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!
—————–
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.
——–
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.
———-
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?)
First about the rainfall around Arizona yesterday….
Jack is happy. Got 1.21 inches yesterday afternoon. Nice! No doubt some of our friends, fellow lowlanders, who can’t take Catalina-Sutherland Heights when the temperature rises above 82.5 F unlike you and me, experienced that cloud downspout that occurred at to Happy Jack Ranger Station in Pine, AZ, at almost 8,000 feet elevation.
For additional rainfall reports beyond those provided at “Happy Jack”, of course, we have to go to about 3 dozen other places because no one has managed to cull ALL of the rainfall reports we get into ONE daily list. Well, maybe the NSA has them all… Here are a few more links to rainfall data:
Not to mention the many “school net” and TEEVEE station-established rainfall reporting stations, and those folks who monitor rainfall at home but don’t report it to the rest of us who want to know about it. Maybe NSA can help out there, too. Hahahahaha, sort of. (BTW, I have nothing to hide to whomever is reading this; well, mostly nothing.)
——-EDITORIAL OUTBURST——
How strange it is that we cannot go to ONE friggin’ site and get all of the rain reports for the whole State! Would it be due to a lack of…….inter agency cooperation and competition, even among non-profit organizations???? (Insert creepy organ music here)
——-END OF EDITORIAL OUTBURST——
Back to rainfall observations…..
Douglas, AZ, if you haven’t heard from your favorite TEEVEE meteorologist who makes a lot of money1, has experienced its wettest June through August ever, with 13 plus inches, with about two weeks to go! This is for the purpose of generating a thought about a trip, a weather vacation, for you. That whole area down there, with its historic heavy rains this summer MUST be seen! Your weather diary will be sadly lacking without some notes about the vegetation, ponding and stream flows in that area. Damn well know I’m going again. There is a treasure of scenes, maybe new lifeforms, down thataway that won’t happen again in our lifetimes. The specifics below from the NWS:
SXUS75 KTWC 130105
RERTWC
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TUCSON AZ
605 PM MST MON AUG 12 2013
...DOUGLAS ARIZONA RECORDS WETTEST METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER ON RECORD...
RAINFALL OVER THIS PAST WEEKEND AT BISBEE-DOUGLAS AIRPORT PUSHED
THEIR 2013 METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER TOTAL TO 13.23"...WHICH ECLIPSED
THE OLD RECORD OF 13.07" FROM THE SUMMER OF 1964.
METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER IS THE PERIOD FROM JUNE 1 TO AUGUST 31ST.
THE 13.23" IS ALSO THE TOTAL FOR THE 2013 MONSOON. THIS RANKS AS 2ND
WETTEST MONSOON ON RECORD...STILL WELL BEHIND THE RECORD OF 15.90"
FROM 1964.
LASTLY...THE 2013 CALENDAR TOTAL OF 14.10" CURRENTLY RANKS AS THE
19TH WETTEST YEAR ON RECORD.
$$
On to clouds, yesterday’s:
As a CMJ, you should have noticed the harbinger of better things ahead for late yesterday afternoon and evening when we had “thunder on the Lemmon” beginning at 2 PM, about 4-5 hours earlier than the two prior days. Earlier is better.
Also earlier were the first scruffs of Cumulus clouds forming over the Catalinas, in this case about 2 h ealier than prior days, another “earlier is better” scene for rain here in Catalina-SH. Here are some scenes; hope you seen’em. Oh, my, another outburst of creativity.
First, before Cumulus, these “strangers”:
8:11 AM. Billow clouds, Cirrocumulus undulatus, if you want a tech name. They weren’t around very long, just a few minutes, hope you scene’em. Best seen as action figures in the U of AZ time lapse film for yesterday.
11:13 AM. Cloud street streaming off the Lemmon is pretty advanced for this time. Cloud bases, too, a bit lower than the day before. Lower is better (for rain amounts).1:43 PM. First ice on top of Ms. Mt. Lemmon. Should be in your diary. Can you see it? Answer in next image. I’m trying to learn you up on these things…dammitall. Note lack of a rain shaft at this time1:43 PM close up of glaciated turret showing above the cloud mass above Lemmon. There’s some writing on it. Thunder b
While this early TSTM fabove aded quickly, dropping only 0.28 inches on Mt. Lemmon, the “Dump of the Day” (say, those within 5 miles of here) erupted suddenly just after 5 PM over and to the south of the Golder Ranch development at the foot of the Catalina Mountains. The cloud-to-ground strikes came within seconds, not minutes from this dynamo, though like its predecessor, it did not last long. Still, parts of it moved far enough north to give SH (Sutherland Heights) 0.12 inches. Here it is:
5:16 PM. “Dump of the Day”, looking toward the Golder Ranch development from the parking lot at the top of Golder Ranch Drive. LTG was too scary to leave car.
And, of course, the day finished out with another one of those dramatic sunsets, and the lighting on the clouds at that time of day that makes us so happy to be here, that we can take temperatures above 82 F without having to depart for higher ground. Last evening, this beauty:
7:03 PM. Looking north beyond Saddlebrooke, and along with it, another fabulous evening of lightning. Doesn’t happen like this as a rule in that colder, high terrain that our “temperature refugees” head for. Much better down here for evening and nighttime LTG.
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1I dream about being a TEEVEE weatherman making a LOT of money. I could then take those weather vacations I’ve dreamed of, never mind the State Department Travel warnings, to Cherrapunji, India, where they once measured over a thousand inches of rain over 12 months; to the Island of La Reunion in the southern Indian Ocean where tropical storms have sat and dropped, and your jaw will also drop, 72 inches of rain in ONE day, and 66 inches in 18 hours in a DIFFERENT storm–before that one let up.
Worn out from yesterday, which resembled the day before with the late “bloom” of fabulously photogenic Cumulonimbus clouds, much lightning, and an equally fabulous sunset. Took too many photos (200 plus I think) kind of out of control, due to excessive excitement again; hard drive filling up. Locating brain now in this cup of coffee.
First, before the cloud photo diary for yesterday, this wonderful, uplifting look at the weather way ahead from NOAA’s spaghetti forecasting machine last night, calculated from global data taken around the world, to be redundant, at 5 PM AST last evening, valid for 5 PM AST Friday, August 30th:
Isn’t this great?! One of the best maps I’ve seen this summer. Looks like the summer rain season1 hereabouts will be in pretty good force through the end of August now after abosrbing this NOAA check of chaos theory. Maybe Sutherland Heights will catch up to our average rainfall for July and August by the end of the month, 6-7 inches. Now sitting on only 3.2 inches since July 1st.
Yesterday’s clouds and storms
Here’s how it all started:
10:38 AM. Cumulus specks began to appear over Ms. Lemmon an hour or two earlier than the previous day, always a good trend.11:21 AM. Early sign of an aroused atmosphere, one ready to produce deep clouds. Thin, spindly clouds shooting upward rapidly, sometimes, as here, in the formation of an obscene gesture.12:57 PM. And before 1 PM, this early Cb (calvus) off the mountains to the NW! I was really preparing for giant storms ALL day in the area. But, that’s NOT what happened. They faded soon after this. Ms. Lemmon, never mind the raging heat, became devoid of clouds. It was nothing less than astonishing that it could be cloud free in the middle of the afternoon with such an “auspicious”, if rude, early start of Cumulus clouds.
3:08 PM. Its 106 F in Sutherland Heights. This view of piddly-pooh Cumlus clouds over the Catalinas didn’t seem possible, in a sense, an amazing sight. All the day’s early promise was somehow gone, drier air was moving in, and that thought made the heat even more intolerable, though I don’t mind it myself, adding a personal note here.3:25 PM. Its a 107 F; cloud drought over the Catalinas continues. May seem silly, but this was just an incredible sight I thought.5:51 PM. Within half an hour, the Cumulus began to perk up. Could the same thing happen, that sudden explosion of Cumulus into Cumulonimbus like yesterday occur AGAIN? Yes
5:51 PM. “Muffin” Cu congestus, center, has top high enough already to produce ice and precip!6:13 PM, 22 min later. “Muffin” Cu cong has grown into a small Cumulonimbus with this pretty rainshaft. But LOOK at how the clouds have filled in toward Sutherland H.!
6:53 PM. By this time more clouds were building upward, joining the fray, as here, and the whole sky was filling in. There was some stupendous cloud to ground lightning strikes with this one, but didn’t capture them.
7:05 PM. Hard to put into words how pretty a sight this was, and so dramatic, full of portent.
7:18 PM, 13 min later, the dump has come. This was the cell that produced almost continuous lightning toward the west into the early evening.
7:14 PM. In the meantime, this cloud base was expanding in the upwind direction toward Saddlebrooke-Charoleau Gap, eventually to be our rain-producer last evening just after 8 PM AST.
Today’s weather? You’ll want to see Bob’s view and, of course, that of the TUS NWS, or your favorite TEEVEE forecaster’s. U of AZ experts though today would be better than yesterday!
The End.
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1Sometimes confused with the “monsoon” of India and south Asia, which is really a MONSOON with a giant low center circulating air around it for millions and millions of square miles. Hey, Jabalpur had 17 centimeters of rain yesterday, 6.70 inches, and the rain is supposed to get heavier in the next couple of days!
Yesterday was interesting because Mr. Cloud Maven person1 gave up on ANY rain around here as late as 5:30 PM yesterday, when the sky was punctuated by only Cumulus mediocris clouds. Sure, there were large, and quite pretty Cumulonimbi to the NW-NE over the distant high terrain, but it seemed Ms. Lemmon could not take part in producing the rainfull joy those distant clouds indicated as she so often does; was a real Cb wallflower. See below.
5:21 PM. Under 104 F skies, Cumulus mediocris over the Cat Mountains having bases way up at about 14 kft above sea level (of course, less high above sea level in future decades) produces a yawn.5:23 PM. Nearly solid mass of Cumulonimbus tops line N horizon.
Within half an hour, things began to change. What happened? Sometimes when you see changes taking place all around you its a sign of some upper level trigger, some pattern in the upper level winds that is causing the air below to come together under it, and produce large areas of clouds and thunderstorms, a little cyclonic swirl. I can’t really see anything to explain the suddeness, so I will quit this topic rather than leaving you hanging. I think I will show you two ant cones now.
Thought break: 7:57 AM, before the cloud development mystery, two symmetric ant cones. But why? There are many mysteries in life that can’t be solved, so I’m not feeling bad at all.5:45 PM. Nice, but still, at this size can only produce sprinkles and virga. Note slight bit of virga above Pusch Ridge. This WAS a sign that these modest clouds with high bases were beginning to reach upward to the glaciation level, where ice forms, a level that changes in height from day to day generally because it is partly dependent on the aerosol content in the air. This began happening in several clouds almost simultaneously! I am sure you started to get worked up, as I did.5:58 PM. Cute narrow shaft falls from a glaciated turret that has also climbed that bit farther from the prior photo. You also can see that while there is a big fluff of ice up there above the base, the rain that falls out represents only a tiny portion of where ice formed in the cloud. This would be the graupel/hail region of the cloud, melting of course on the way down because its so friggin’ hot, to be colloquial there for a second.
Cutting to the chase, these surrounding cloud eruptions that occurred simultaneously, suggesting some help from above:
6:01 PM. Rainshaft fibers began emitting from this pile of Cumulus crumpulus. It was amazing since it now seemed everything was starting to rain! And rain reached the ground under this in Oro Valley. Stupendous, because now you’re looking everywhere for something to go over you.
7:02 PM. Great looking oval base about to “unload.”
7:11 PM. The hammer is down. Likely 0.50 inches or so in this short-lived water bomb.
6:51 PM. “Man with hat and beer”; sun illuminated rain in background.
7:01 PM.
7:11 PM. Part of the spectacular electrical show last evening.
I wasn’t going to blog today, but rather than disappoint my reader, and seeing a ooupla photos that were kind of nice, I pushed through the laziness. I hope you’re happy now….
Also, humid air is pushing up from the S today, and while it hasn’t gotten here yet (dewpoint here in Sutherland Heights next to my gravel driveway being but 36 F now, its in the 60s at Yuma, Nogales and Douglas. With that invasion of water vapor molecules comes a slightly better chance of a shower, or at least SEEING one somewhere! You might hang out some wash today to further increase the moisture content of the air; it would be a more basic form of “cloud seeding”, maybe “cloud doping.”
Sunset to sunrise, because they imported that way:
7:19 PM. Cirrus spissatus, in the distance; foreground and center, Cirrus uncinus, if you care.6:48 PM. Cirrus fibratus and spissatus. This was kind of funny to me. Looks like a flying ghost or something with outstretched arms trying to grab me, or maybe something else.5:36 AM. Cirrostratus fibratus instead of CIrrus because of the all sky coverage.
Factoid: The amount of rain that continues to fall in the formerly severe drought areas of Kansas and Oklahoma continues to astound. Here, from WSI Intellicast, their 7-days of radar-derived totals. Also note the substantial rains in eastern Colorado and New Mexico. Good news for all.
Radar-derived rainfall totals for the 7 days ending August 13th. Areas of dark green to yellow indicate totals of between four and TWELVE inches.
:
(colon deliberately left above at left to provide some tension, some anticipation in case you’re bored already)
5:55 AM. Flakes of a droplet cloud, Altocumulus, rather suddenly appeared or moved in.
Those morning Altocumulus clouds (no ice) were pretty yesterday! Took too many shots, as usual. Here are a couple:
5:56 AM, looking SSW.7:36 AM. A little later.
5:56 AM. A little earlier. Puffed up enough over here to designate them as floccus and castellanus.
The temperature at the top of these clouds, located at about 14,000 feet above sea level: 2 C, 35 F.
2:48 PM. A mid-afternoon mammoth Cumulonimbus capillatus incus arises in the distance toward the Rincon Mountains as closing time at the Marana Landfill Dump nears. Dumps, as you likely know, are one of the great research sites in America, as they are to anthropologists sudying the ancients. You can’t imagine how excited anthros get when find a previously undiscovered dump used by ancient peoples. Its the same today by those who refer to themselves as “trashologists.” Sez a lot about the society of the time, and what they did. Think of how important to us the plastic bag will seem to our society by future anthros and trashologists! Let’s face it, we LOVE the plastic bag! I noticed quite a few here, too, kind of blowing around all over. Gritty-not-pretty photo: $2,500. (Cost $10 to get in and take this photo, so passing along some of the cost to consumers.) Photographer’s note: This may be one of the most important photos in the GNP collection.
