Let us first begin first by NOT exulting too much over our own rain, but let us revel in that rain that has fallen in the Plains. New Mexico, too. From WSI Intellicast this beauty for the past 7 days:
A radar-derived sum of the rain that has fallen in the past seven days over the USA. Please observe the yellowish and orangy areas in Kansas, indicating that between 8-16 inches has fallen! Oh, my. Let us remember, too, that July and August are supposed to be relatively dry months in these areas; the wetter times in May and June.
Below is our national drought status at the onset of the week above (for July 30, 2013), and indicates why so many of us should be thankful for this past weather week:
The national picture of drought as of July 30, 2013. It will be updated later today.
Well, they didn’t get so big, so soon over the Lemmon, as foretold by one model referred to yesterday, but there was something later in the afternoon near the top of Lemmon. Can you detect whether that the turret shown below is mostly “glaciated” or not? You know, that’s why I do this, to learn you up on clouds and when they got ice and therefore are precipitating out the bottom even though here you can’t see the bottom. It all for YOU. Its no problem for me, of course.
5:04 PM. A Cumulus turret has protruded above the others behind Ms. Lemmon. If it’s glaciated, it might be better be termed the head of a Cumulonimbus calvus (“bald”) and would have rain underneath it. What do you think? Only the C-M knows for sure. Sounds like something from a radio program I’ve heard somewhere. But, you should try anyway. Answer at the bottom if I remember to put it there.6:31 PM, Swan and Trotter, with metaphorical “Dead End” road sign, lower right. While to the uninitiated this Cumulonimbus capillatus anvil may have appeared to be heralding a storm, overspreading the Catalina sky the way it was, the lack of cumuliform portions, the fraying edges, not hard ones, indicated it was in its dying phase. Photo of anvil with metaphorical sign; yours for $2,000 (more than usual because some mental effort was expended). Now that I am thinking about money, I think I will demand a million dollars to continue blogging, and see what happens.
2:47 PM. RIght here you knew that the model run that had an echo by 3 PM on Ms. Lemmon was going to be off as we see but a Cumulus mediocris forming after the usual mid-day clearing.
Nice sunrise this morning….
5:48 AM today. Sunrise over the Charoleau Gap. Mulitple layers of Altocumulus, some fine virga.
Another morning of remnant rains moving through right now, rather than the full blast. As usual, these clouds and rain showers are likely to be dissipating in the later morning before doing much.
Looks like one last day of possible big showers here….check this out from the U of AZ, 11 PM run (WRF-GFS mod).. Lets hope so, cuz its gonna be dry after this for a few days.
…says the sky on August 5th, referring to almost the exact same sky as on August 4th at this time. Also, both days had OCNL LTG (texting “occasional lightning” here in weatherspeak) off the to distant NE, unusual for this time of day. Even heard thunder this AM.
Below, which shot is from today, just now, and which boring shot of “stratiform” debris clouds from complexes of Cumulonimbus clouds that have dissipated instead of arriving here full strength boo-hoo is from yesterday?
6:07 AM, August 5th. Altocumulus floccus/castellanus deck with Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus (watch out how you pronounce this in mixed company).
7:00 AM, August 4th. Altocumulus castellanus deck under Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus.
So what’s the routine now? Gradual thinning with isolated showers, ones that also eventually disappear, followed by brighter skies, and growing of Cumulus clouds like desert weeds in July after the first rain. You’ll have noticed by this time that was a cloud scruff (Stratus fractus) on Ms. Lemmon today, indicating that the moisture is enhanced today over yesterday when the bases were appreciably above Ms. Lemmon. So, a better chance of rain, sans any model glimpses, but then since rain was very sparse yesterday, except for that 2 inches that fell in the mountains S of TUS yesterday afternoon (1.61 inches measured at the Florida Canyon Work Center), almost anything would be an enhancement of a rain chance here over yesterday so I have fudged some words here.
What happened to produce all these dense, morning clouds the past two days? Cloud gigantism in northern Mexico last evening and overnight. Must have had a TON of precip in these complexes that just exploded down there, inches of rain no doubt fell. Sure wish we had some reports under these magnificent blow ups. There are quite a few rain measuring stations in Mexico, but that data is not available from remote areas until they’re published. Here’s a view of last night’s Mexican eruption from IPS Meteostar.
!! PM AST U of AZ mod has rain “on the mountain” (the Catalina ones) by 3 PM AST, and, like yesterday strong storms to the south of us heading this way. But, like yesterday afternoons showers down thataway, they don’t make it here, the model reports. You can do the loop for precip here in their rendition of the WRF-GFS mod. Hoping Mr. Leuthold, our U of AZ expert, will shed further light on this when he reports here today between 10 and 11 AM. In the meantime, I am sure convection expert, Bob (Maddox), will have something to say before then.
Not looking that great for a juicy August rain season here in Catalina Sutherland Heights…. Recall last year we had about 8 inches in July and August here, and at the end of August the mountains and grasses were SO green!
“Alas”, now there’s a word to don’t see every day…probably a little stiff from laying around so long.
Those Cumulus that shot up over the Catalinas early yesterday morning were a magnificent sight, and so full of promise. And while thunder was heard here just after 11 AM here in Sutherland Heights-Catalina, the showers just did not get off the mountains around here as hoped, though there were a few big boys (or “gals”, to be gender neutral) around to the NW-N and down to the S-SW during the afternoon. Here are the Pima County ALERT totals for the past 24 h. Lemmon had a good drop of 1.46 inches; that’ll surely keep those mountain streams going. But as you will see, not much elsewhere. Just a trace here, our mode for this summer in Sutherland Heights-Catalina area it seems.
BTW, all available model outputs (U of AZ 11 PM run not available at this time) show fewer showers than yesterday, though to CM, it looks like a very similar day to yesterday in sat imagery and such1. So, it would seem we have a another day with a chance for a good rain in the afternoon or evening, about like yesterday when some showers did form off the mountains and could have landed on us. Besides, even without rain, it was a pretty day anyway. Its all great.
Here is yesterday’s cloud history with its early promise, ultimately only fulfilled only on the Catalinas around here:
6:35 AM. Our usual broken layer of Altocumulus clouds. But, being composed of droplets, are especially subject to dissipation as the sun comes up, irradiates them, and ground plumes begin rising to help finish the job off.
10:32 AM. EVery single and married cloud-maven junior should have been EXTREMELY excited and filled with anticipation at the sight of these towering Cumulus clouds, these early risers (Cumulus congestus erectus). They demonstrate that that the atmosphere was “loaded” for action, that is, was really unstable, ready to produce deep clouds and heavy showers. Above the Cu, the remnant of the morning’s Altocumulus layer.
11:36 AM. Has been thundering on the Lemmon for about half an hour. These next two photos show the risk of being under a nice, darker cloud base with no sign of rain coming out, and then 3 min later (from a video I took), the mountains are obscured in blinding 1-2 inch rainrates per hour.11:41 AM. A couple minutes after the shaft dropped down. This was another really good sign about this day, the dark bases weren’t going to be “Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders2” so-to-speak in terms of alternative music of the 1980s, but rather, the “real deal”; were shooting up to….the level of glaciation and precip formation! I probably did not have to tell you that last thing when you saw shafts of precip coming out eventually, but suddenly, out of every darkened base.
12:12 PM. “Twin towers”, able to escape the mountains.
12:51 PM. These beauties. Topmost turret on the left is loaded with ice–can you tell? This is pretty hard to do at this stage. In a couple of minutes, the results of that ice began to show up at the base.
12:53 PM. Shaft beginning to appear below base. This is the most exciting place to be if you’re under it, since the drops are huge, have made it through the now collapsing updraft. Lightning had already occurred by this time, so you have to watch out for these early stages of thunderstorm formation since, underneath it, you might not see the ice forming, and know that the electrification process is well underway.
12:57 PM. Puttin’ the hammer all the way down.
7:24 PM. Scattered Altocumulus with Altostratus above (a bit too thick to be just “Cirrus.”
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1BTW, if you want a really GREAT forecast by a true expert, rather than a “shoot from hip” kind of one that CM so often offers, you have to read what Bob has to say today when he posts it. U of AZ experts also often refer to his careful analyses.
2Here they sing about something we probably don’t want to happen to Catalina, Arizona.
Its not a motorcycle gang, though it would be a good name for one comprised of meteorologists. Don’t think that’s gonna happen.
If you were watching carefully, and you had no radar capability on your smart phone, you could have still detected the presence of clouds producing rain. Here’s what they looked like, in a kind of a washed out, low-contrast view toward the southern horizon. AZ mod didn’t have them there, so it was a nice surprise to see them. It suggests that the chances of scattered rain today, and rumbles from the The Lemmon, are pretty good. Model output from yesterday DID have that for today; rain on The Lemmon this afternoon into this evening, drifting northwestward onto the valley. Yay! Waxing rain gauge so that the first drops don’t stick in the dust covered collector part, but zoom down into the inner cylinder (the part that magnifies the amount collected so you can read hundredths). You don’t want any water molecules from those drops, “leaving the building” before they get in.
Here’s a photo of those thunderheads crossing the border yesterday afternoon:
2:58 PM. A surprise sight.
Nice to see some Cumulus mediocris shading Mt. Lemmon, too.
2:51 PM. Mediocre Cumulus clouds hover over Lemmon.7:18 PM. By this time, Altocumulus clouds, including some lenticular ones were invading the sky, Along with scattered Cirrus way above them, promised a great multi-colored sunset.
And here it is, nine minutes later:
7:27 PM. Altocumulus and CIrrus clouds, due to their vastly different heights, provide contrasting sunset color.
So, there are pretty much all of your clouds for yesterday. What more can I do?
The End
This just in: just when you think you can’t possibly do anymore, this sunrise;
In case you missed it, today at 5:45 AM. Clouds: Altocumulus opacus.
And it was yesterday. But if I titled this blog page that, I would get people complaining that they weren’t looking for a cloud and weather report from the prior day. Still, “hot and pretty” it was with those small Cumulus shadows drifting across our Catalina mountains, the shadows ever changing like the patterns in a kaleidoscope. Can anyone tire of these views? I don’t see how.
This last photo shows a “cloud street”, an intermittent line of small Cumulus clouds,generated by either the Tucson Mountains, or maybe even as far south as from Kitt Peak. This line of clouds demonstrates that one of our best wind directions for rain is from the SW, as it was yesterday, and that was about the direction of movement for our those big rain cells on July 15-16th that drenched so much of the west slope of the Catalinas. This direction brings air that is moving upward due to the increasing height of the terrain north and northeast of us, and storms are not compromised by downslope flow as they were the day before when the wind rushed out of the north.
Many of you will want to know if I saw any ice from these clouds yesterday, to compare with your own notes. The answer is “no”, I did not see any. The sounding below shows why. Tops of the clouds were only about -5 C (23 F) and that’s too warm for ice to form in a cloud in Arizona–can happen over the oceans, or in clouds with real warm bases, but not here, not yesterday. Yesterday’s cloud bases were up around 12,000 feet above sea level, highest tops about 15,000 feet, so the thickest clouds in these photos were maybe 3,000 feet thick (1 km). See below.
Atmospheric sounding for Tucson from a balloon launched between 3:30 and 4 PM yesterday.
July rain “factoid”:
Douglass, Arizona, has just passed the TEN inches mark for rain this month, a remarkable amount that is several inches over the prior record! Definitely have to get down there to see what TEN INCHES does to plant life there, maybe see some nice puddles, running streams, the whole great scenes of water in the desert. I think you should, too; get out of the house, experience some summer life out there, stop watching so much TV… :}
No rain likely here through the end of July. Boo-hoo.
Great rainshowers pummeled a few nearby areas yesterday; Horseshoe Bend just NE of Saddlebrooke, got 0.75 inches yesterday with another little pulse of water coming down the CDO later. But once again Nature bobbed a rainy apple in front of us, only to jerk it away, to mix metaphors royally. BTW, has there been a baby yet?
I wonder, too, if you saw in yesterday’s sad weather “play”, the colliding outflows NE of Saddlebrooke? Or the the ideal, dark, expansive, flat cloud base indicating a great updraft was feeding the rain shafts just to the north of us, ones that were propagating this way, riding the rain-cooled outflow racing toward Sutherland Heights, that wind shoving the air up as it pushed S, forming new clouds over it?
All this looked so promising to the non-cynical observer. As a meteorologist I was, of course, videoing these events to the north LONG before they happened since we often see this sequence develop to the north of us. But after you experience so many disappointments, as we have here in SH, you begin to expect bad no matter how promising they look at first. Its kind of like being a Cubs fan. You KNOW nothing good is going to come of the season. So that’s where I am now, pretty much like a hopeless Cubs (or a Seattle Mariners) fan.
Have, of course, in five summers, seen this happen before, that is, “The Great Dissipation”, when rain is but yards away, moving down from the N and then doesn’t make it. You probably have, too.
Part of the reason, maybe a large part, is that the wind rushing south from areas north of Saddlebrooke, and especially out of the Charoleau Gap, is going downhill. This means that the upward shove out of the rain shaft is being compromised by downslope motion at the ground. Often, in spite of this downslope motion at the ground, the upward shove is still enough to keep a respectable cloud base going, feeding more precip into the rain shafts that develop above. So, while there have been other situations where strength of the “incoming” is weakened, there was still an upward shove strong enough that we still get drenched.
But not yesterday.
The cloud bottoms/updrafts, necessary for new rain to form and reach here, broke up just as they arrived over Sutherland Heights, with one last gasp rain streamer, the end product of the last decent cloud base/updraft, landing only a mile or less away to the east before giving out completely. Man, that was tough to see.
Here’s a photo diary for yesterday, which, BTW, was one of the most photogenic summer days ever IMO (took around 300 shots (!), though part of that excess was because my camera malfunctioning and had to repeat many):
5:24 AM. Cumulus turret beyond the horizon casts a shadow on Cirrus clouds as the sun comes up behind it. Very pretty..
8:34 AM. Now here’s a great sign, a fingerling Cumulus shooting up from the Catalinas this early!9:39 AM. This is really looking good due to the bulk and towering aspect of the clouds.9:43 AM. So pretty, so isolated, and shows that even the Tortolitas can launch large clouds early yesterday, another great sign for an active day.9:51 AM. Clouds continue to be quite aroused over the Catalinas, nearly reaching the glaciation level already! I was quite excited myself and took a lot of photos of these.10:12 AM. Rain! (from a Cumulonimbus capillatus–looks fibrous in its upper portions due to ice crystals and snowflakes11:12 AM. Within an hour, Lemmon was rumbling, as was this giant off to the N of Saddlebrooke.11:26 AM. The unusual scene of two outflow winds colliding, just behind the dark base in the foreground. Things were looking so great because you knew there would be an out rush of wind at us, maybe maintaining that big dark base that’s necesssary to keep the rainshafts going its the bottom of the chimney feeding the Cumulonimbus turrets, getting them up there where they cold enough to form new rain/hail/graupel. Its only a few miles away, too!11:39 AM. Learning module. Here’s where your hope for a great rain should begin to fade, a wave of sadness washing over you. RIght here you begin to suspect something’s wrong, that big fat dark base looking a bit disorganized, not as large and flat, though still has a strong upshoot on the right side. Maybe the disintegration of the base will continue; once started it always does.11:49 AM. This is the trash base that made it over the house. Going to put on “The Who” now; you remember them: “Won’t get fooled again. New base same as the old base. Won’t get fooled again.” One of the great weather songs of all time.Dong, twelve noon. That diminishing base at 11:39 AM above had enough upward zoom in it to produce this narrow rain streamer as the base disappeared, got rained out. If you were out, there was a very close lightning strike at this time in Sutherland Heights.4:24 PM. But the day wasn’t over yet was it? BY late afternoon, new Cumulonimbus clouds had arisen, now drifting from the west that produced this unusual scene of spaced rainshafts.7:31 PM. The day ended with another one of our multi-colored sunsets, the ones we love so much in the summer.
Now to get through the dry, HOT few days ahead…. Will be tough.
However, take a look at this radar-derived precip map for the US for just the past 7 days, and just look at how the droughty areas of the SW and Plains States have been hit with tremendous rains during this period. So great to see so much, especially here in AZ and NM. From WSI:
Total precipitation as inferred by radar for the seven days ending today. Fantastic!
Still a chance, a small one for a shower today, before it dries out for a few days. Mods pretty sure about rain on the Cats this afternoon, which is good. Should be a very photogenic day, with nice shots of more isolated thunderblasters.
With that out of the way…let us reprise yesterday, the good and the bad.
Only 0.17 inches here in Sutherland Heights yesterday while Saddlebrooke was getting shafted, rain shafted, that is. Moore Road at La Cholla, over there, also got more than TWO inches yesterday afternoon. You can check the interesting amounts here and here.
Another near miss here at the house. May have to sell if this keeps up. July rain here in Sutherland Heights, now at only 2.87 inches (normal is 3.5 inches) while everywhere within radius of two miles has more, for example, about 3.5 inches already over there to the south on Trotter (just S of Golder Ranch Drive), and 4 or so inches in places in and around Saddlebrooke, almost within ear shot.
Here are the effects of more July rain than here; these shots from yesterday morning down in the Regional State Park next to Lago del Oro Road:
8:05 AM. For depth perspective, riding pal, Nora B., co-author with hubby of “Wildflowers of Arizona”, admires the vegetation as she usually does being a big vegetation “author” and all that. This is how the summer vegetation is erupting in Cat Regional Park now where they have had more rain than I have. :(…. Might be worth a look down there. Think about it. Also note; she forgot to put the saddle on my horse, Jake. How funny is that? Also shows I have a friend that doesn’t mind an excessive amount of cloud chatter, unlike our former engineer, Jack R., , who had to rip his headset off when I spoke about clouds to crew members on our research flights at the University of Washington. I liked Jack, though, shown below for reasons of nostalgia.
The late Jack Russell, 1942-1998, engineer with the Cloud and Aerosol Research Group, University of Washington. He kept EVERYTHING running, though he was not fond of cloud talk! I ahd to tell him about cloud instruments that were busted, but we kidded around a lot, too, leading a grad student who observed our relationship to say, “I don’t know whether Jack loves you or hates you.”
Continuing with vegetation shots after nostalgia break:
Also had a surge down the CDO wash. I know you like to see this, you love water, so here are two shots from yesterday afternoon after the Saddlebrooke mash down:
3:17 PM. The CDO wash at Wilds Road.3:12 PM. Just as the surge passed at Wilds Road down by the mail boxes.
While the rain was a disappointment, all the other scenes yesterday caused more than 200 photos to be taken from it. Since I have termed myself, rightly or wrongly, as a “cloud maven”, I should show you ones I thought were exceptional, pretty and or dramatic. The first one, while I was looking forlornly at the Saddlebrooke cloudburst, “Why there, and not on me?”:
1:17 PM. The Saddlebrooke mash down as it was happening. Thought it might propagate this way, that is, the push of wind out of this send up a giant Cumulus to Cumulonimbus over ME, and while the sky darkened for awhile, no real cloudburst occurred.
Here’s what rips your heart out, the big, smooth-looking base indicating a good updraft right overhead but nothing comes out. The giant drops, those ones that are the biggest ones in the cloud could be coming down, defeating the updraft that’s been holding them up there because they’ve gotten too big and heavy for it, and likeyly they were even were big hail stones or giant graupel particles (soft hail), and they’re up there. but the strands of those biggest drops begin to streaming downward just a mile away you see. First, you have some sky rage seeing those strands reach the ground just a mile away, your face reddening, but then, being by nature more contemplative, resign yourself to yet another miss as now the sky fills with dead looking debris cloud upstream of you, only producing light, steady “little baby” rain at best, rain that wouldn’t amount to that much, only might be important to a flying ant colony, but that’s about it. Heartbreak Hotel, right here, overhead yesterday, started thinking about moving on again:
12:51 PM. Harris hawk takes advantage of updraft feeding Cumulus congestus base over the house. My heart was aching for those giant drop to start falling out. Did the hawk know he was safe from that event somehow wherein he might have had trouble flying? Maybe he was sensing that the updraft was too chaotic, broken up into small bits, some genetic implant passed down over the eons? Will be watching for hawks under dark cloud bases and what happens now.1:38 PM. Another Cu congestus base almost directly overhead. Was overhead a coupla minutes earlier. Not as smooth now as it was then, suggesting the updraft is getting chaotic. Darn.
Thought back, too, to all the promise, the propitious start to the day with those thunderheads, mimicking hydrogen bomb blasts, over the Mogollon Rim on the north horizon at 9:30 AM. As a cloud maven junior, you would been thinking, “THIS is going to be a special day today.” Here’s that distant scene, so fabulous to see, from Equestrian Trail Road:
9:34 AM. Giant Cumulonimbus calvus clouds line the Mogollon Rim already! This is a great sign for a “big day” with a good chance the same kind of air that let this happen there is over us, too! Watch out, Catalinas!11:45 AM. Sure enough, there they go, thunder on the Cats! Superb. Note anvil peaking out on the right side, middle. Oh,well, you know the rest of the story. Still, there were so many great cloud scenes all day. I loved it overall.
The first t yesterday, from growing clouds topping Mt; Lemmon was at 9:30 AM, the earliest such event of the summer. Cumulus that grew immediately into Cumulonimbus clouds, then one cell after another in a continuous stream came off Mt Lemmon with no breaks in the dark bases above the spawning area. Had never seen that before. Usually there are breaks between cells, a brief clearing on even the most active days. And those cells really must have sprouted upward around 11:10 AM when, finally, a second blast of thunder occurred. After that grew much more frequent, and by early afternoon, it was almost continuous. Very exciting, as steady rain fell here.
Here in Catalina Sutherland Heights, we were the beneficiaries of the more stratiform (flat, dissipating) part of those Cumulonimbus that stayed rooted on the mountains. Those flat portions provided a more or less gentle rain amounting to 0.18 inches here. However, more than an inch fell in the Mt. Lemmon and Samaniego ALERT gauges. You can see more rain data here from the U of AZ rainlog. org home page. It is a certainty that some mountain sites got considerably more yesterday if you saw the repeated dense shafts of rain S of Samaniego Peak, where 1.10 inches fell. Guessing the peak (but non-measured total) was more like an 1.5 inches. This should recharge many of the normally dry creeks and streams on the Catalinas, and keep the green coming.
Another aspect, making yesterday one of the best visually pleasing days was the absence of haze and smoke. The sunlit Cumulus clouds that were forming away from the mountains and over Oro Valley were especially, pristinely white and gorgeous; took your breath away to see them piling up so high, and so purely, brilliantly white, so clean looking.
Here are some shots from yesterday, beginning with some “morning castellanus”, which were nice to see, too:
7:50 AM. Always a hopeful sign, Altocumulus castellanus float lazily to the north of Catalina.8:27 AM. Altocumulus castellanus growing into sizes that they would now be called, Cumulus clouds. Those very flat bases tell you that they are not from plumes of warm air from the ground, but are associated with a moist layer that’s being gently lifted. Its clouds like these that produce our dawn thunderstorms and showers from time to time, and indicate there’s a disturbance in the area lifting the air. It was another hopeful sign of a significant rain. These clouds, unlike the ones that were starting to grow over our mountains, tend to dissipate lin the morning hours after the sun comes up and burns them off.8:12 AM. In the meantime, actual, ground launched Cumulus, from the slight amount of morning heating, were already starting to puff up from Ms. Mt. Lemmon. This was really unusual. You can tell that these are “real” Cumulus because such ground plumes of warmer air produce more irregular bases and scattered shred clouds, show more turbulence (movement) when you watch them than Ac cas clouds, the latter seeming to be almost motionless. Bases of these starting Cumulus not too much different in height than the castellanus clouds in the prior shot. Looks like today will be a big day for captions, if nothing else!
9:25 AM. The first Cumulonimbus is about to announce its presence with a thunderblast. No precip evident here, but aloft, next shot, is the “ice” in the overhanging anvil.9:25 AM, overhead view showing that this buildup had already deepened upward enough to form ice, and was about to let go of some precip. See arrows.9:31 AM. Seconds after first, and completely unexpected thunderblast. Didn’t look big enough. Top of Mt. Lemmon is obscured in heavy rain.
11:13 AM. Finally a second blast of thunder occurred in this cell, though one rain shaft after another drifted across the Catalinas, fading away as they continued across Catalina and Oro Valley.11:14 AM. A look at the downwind part of these storms where only the deep, flat portion remains. Yesterday we were lucky since it is often too dry underneath these portions for the rain aloft to reach the ground. Steady light rain was occurring at the time of this photo, while deluges were taking place on Samaniego Ridge. Rain from these Cumulonimbus portions shown here is mainly due to melting snowflakes while the strong shafts are produced by melting hail and or graupel,that began as as frozen drops or ice particles that subsequently get heavily rimed (coated with ice) as they collide with supercooled drops in the vigorous rising portions of Cumulonimbus clouds, finding their way down as the updraft weakens or collapses entirely. I can;t believe how big these captions are getting, but it can’t be helped.11:27 AM. While things were “humming” along from the Catalinas, Cumulus arose elsewhere in a hurry, producing this gorgeous scene. This cloud is a Cumulonimbus calvus, that short-lived stage when a congestus begins to form ice in its top, but has not gotten to an obvious fibrous stage. That ice is present is seen in the rainshaft already pouring out of this cloud. Can you see that the very top is ice?
6:52 PM. As with many active days, yesterday ended with “debris” clouds from the many Cumulonimbus clouds that formed early in the day, providing a comfortable, overcast evening. The clouds are Altocumulus, at two different levels, with an Altostratus overcast above. Who says Arizona is unbearable in July? Some of the most pleasant days of the year are now.
Today is supposed to be another early starter as well with rain on The Lemmon before noon, the model runs at the U of AZ from last night say. However, the longer term model runs indicate a break in the summer rain season for a few days after today. I guess that’s when our weather can be that bit unbearable here in July. Phooey.
Cloud bases were very warm again yesterday, 15-20 C (59-68 F) paving the way for thunderstorm rainfalls similar to those seen in the Southeast US, inches in an hour or so. Didn’t happen locally, but just to the north of us toward Park Links Road and up toward the Florence area, likely happened as one giant cell after another formed between Saddlebrooke and Florence.
Those were the only clouds that produced thunder yesterday. Less vigorous clouds rained, but didn’t have the ingredients to be thunderstorms, stronger updrafts, apparently. Also, at times it appeared some of the rain, to this eyeball, was “warm” rain, rain formed without ice, a rarity here in Arizona (something that happens all the time in Hawaii, and over the oceans.)
And if you were sharp, you saw something happen yesterday that is also quite rare; the clouds erupt in our vicinity into Cumulonimbus by 9 AM from surface heating (they weren’t those nighttime showers that tend to fade as the sun comes up). That was exciting because when they took off, it seemed like a day destined to have giants here.
But then something happened, drier air began to move in from the east, and pretty soon, the ONLY large clouds were to the west and north, a sure sign a disturbance aloft was moving through and less favorable conditions for rain would follow it, the normal “couplet”, or sequence.
Sure enough, the clouds over the Catalinas, after such an auspicious start, struggled to grow into Cumulonimbus clouds, as they did elsewhere to our southern flank, while we watched one magnificent Cumulonimbus after another rise up to the north.
Fortunately, a moistening and destabilizing regime of air is moving this way from Texas across northern Mexico toward Douglas, and so our day here in Catalina should be more enlightened, by lightning.
Yesterday’s clouds
6:15 PM Cumulus congestus forms over Oro Valley in smoky air. Died away in 20 min. Nice, isolated example of that cloud, anyway.1:42 PM. Another one of the large Cumulonimbus capillatus clouds forms just north of Saddlebrooke.1:36 PM. Looked like a promising sign that the clouds on the Catalinas might still erupt into Cumulonimbus after the brief shower an hour earlier. But no. Looking like someone exulting over a three-pointer, hands raised, it turned out to be a case of cloud erectile dysfunction. It flopped back down in minutes. HELL, we can talk about things like that because we hear about them all the time during our favorite TEEVEE shows! BTW, “TV party tonight!”12:27 PM. The very most hopeful part of yesterday. Forming over Charoleau Gap was this beauty. I thought I was going to see the first strands of large drops/and graupel pour out of it at any moment. I was so happy then. But then, only misty-looking rain fell out, no strands, filaments, suggesting maybe that it was rain due to drops colliding together rather than from ice/hail mechanism. Well, did get measurable rain, but only 0.07 inches.10:55 AM. What a behemoth this was, dumping its inches, producing the first thunder of the day, north of Saddlebrooke.9:13 AM. First Cumulonimbus forms out of the growing field of Cumulus clouds. Can you see the ice shield peaking out on the left?8:26 AM. To see real (ground launched) Cumulus sprouting like this so early in the morning was incredible; hopeful signs of “big day.”
3:32 PM. Severe thunderstorm comes roaring out of TUS and, we hoped, “up around the bend”, as the song says (Pusch Ridge). But it didn’t happen. Did dump a whopping 1.93 inches in one hour at an Avra Valley gauge a bit later. Note light gray, lower “arcus” cloud in the center, the sign of strong winds pushing outward from the cell. Very Floridian looking.
Ealier yesterday, a very nice cell traversed the Catalinas dropping a half and more on Ms. Lemmon before sliding down toward the southwest. Here’s what it looked like at its peak:
1:32 PM. Great to see more water landing on those mountains, feeding those washes and creeks.
Other notes: Yesterday morning was the coolest in weeks here at 71-72 F. Perfect.
More storms and mayhem today. Take a look at how low the clouds are on the Catalinas and Samaniego Ridge, always a great sign when they are are low as this for powerful storms and big rain areas, though we missed them yesterday, they were all around.
