Mt. Lemmon almost as soon as the sun came up.
8:55 AM. A very good sign for an enhanced chance of rain; Cumulus spawning off Ms. Lemmon this early under a clear sky.
10:31 AM. An hour and a half later, a stream of Cumulus clouds drifted off Ms. Lemmon; they were about to start raining on only Sutherland Heights, making us feel pretty special.10:36 PM. A fine shaft of rain begins to fall from modest line of Cumulus congestus clouds that have reached the ice-forming level just upstream of Sutherland Heights. For these modest clouds to trail over Sutherland Heights and Catalina with rain, sometimes reaching “moderate” levels is a rare event. Usually rain from such clouds falls out on the mountains before it reaches Catalina with anything more than a sprinkle. We received 0.14 inches over about 40 minutes of rain from these guys! It was a joyful time because there was hardly any other cloud cover; it was just us getting rained on! When looked to the right (S) and to the left (N), yesterday, and it was clear, yet raining! Really was a fun time.10:59 AM. Looking out over Oro Valley at the stratiform plume of ice cloud left by those “glaciating” (converting to ice) turrets.5:00 PM. Issuing flash flood watch to golfers at Saddlebrooke now. Pick your balls up, lest they end up in the CDO, and run for cover now!5:13 PM. From Golden Goose Plaza, where I had a social engagement instead of excitedly experiencing the Sutherland Heights dump in person (grumble, grumble), this view of the flash flood in progress up Saddlebrooke way. Lotta lightning, too.
You can review the day here, courtesy of the U of AZ. In this film you will see how small our raining clouds were yesterday morning!
Things quieted down for pretty much the remainder of the day until our late afternoon and evening “bloom”, something we’ve been experiencing over the past week or so. There was a sudden invigoration of Cumulus clouds that began around 4-4:30 PM, leading to some remarkable, large and dark Cumulus bases, ones that powered up into full blown Cumulonimbus clouds that propagated from the north and east. The middle and upper level winds were trying to carry them north, but that north wind that accompanied a heavy downpour toward Oracle caused an uplift and cloud invigoration over us here in Catalina.
Couldn’t be on “the perch” for that rain here in SH-Catalina late yesterday afternoon (0.14 inches) due to a social engagement, but, serendipitously drove under the 1-2 inch blast of rain, lightning, and 60 mph winds that deluged Oracle Road at Magee and points south. 1.7 inches was measured in 37 minutes at the Ina Road and CDO Wash! You can find more regional totals here. Arrived in that zone just as the bottom unloaded, the most exciting place you can be, as you and storm chasers know, of course. Restaurant, at Ina and Oracle, took quite a bit of water, too
4:43 PM. Updraft holding the flood aloft giving out, first in that brighter spot in the center. In only a few minutes, everything was “fogged out” in torrential , sideways-blowing rain, and vicious cloud-to-ground strikes, as I knew it would be, and you, too, within minutes looking at this cloud base. This is the kind of storm we get here that gets your attention, gets you off the couch and over to the window, if it hasn’t blown in yet.4:50 PM. Not even sure this was the worst of it, but it was reel bad here on Oracle near Magee. Wasn’t very imaginative, just repeating over and over, “This is amazing!”
4:37 PM. Gorgeous shafts of rain obscure parts of the Catalina Mountains next to Catalina State Park, Romero Falls area. Had to pull off and get SOMETHING of this sight. Didn’t see a flow in the CDO later though1. (Mini-harangue down below, way down, about walls.
You can see this stupendous sequence, too, from the U of AZ campus here.
A U of AZ mod from 11 PM last night foretells another active rain day today. This is great. Weeds getting crispy, as seen on yesterday’s horseback ride. Maybe some will get rejuvenated. Expert takes on mods will come out later by Bob and Mike, of course. The scene at White Dog Ranch, by the CDO wash and Lago del Oro as of yesterday:
But also saw some wildlfower stragglers
7:58 AM. Still some of these around, as well as some kind of yellow flowers, too; hangers on through the recent dry conditions.
And, to finish off here, the early signs of a likely good day ahead, Cu sprouting above Ms. Lemmon by mid morning, tops reaching “glaciation temperatures” not much later, and, of course, “thunder on the Lemmon before 1 PM.” Like all “signs”, there are exceptions but they usually work out, like yesterday’s downpours.
10:27 AM. A good sign for an active day, Cumulus beginning to form by mid-morning. Means the amount of moisture is pretty good, the shallow thermals rising off the mountains don’t have to go very far. Also, whitish haze implies high humidity (not pretty, though) because aerosols usually contain particles that respond to humidity and swell up (deliquesce), causing the sun’s light to be more scattered than small, dry particles would do. Big problem back East where sometimes there is no blue sky on the most humid days, just this white murk. Just awful because you can’t even see the clouds around you.11:12 AM. At left, a not very tall turret has left an icy residue, the whitish blur. You would have been getting happier seeing this happen, since things will only get bigger and better as the day wears on. Also, was musing about, “Could this be more ‘ice multiplication'”?, that phenomenon we who study clouds call those that have “too many” crystals for the temperature at the top. Recall that back in the 1950s and 1960s for the most part, scientists thought it took a cloud top temperature lower than -20 C (-4 F) (!) to produce many ice crystals due to cloud chamber measurements on the ground in which there were no, or very few crystals that formed at those cloud chamber temperatures. But, voila, when scientists flew airplanes into clouds looking for ice, they found Ma Nature forming a lot of ice at cloud top temperatures higher than -10 C (14 F) in many cases! This “discrepancy” has not been completely explained even today, and is STILL the focus of airborne research. Amazing.12:49 PM. First thunder on the Lemmon was about now. Excellent!
The End.
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1The CDO wash is no longer visible at Oracle on the east side, thanks to an unnecessary, unbelievable 400 feet of sound wall monstrosity, extended past the neighborhood (Ramsfield Pass) it was supposed to shelter from a few extra decibels. One Catalina neighbor described it as only slightly better looking than the Berlin Wall. Our tax dollars at work, I guess, in some bizarre way. The wash did NOT need to be protected from a few decibals, and I miss seeing in as we used to!
For those less weather-watchfully-endowed as a CM or CMJ is, these from last evening between 6:02 and 6:10 PM:
6:08 PM. Its raining on me, too, and so I am IN somebody’s rainbow! How cool izzat?
Yes, Virginia, it did rain on the Lemmon yesterday, and that very light rain crept across SH-Catalina just after 6 PM yesterday, eventually crossing Oro Valley with a little baby sprinkle.
Drops were pretty numerous, pretty small, and fairly uniform in size, making me think about what was up there doing it. The shaft was always thin coming down the mountains toward us, and being thin means the top ain’t too high, as you know. Maybe, it was one of those rare ice multiplication days that happens here every so often, ice that forms at temperatures not terribly far below freezing. Going to movies now to see if the U of AZ time lapse can shed light on the buildup–thinking aggregates of needles and sheaths that melted into raindrops and ice multiplication in a top only as cold as -10 C or so.
OK, looked at movie, can’t see a protruding high top and so I am concluding that I am correct in the assertion that an unusual event happened in AZ, ice formation a plenty at temperatures of -10 C. It happens, but requires larger cloud drops in our clouds than usual, maybe some drizzle drops that froze, became graupel (soft hail).
Now I will look at the TUS sounding for yesterday afternoon and see that it confirms my thoughts, tidying up a nice story of cloud microphysics. After looking at it, will post it since it is supportive of the above conjectures, otherwies I would not have posted it. From the Cowboys this for Tucson yesterday afternoon:
The afternoon sounding for TUS, launched around 3:30 PM AST. This profile DOES support the thought that ice formed at high temperatures. Amazing! I really was thinking needles and sheaths as the drops came down.
Gotta go now, ride a horse, more later maybe….looks like we have those pesky Altocumulus clouds, though ones not as thick as yesterday’s which took into mid-afternoon to burn off, and kind of wrecked our rain chances.
Needles and hollow sheath ice crystals only form when the temperatures in cloud are warmer than -10 C (14 F). Normally in AZ we do not see ice forming at those temperatures because the conditions for their formation, generally involving very large cloud drops and drizzle drops in clouds at those temperatures are rare. This is because we usually have high concentrations of cloud droplets and those higher concentrations lead to itty bitty drops, ones less than 30 microns in diameter at temperatures higher than -10 C. So, another thing that we can guess about yesterday’s clouds is that the droplet concentrations might have been lower than usual, and that the drops in the clouds got larger than 30 microns in diameter.
It was great to see a huge Cumulonimbus squatting on Ms. Mt. Lemmon yesterday just after noon, then hours of intermittent thunder as new clouds piled high into the troposphere around it. One site, White Tail by Catalina Highway up there, got almost two inches in just an hour! So, the atmosphere was quite juicy yesterday.
Still, to see all those pretty curtains, rain ones, dropping down around us as new Cumulus powered up into Cumulonimbus clouds, many such events due to Cumulus spawned by outflow winds from the Lemmon dumps, was visually nice, but “unsatisfying” because none landed on me.
Too, we need to catch up to our nearly 7-inch normal July-August rain from the half that we have now, and we came up with only a trace here in the Sutherland district.
BTW, under “advanced observation taking”, you would have logged the first drops from the anvil overhang of the “storm on the Lemmon” at 1:51 PM. Well, maybe not exactly that minute at YOUR house, but I nailed it! Had to be outside though, and wait around for those drops, since it was not clear drops would even make it to the ground from what was over me. The wait was worth it.
Of course, those early storms, rising off the Catalina peaks, usually don’t make it here off the mountains early on with anything but sprinkles. Only later in the day, when we’ve been baked some more, do those giants start making their way on to the lower elevations, and yesterday they did.
Here is your cloud photo diary for yesterday, beginning with your precursors for a good cloud day:
10:51 AM. RIght here you should have been thinking, “Man, this could be a fantastic rain day!” Look at how thin and tall this cloud got, and it happened soon after the first scruff formed (Cu fractus).
11:14 AM, the prior cloud devolving into a reminder, with its narrow stem, of atomic testing back in the 1950s1 see historical note, “nuclear winter” scenarios in the 1980s. a way of defeating global warming…..(gallows humor). The flattening of the cloud at top indicates that there was a temperature barrier that still needed to be punched through as the day warmed.12:28 PM. Minimal lid capping prior cloud punched through as day warmed–see protruding top; thunder began at this time. I probably did not need to tell you that. Sorry.2:20 PM. Pretty curtains, just after drenching Pusch Ridge, drift S to deluge TUS–see today’s AZ Star. It is truly remarkable how much rain can fall from these clouds! Note the stranding here, detailing differences in the cloud’s structure above, generally associated with hail and graupel up there.
Today’s clouds and weather?
You know the drill. Early cloud conditions (due to Altocumulus opacus), followed by a slow burn off, then the rise of the Cumulus clouds. U of AZ mod expects a very active day today, so maybe the curtain will come down on Catalina this afternoon.
Farther out: “tropical river” still floods SE Cal and western AZ, as we remain on the edge, getting something but not the full force as those areas will. Remnant center passes over Yuma Sunday AM. Might be worth a trip. Hell, they could get their annual precip in 12 h, something to write to the family about if you’re there.
—————— 1 Historical note re “atomic testing”: It was a common perception in those days of atomic testing, generally scientists believed, by naive, uninformed peoples, that the explosions were changing the weather. So, when anything weird in weather happened, some would point to “atomic testing”, kind of like some scientists do with global warming and weird weather today. (“Real scientists” are more cautious about attributing a storm or other singular event to GW.)
The US Weather Bureau (ATOMIC EXPLOSIONS AND WEATHER USWB) and the US government went to great lengths to explain to these people why atomic testing could not have changed the weather; it was too small an event to have changed the weather.
In fact, with the rise of Chaos Theory, where it is deemed by some scientists2 that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil might have something to do with a tornado in Texas, of COURSE, atomic testing changed the friggin’ weather! We just don’t know how and where…
Also, it is normal and proper for scientists to correct, enhance, or reject prior theories as new facts come in. “Hey” think about how embarrassed the cosmologists were back in the 1990s or so when they discovered they had the friggin’ sign of the “Cosmic Constant” wrong. The Universe was expanding, ever more rapidly, not collapsing. Then, and this is really funny, they made up some magic called, “Dark Energy” to explain that inexplicable new finding! But, as the ideals of science demand, they did change their minds and theories! Not sure that happens so easily today in some domains I could think of.
2Nick, research faculty, U of WA, private communication, as seen in the Seattle Times.
The summer high pressure sitting on top of Catalina in the middle and upper atmosphere, squashing our Cumulonimbus clouds with its extra warm air, is destined to relocate to Dubuque, Iowa over the next five days. Along with the return of better showers, more bigger ones, as this happens, this movement will also allow a river of tropical air to flood into Arizona with the remains of Hurricane “Xxxxx” (hasn’t formed yet, but will shortly way down off Mexico way).
Before placing much confidence in such a wild scenario, let us examine the NOAA “Ball of Yarn After Kitty Played with It“, as my one blog reader once termed it, or, AKA, the “ensembles of spaghetti”:
NOAA “Ensembles of spaghetti”, valid for 5 PM AST, Sunday, August 25th. Pretty cool, huh? Big trough off West Coast; big fat high over Plains States, tropical river flows between them into Cal and AZ. Really, this is as good as it gets for summer rain deluges, ones that deserts are always in need of in parts of those areas. I am pumped because the clustering of the red and bluish lines, as you know, mean that this model forecast pattern is just about a foregone conclusion.
So,after DELIBERATELY putting little errors in the data that the model crunches to see if there are tipping points, little errors that make a big difference, then running the model over and over again to see how different the results are, we can see that everything looks pretty much the same even after little errors are put in. That means the tropical river forecast is robust. In plain language, “Count on it!”
These forecasts also include the remnant of a tropical storm or hurricane that has yet to form, being swept along into western Arizona and SE Cal. Some of our greatest floods in Arizona have occurred with these kinds of storms, as you know. Presently, the bulk of the tropical river will impinge more over the western lowlands of Arizona rather than here, but we should be in great position to accumulate appreciable rains anyway, if not the heaviest.
BTW, interested in tropical storms impacted, say, Yuma? Go here, type in the name and you will see, oh, names like Nora (1997), Kathleen, 1976, and so forth. It happens. Pretty damn exciting for those folks. So maybe it will happen again. Atmo is set up to do this, or come close.
Now for the little cloud news for yesterday, not as good a day as hoped for, just hot with run of the mill, isolated storms. Can hardly find rain in the past 24 h in the Pima County ALERT gauges.
12:18 PM. Already 100 F here but only modest clouds have formed over the Catalinas. Look at how confused the top is, one leaning one way, and the other another way. Shows how still the atmosphere was at that level, almost calm.2:05 PM. You gotta love this little guy, trying so hard to be something. I just wanted to fly up there and hug it, all puffed up the way it was but so little. Kinda reminded me of the antics of my very little brother when he was, trying to be more.
Below, the human metaphor for that little cloud shown above; my little bro. He was so cute, too. Went on to be a tough guy, as well, a young LA policeman working the Watts area during the riots, you know, guns pointed at, death threats from Black Panthers1, ambushes, etc.
Thanks, bro, for all you’ve done.
Circa 1953,5:34 PM. Squashed Cumulonimbus over west Tucson just after a spectacular cloud to ground stroke. Didn’t think it had it in it to produce LTG.6:49 PM. While it didn’t rain, we did have our usual sunset glory, lighting on the mountains.7:11 PM. Sunset colors with “Cirrus spissatus cumulonimbogenitus” in the foreground (debris from dissipated thunderheads, of course).
Finishing up with a quick look at the 11 PM U of AZ model runs…. Has some more showers around here than yesterday, which isn’t hard to do. But yesterday, this same model was foretelling a down day today. Hmmmm.
Well, gotta go with the latest, or just have a great day; lay back and enjoy whatever happens. Oh, yeah!
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1Across from the Watts police precinct was a Black Panther headquarters which at one point had a sign, “Off the pig Rango.” My brother went over and told them he was upset that they had misspelled his name. The next day the sign read, “Off the pig Ragno”, also misspelled.
Quite happy early on yesterday with Cu sprouting upward rapidly in the mid-morning, then it ended up being a sad day for us yesterday with only a trace. It appeared, with the early generation of towering Cumulus over the Cat Mountains, then thunder just before noon, that we were going to have a good chance of a big dump, a land-filling rainstorm, to make a play on the word “dump.”
But no.
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Next, in a continuation of negative thoughts, I propose a spending cap on college athletics. Here’s why from the NYT, no less1. In the short of it: the Duck has more money to spend than the Dawg, and, as a former employee of the University of Washington, I am upset. Yes I am THAT great a former employee. Even when working at the U of WA full time, I advertised the company teams AFTER working hours by wearing this and that with Dawg logos, that’s how good an employee I was.
But Oregon has crossed the line; its got to stop. Think of the poor AZ Wildcats, too, if you’re so inclined. The only worse thing that could happen is for the University of Phoenix, with all their money, to start a football program and join the Pac 12 after the WAZU Cougars drop out because they are so bad. (The Cougars ARE really bad, to get an in-state rival Dawg dig in. hahahaha, Cougs.
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Now, some clouds, real drama queens, but still pretty darn photogenic:
11:25 AM. Cu pile up nicely beyond the Gap. Note pileus clouds atop Cu left and distant right, a sign of good updrafts. I like pileus clouds.11:36 AM. While these two Cumulus clouds became marshmallows, the first ice (fibrous area, upper left) begins to show.
11:49 AM. Rain shaft begins to show, first thunder a few minutes later.
1:55 PM. With flow from the south, I was ecstatic at this point. Why? The big rain shaft to the south. Oh, no, too late for that one to be anything when it gets here. But, those Cu building over Pusch Ridge, they’re what needed to fire up and keep this complex going, and they are looking GREAT at this point, no doubt pushed up by the outflow winds of the rain just behind them. But it gets better….
2:18 PM. Heading upward into euphoria from ecstaticness (is that a word?) here as Cu congestus bases enlarge, don’t seem to have weak points in the center suggesting irregular updrafts. Its going to rain from them soon, no doubt it. And it did. But….not that much. Rain shaft behind and to the right, already thinning at this time.
So with all the drama shown above, here’s what ensued from that great looking base, demonstrating that you can only be “mostly be sure, but not all sure”, to paraphrase a Billy Crystal line in “The Princess Bride.”
3:02 PM. The pitiful “rain shaft”, if I may so elevate such light rain, on Samaniego Ridge, the outpouring of precip that eventuated from that great looking base. Little baby rain was falling here at the time. Traced is all it did.
What happened? The intensity of the shaft tells you how high the tops of those really dark bases got, and in this case, probably they probably got no higher than the marshmallow clouds shown above with their equally weak shafts. Not much rain, either, in the Catalinas.
Why didn’t the tops get higher?
The outflow shove wasn’t enough to jack them up, the air just a bit too cool feeding into the bases, weakening outflow winds. You can make up a lot of stuff. But, darn, it looked SO GOOD there for a moment.
Today? Well, the same scenario replayed over and over again it seems. Likely Cu building on the Cat Mountains again, probably not as early a start as yesterday–TUS sounding’s a little drier. I should see what Bob sez, since he really knows stuff.
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1 Sent to me by a science prize-winning friend2 with whom I shared Husky season ticks with. It was interesting since I got a minimal science prize of sorts, too. The headline: “Prize-winning meteorologists attend college football games together.” Kind of an unexpected scenario I would think.
2Got his prize, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and congratulations from Al Gore at the White House back in ’00 or so. (Can you put a footnote in a footnote?)
