0.52 inches here, 1 to 1.5 inches on the CDO upper watershed; will it run?

May take Jake Horse out to see if the Sutherland Wash is running, anyway, if the CDO is not running here in Catalina.

Thunderstorms (at least 4 separate ones yesterday), with hail, graupel, wind, rain; what a nice day for Catalinans and our environs. Lightning was still visible as of 7:52 PM last evening, and close enough that thunder could be heard, technically meaning a thunderstorm is in progress in weather parlance. Here’s some pea-sized hail for you, sent by a listener, “Dave”, in Sutherland Heights:

Was awakened by a moderate rainshower just before 3 AM. Dropped 0.03 inches in a few minutes, to bring the total to 0.40. Another shower followed within half an hour, but bucket didn’t tip for even 0.01 inch. May have to jiggle it to get that extra 0.01 inch that I KNOW fell. Hahahah.

In the meantime, exulting over the large amounts, so well foretold by the U of AZ Beowulf Cluster run from 24 h ago. Truly amazing! Our total here was also well=predicted by that model; amounts in this storm increase northward reaching 0.87 inches at Oracle State Park, 0.55 inches at the NE corner of Saddlebrooke. We SO needed a good rain. Here’s where the totals are:

201303091030_pptreport

Here are some mind-boggling statewide totals from the USGS, some approaching two and a half inches of water content at Sunflower near Payson! How great is that?! Really, this has been a billion dollar storm in dropped water and snow. Maybe it should have a name now.

2013030911_AZ pcp USgS Sheet1

You will can also access rainfall data from the U of AZ rainlog.org network here, and from CoCoRahs national network for Arizona here. As always, its necessary to point out that in the rainlog network, the measurements reported this morning will be assigned to yesterday’s date, while the ones in the CoCoRahs system will be assigned to today, March 9th.

Since its unlikely to rain for at least 10 days, I thought I would overdo the precipitation data for our billion dollar storm.

Sadly, as you will see in this Pima County ALERT gauge totals above, we in the north end of the County really got the nice rain; most of the county did not. We were lucky we were that bit farther north because it wasn’t the wind direction helping us out in most of the storm; that “help” is taking place now because the wind is more from the west at cloud levels. Going into yesterday yesterday evening the wind at cloud/mountain top levels was from the south-southwest rather than from the west, and normally that more southerly flow helps the south facing sides of the Catalinas, as much as us. So, it was more to do with cloud top temperatures and those clouds being a bit too warm to the south, while northward and to the northwest (perpendicular to our jet stream), the temperatures decreased rapidly at the same level in the atmosphere, and that in turn, allowed cloud tops to deepen more as they went nortward. Make any sense? Here’s a map of temperatures aloft for yesterday, two graphics to try to explain this:

A 500 millibar map at 5 PM AST. Center of coldest air is to the northwest of us at that time, gets colder over you as you take Highway 79 to Florence and beyond. Cloud tops do, too. The full loop is here.

Mapm for the same time with colors showing temperatures getting colder to the NW of us. More likely to have deeper clouds and thunderstorms as you go NW. Full loop is here.

First, here’s last evening’s TUS sounding, as rendered by the Cowboys of Wyoming. Its got some writing on it:

The Tucson sounding at 5 PM AST, yesterday, March 8th. Cloud tops marked by asterisks to represent ice crystals, and bottom by little “o’s”. The arrows in roughly an “R” shape is an attempt at replicating the thunderstorm sign used by NOAA. Even though the clouds were topping out at less than 25,000 feet, they still contained enough ingredients such as hail and updrafts to generate enough static electricity for lightning.

———begin tedious stream of consciousness again, probably worth skipping——–

Graupeling hard here at 3:38 AM! Third shower since getting up! Pounding roof. Very small, like rice grains. Just quit, like someone turned a light off at 3:41 AM. Tells me its a new cell that just formed with narrow strands of precip/graupel. Investigating…no echo at 3:36 AM nearby… waiting for next 6 min sweep… 2:42 AM: No echo! I have not seen this happen before. Could it have developed and died in less than 5 min? Did not tip bucket! Its just like yesterday, we had no less than four hail/graupel episodes and I was beside myself thinking of those balls of ice bouncing OUT of my rain gauge collector! I was being short-changed in the amount of precip I could report. I think I am going to have to add to my rain total, maybe 0.03 inches due hail balls that bounced out

——————–end of tedious stream———————-

OK, now up to 0.13 inches in rain that has fallen since about 3 AM. This is great, because now the total amount in the storm is 0.50 inches here!

Yesterday’s clouds

After a few sprinkles-its-not-drizzle amid brief sunbreaks yesterday morning, the first thunderstorm rumbled across Marana and the Oro Valley at 9:30 AM.

9:55 AM. Thunderstorm with hail and heavy rain moves into Oro Valley.

10:21 AM. Looking upwind toward Pusch Ridge at the bases of a line of rapidly moving Cumulus congestus clouds.

10:25 AM. Hail-producing cloud has passed by, but shaft increases in size and visibility. This is a time when tremendous amounts of ice is forming in the cloud, ultimately leading to its demise as a fluffy area looking area of only ice crystals. Without the liquid droplets, that disappear during this stage where ice forms explosively, no graupel or hail can form. Its a normal life cycle event for cells like this. — 10:25 AM. Hail-producing cloud has passed by, but shaft increases in size and visibility. This is a time when tremendous amounts of ice is forming in the cloud, ultimately leading to its demise as a fluffy area looking area of only ice crystals. Without the liquid droplets, that disappear during this stage where ice forms explosively, no graupel or hail can form.
Its a normal life cycle event for cells like this.

12:12 PM. Another line of young Cumulonimbus clouds races toward Catalina and Sutherland Heights, a recurring theme yesterday.

12:23 PM. Passage of that complex of Cumulonimbus clouds shown in the prior shot resulted in this hail shaft trail on the foothills of Samaniego Ridge. Hail shafts are very narrow. If it had been snow, there would have been much greater coverage.

2:30 PM. But the day wasn't done then, was it? Here something in the way of an arcus cloud rolled across Oro Valley and onto the Catalinas. Thought maybe a tube might form. — 2:30 PM. But the day wasn’t done then, was it? Here something in the way of an arcus cloud rolled across Oro Valley and onto the Catalinas. Thought maybe a tube might form.

4:55 PM. Just kept on giving. Here yet another line of developing Cumulus congestus, just reaching the precip stage a little upwind of Catalina, dropped a few more graupel particles while going on to dump heavily farther north. This recurring pattern of clouds developing, able to become deeper with colder cloud tops is the primary reason the north part of Pima County did so well yesterday and this morning,

Today’s clouds

These early morning stratiform (flat) clouds will disperse into Cumulus and Stratocumulus in clumps. They’ll be cold enough at cloud tops for ice and virga, but clouds likely will be too shallow for more than a hundredth or two in the heaviest precip areas around Catalina. Things dry out later in the day, the Cu becoming smaller, so the best chance of measurable rain is before, say, 2 PM.

Get camera out fast, too. THere was a huge dump of hail or snow on Charoleau Gap last night or this morning I suspect, and it looks spectacular even now at 6:53 AM. Its local, because its not seen at the same elevations to the south on Samaniego Ridge. But, it will just be gorgeous with those deep blue skies and white Cumulus clouds all around.

The End, finally, I think.

March showers for spring flowers; the bloom is on, the rain is here

This is so great, today’s badly needed substantial rain for our Cal pops and other wildflowers, now beginning to bloom. You may have seen some poppies along North Oracle Road in the past week.

Here is the current radar and cloud situation from IPS MeteoStar (loop is here). You can see three rain bands, very similar in configuration to the historic snowstorm of February 20th that also had three bands. What’s potent and interesting is that the lead band with precip just to the west of us (passing over Ajo at this time). That cloud band is usually just that, composed of thick, middle and high clouds (Alstostratus/Cirrus/Altocumulus) without any precip or just virga. And its usually also followed by the “clearing before the storm”, the ones that lead on many occasions to those super spectacular sunsets before the surge of low clouds and precip. You can see that “clearing before the storm” aspect in southwest AZ in the image below.

But, as you can see, THIS cloud band “before the storm”, has developed some rain. So, in this case, we have a chance to pick up some light rain before the major bands arrive later in the day. You can also follow the progress of the storm on those great WunderMaps here. Might be on this site ALL DAY.

4:10 AM combination satellite and radar, the best on the web IMO.

Here, too, is the University of Washington’s 500 mb map for 5 AM AST this morning showing the flow at about 18,000 feet above sea level. You can see the three bands here, too, and a fourth taking shape in the center of the low, now off southern California. You will see that the strongest winds at this level are over Tucson now, meaning rain is imminent, and it is. Already had a trace, a few drops fell at 4:06 AM. Expect lightning in AZ today, maybe around here, too, with the second or third bands.

Here’s the loop U of AZ weather department’s mod output from last night’s 11 PM run, which gives you an hour by hour account of the storm over the next two days. While the main bang is today, a lobe of cold air aloft follows it and scattered light showers continue into tomorrow. What will help Catalina’s rainfall is that the wind will be more westerly rather than southerly at cloud levels during and after the storm, which means they will pile up on this side of the Catalina Mountains the best, and which should do better than other areas. The U of AZ mod knows something of this, and you can see the precip in the panel below extending from the Catalinas toward the west and over us. Its due to this frequent occurrence during and following storms that really boosts our winter precip totals over surrounding areas of similar elevation.

There are a lot of parameters available from this output. You can look at the whole range of them here.

Valid for 3 AM AST tomorrow morning, March 9th.

Yesterday’s clouds

It was asserted yesterday that there would be some Cumulus and Cirrus by Mr. Cloud Maven person.

Here they are:

4:16 PM. Forecast of Cumulus cloud(s) verifies! It was small, but great.

6:10 PM. Cirrus creep underway from the west.

Sure, it was clear practically the whole day, and some people might complain that they got eye strain looking for Cirrus and Cumulus clouds during the day…. But then, you can find people who will complain about anything.

Enjoy this day!

The End

Going inside the curl, again and again

Its not about hairdressing. Its about the “curl of the low” and its jet stream configuration, as shown here by here (IPS MeteoStar):

Valid for Wednesday, March 20th, 2013. Want to see if anyone reads the captions.

Oh, shoot, this is for a storm and cold blast about 13 days from now! (Secretly, with the storm tomorrow so well predicted at this point by all—might as well show you that it might not be the end of March storms.)

OK, lets try again to get a more timely forecast map:

Oh fer Pete's Sake. This is valid for 256 h from last night, or the morning of March 18th! — Oh fer Pete’s Sake. This is valid for 256 h from last night, or the morning of March 18th! But we’re in the curl AGAIN!

Oh, shoot, this ones for 256 h or almost 11 days from last night! What is going on here?

One more try for something relevant, well. its all relevant (suggests we’re in the “trough bowl”:

Finally, valid for 11 AM AST tomorrow morning, this from last night's WRF-GFS run. — Finally, valid for 11 AM AST tomorrow morning, this from last night’s WRF-GFS run.

Maps look kinda similar don’t they? Hence, talk about the “bowl” phenomenon where troughs “remember” where they’ve been like your horse does, and they know where they should be. There’s a long fair weather gap between the one tomorrow and the ones later; don’t get fooled by thinking winter’s over.

This last one for tomorrow suggests the rain is either here or imminent at 11 AM AST as the jet core at 500 millibars, is already deployed to the southeast of us by that time. The timing of all of what happens tomorrow is pretty good for rain amounts since with the chilling air aloft (making it easier for air to rise from near the surface), the cold front will blast across Catalina in the later afternoon. This means that the little heating that we will get tomorrow, limited by windy conditions and clouds, will work to plump up the Cumulonimbus clouds in the frontal band–oh, yeah, there should be some, and that means what?

Graupel (soft hail)! Shafts of them, here and there in the frontal band. The presence of graupel, and it’ll be bashing snowflakes and ice crystals on the way down (the latter can’t get out of the way fast enough) means the clouds will get “plugged in”, electrified, due to those collisions because they generate electricity and lightning is virtually certain in AZ tomorrow. Talk about excitement! Cbs, graupel, lightning, a strong frontal passage, strong winds, and a greater than 100-200 percent chance of measurable rain in Catalina! It doesn’t get better than that!

This pattern also favors better accumulations of precip here with the winds being more southwesterly to west at cloud levels. Amounts? Mod, the very excellent U of AZ mod run indicates Catlania-ites will get around half an inch! I am so excited since this is close to the median amount (0.60 inches) forecast from this microphone two and more days ago! Something must be wrong! Here’s the AZ cumulative precip map for Arizona. Look at all the precip in the State, about an inch and a half of liquid expected on top of Ms. Mt. Lemmon! This is going to be so good for our drought.

Valid for 3 PM AST on the 9th. Most of this falls on the 8th, but passing showers add that bit more into the 9th.

Yesterday’s clouds

They were great, such as they were, and before leaving for NM and points east. Take a look:

6:56 AM. I wanted to hug these little Cirrus uncinus clouds. So cute, just trying like anything to make a little snowstorm to water the ground. Just look at those long tails!

7:47 AM. Then you got to see a Catalina lenticular cloud. How nice was that? Note parhelia on the right.

8:04 AM. A nice, patterned Altocumulus perlucidus translucidus.

All in all, I thought it was quite a good day for you. As usual, thinking about others here.

Today’s clouds

Today we’ll likely see some precursor Cirrus, maybe a flake of Cumulus here and there. I will predict more clouds, if necessary, as they occur.

The End.

Temperature records, yesterday’s cloud, and “Phil” or maybe, “Wanda” just ahead

Temperature records have been falling recently, lots of them, you can see them here. This is what the “lobes of anomaly” at 500 millibars and the circulation patterns associated with them did over the past three days. A lot of the cold ones were in Florida, as you will see. Too bad for those people in Florida who went there instead of to Arizona to escape winter cold. Their whole spring break vacation was probably ruined, if its spring break now. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce should be advertising heavily in Florida right now! “Sad about being in Florida on your vacation? Well, its not too late to come to Arizona where its warm, not cold!” (We won’t mention our recent snow, of course.)

Yesterday’s cloud

Being cloud-centric, thought you’d want to see it¹.

2:23 PM. Cumulus humilis. Kind of cute, sitting there, trying to be the best it can be.

The storm ahead

Seems to be getting bigger in the Canadian model as time goes by, and so I thought I would allude to that before you even read what I was going to say with a fatter sub-title having color, one then filled with portent.

This Storm (yes, that’s right, I’ve improperly capitalized the word “storm”; I do a LOT of improper things with language here) is now going to be so great it may get its own name, like “Phil” or “Wanda.” Years later: “Remember how Phil saved our spring vegetation back in ’13? Put a dent in the drought we were having?”

Check the load indicated in the Enviro Can mod below, those accumulations expected by 5 PM AST, Friday, March 8th. This is stupendous. Notice the Canadians have gone from the usual green, maybe a little yellow, to seeing red in the amounts of precip for this storm. I was beside myself when I saw it, because when you live in a desert, you kind of expect storms to become less rather than more in the models. Should be some thunder in it, too. This will be a real chance to get above normal rain here in Catalina for the month of March (1.46 inch average) in one load spanning two days. Notice, too, how the whole Southwest benefits from this Goliath. Will it be a trillion dollar crop-saving storm like the one at the end of January? Might be, since crop-saving rains move out into those droughty areas of the Plains States, like Nebraska. Hooray! Literally millions of people will be made happy by this storm!

Also, when you have a great storm, meteorologists like me become important, too, and so a great storm is great for us since we might dominate the news, not just be an itty bitty after thought. Our favorite expression: “The one behind this one is even BIGGER.”

Unfortunately, there is no storm after this one, so let’s hope we get all that it can be from it.

In fact, as an impersonator of a true scientist, I have to report that the USA! WRF-GFS model makes this only a million dollar, oh, maybe a billion dollar storm (might not get its own name). Much less precip is indicated in our models, ones based on the SAME data as that in the Canadian model below, that from last evening’s global observations made at 5 PM AST. Not even going to show that output. Not happy.

Still sticking with 0.25 inches as bottom of this storm (bad things happen to it) and 1.00 inches at the top (that is, ten percent chance of less; ten percent chance of more, as perceived from this keyboard). Best guess median of these: about 0.60 inches, or about the same amount of liquid as the historic snowstorm produced on Feb. 20th.

Still looking forward to this.

The End.

——————

¹ Testing 1-2-3. There was some Cirrus, too, visible in the photo, and several other Cu humilis, along with their little brothers, Cumulus fractus.

Let’s look at March, now that its already underway; cloud and weather talk, too

First, a water year (Oct-Sept) update. You won’t like it:

One caveat about February’s total: It might be as much as 0.25 inches higher since a good bit of snow during the historic February 20th storm probably did not get into the Davis Vantage Pro gage located some six feet above ground level where wind raises havoc with snow measurements in particular. Gauges day had more all around mine. You can go to the U of AZ rainlog.org home, plug in the date (in this case the 20th, and see what other folks had compared to the crummy 0.52 inches the gauge here got following the meltdown. Generally, while there are a couple of goofy obs on the rainlog site, the amounts around here were 0.70 to 0.90 inches. Thus, our February 2013 total is more likely around 1.20 inches, not 0.95 inches as shown in this graph. Dang.

Here’s the March daily measurable rain climo:

Current and just passed weather

Traced last night, I’m sure you logged it. Drops were falling, pretty big ones, at 2:42 AM. Only lasted about a two minutes. If you want to see what happened in radar and clouds, go here. Shouldn’t be surprising that it traced here given all the virga, and isolated spots where drops were already hitting the ground last evening.

Here are some shots after I got back from PHX-Anthem late yesterday. Some drops hit the window, too. First, I thought I would share with you a wildlife response to coming changes in the weather, something you’ll begin to notice as you traverse the long road to cloud maven juniordom. Here, shelled creatures demonstrate a preoccupation with the sky over due to increasing Cirrus cloudiness in Anthem, late on March 2nd, the day BEFORE all the heavy virga. Its something to note when these creatures do this. They are telling you something about the coming weather. Well, anyway, that’s what you should say when you see this turtle formation; your neighbors will then think you’re some kind of turtle “whisperer” AND a weather guru all in one.

At the Anthem Community Park. Wildlife turtles becoming increasingly concerned about the increasing cloud cover late on the 2nd. — At the Anthem Community Park: Wildlife shown here were clearly becoming increasingly concerned about the thickening cloud cover late on the 2nd.

3:53 PM. Tentacles of virga from deep Altostratus clouds reach down toward the Tortolita Mountains.

5:53 PM. Altostratus with virga and mammatus, a term reflecting certain female mammalian characteristics. As I have reported here in the past, some of the female grad students at the U of WA weather department were offended by such nomenclature, asking why such clouds couldn't have have been termed, "testicularis." — 5:53 PM. Altostratus with virga and mammatus (left side), a term reflecting certain female mammalian characteristics. As I have reported here in the past, some of the female grad students at the U of WA weather department were offended by such nomenclature, asking why such clouds couldn’t have have been termed, “testicularis” (quite an unseemly term, really) and drew lines through a label of a wall print of “mammatus” on a fifth floor hallway. The culprit was never caught, and the “graffiti” was never removed. Makes you realize the kind of issues that budding, bright female meteorologists at the U of Washington are thinking about. BTW, this also demonstrates that the notion of “mammatus/testicularis” are always associated with, or indicating a thunderstorm, is quite goofy.

SONY DSC — 6:30 PM. Had a late “bloom” as a distant hole in the overcast let the sun under light our Altostratus clouds with virga. Only lasted a few minutes. Nice.

The weather ahead

Of course, the big media weather stars with their gigantic salaries are all over this next storm, I am sure. Its mind boggling how much money they make having fun with weather on TEEVEE…

Here’s is the latest forecast from our friends in Canada, most of whom want to live here in the good ole USA!; that’s why the entire population of Canada is so clustered near the US border. You can feel them up there (hahah, I like to tease my Canadian relatives):

Valid for 5 AM AST, Friday, March 8th. "Vorticity maximum poised to strike AZ from low over central Cal. "Vorticity maximum"? Cloud and weather maker. — Valid for 5 AM AST, Friday, March 8th. “Vorticity maximum poised to strike AZ from low over central Cal. “Vorticity maximum”? Cloud and weather maker. There’s some writing on this; hope you can read it.

"Bee" sting. LOOK at all the precip indicated for AZ! THis is so great, one of the great model forecasts of our time, well, this winter anyway. — “Bee” sting! LOOK at all the precip indicated for AZ! THis is so great, one of the great model forecasts of our time, well, this winter anyway.

Range of amounts with this next storm: I think in view of the wetting up of the models, I too, will wet it up. Bottom amount, almost surely in the bag, 0.25 inches now, up from 0.10 inches. Top? Wow, in view of passage of this system in the afternoon, you have to think about enhanced convection, thunderstorms here and there, and with those, and luck, the top has to be around 1.00 inches now. Notice how similar the track of this in the Candadian model is to our historic Feb. 20 storm, one in which amounts over half an inch to an inch were the norm. Can’t wait to see this go by, no matter what!

The End.

The Lobes of Anomaly

Sounds mysterious…maybe another sci fi movie title. I wonder what they are? Oh, here they are (I bet you weren’t expecting that):

The departures from average of the heights of where you encounter about half of normal atmospheric pressure, 500 mb. Lower means colder; higher means warmer than normal. — The departures from average of the height where you encounter about half of normal atmospheric surface pressure (1013 mb) on your way up in a balloon, 500 mb. Lower heights (blue) means colder above you ( as in the southeast); higher heights (red) means a warmer than normal column of air is over you (as in all over the West). The air flows along the contour lines at this level. (From IPS MeteoStar.)

If you had giant lobes like this on you, you’d want to go to the doctor right away.

This is a common pattern, one that produces, “toasty in the West, and people who complain a lot about cold in the East and wish they’d have gone to Arizona for the winter.” Comes up about every winter or so a time or two, and we got one now.

You may remember that the ensembles of spaghetti were all over this pattern; it was well predicted 10 or more days in advance. I hope you told your relatives back East about it. It’ll be interesting to see how many warm and cold records are set during this anomaly couplet. Only lasts a day or two, and then its gone, and weather returns to a more seasonal pattern for awhile.

The weather ahead

What’s ahead for us AFTER the lobes of anomaly pattern passes in a couple of days? Pretty normal for a few days after that, and then wham-bam, this monster upper low shown below, and pretty much in the bag; a near certainty to occur. (Remember your Catalina spaghetti from yesterday…) For awhile the models have been painting it as quite dry, but lately this low has been filling up with quite a bit of precip for SE AZ, quite nice to see happen.

Valid for Friday night, 11 PM March 8th. Very nice. (Also from IPS MeteoStar.)

Can you guess what the lobes of anomaly will look like on this day? Well, why waste time guessing when here they are (well, there are actually three or more visible and partly visible, maybe we should say “lobesssssss” kind of string out the plural of that word to emphasize how many there might be.

What’s the weather with this anomaly pattern? Cold in the Southwest with precipitation and low snow levels around here. Toasty now in the East, where they are now quite happy with the weather.

Valid on Friday, March 8th at 11 PM AST.

I am going to expeculate that while the models have been rather dry up to now as this low passes, that we’ll get measurable precip here in Catalina, oh, bottom amount, 0.10 inches, top amount (its gotta be pretty wild here at this point), 0.60 inches, substantial. The main point is that this situation will bring some precip to Catalina, not be completely dry as so many runs before this have indicated. More snow will pile up on the Catalilnas, that’s pretty much for sure.

Local water news…

there’s water now in several of the small mountain creeks/washes leading down to the Sutherland Wash above Catalina. There’s no water in the Sutherland Wash, however, just yet. Seems to disappear before getting to the Sutherland. The first shot below is from Thursday’s horsey ride and shows the dry Sutherland Wash with a donkey rolling in the sand (Hint for bloggers: more people go to your web site if you have animals in it):

Thursday afternoon, at the base of the trail to the Deer Camp junction. — Thursday afternoon, Sutherland Wash at the base of the trail to the Deer Camp junction.

Later, this nice encounter with some running, gurgling water! Likely from snow melt from our historic Catalina snowstorm. Plenty still left at higher elevations, but its melting fast now, of course, with the warm lobe of anomaly over us.

Thursday afternoon, a riparian scene with TWO animals in it, several hundred feet in elevation above the Sutherland Wash. Famous wildlife author and frequent riding pal, Nora Bowers, adjusts the halter on her horse, Dreamer. Its best if you associate with famous people because you yourself will seem more important that way. — Thursday afternoon, a riparian scene with TWO animals in it, several hundred feet in elevation above the Sutherland Wash. Famous wildlife author and frequent riding pal, Nora Bowers, adjusts the halter on her horse, Dreamer, while Buddy Donkey snacks. BTW, its best if you associate with famous people as we learned in the wisdom dispensed from the Firesign Theater performing group so long ago.

The End.

Seeing red

Well, here it is, the NOAA Catalina spaghetti output for March 8th, 5 PM AST, hold the sauce:

The 564 decameter height contours for 500 millibars over Catalina and environs (in the center) on March 8th at 5 PM. The yellow line is the 5 PM AST model prediction, and the gray pixel in the lower left corner is what’s left of the same contour (after I cut and pasted) yesterday’s 5 AM AST prediction. They were pretty much showing the same thing.

The plot at left, with likely a Guinness record for a long, thin caption, pretty much guarantees a big trough of cold air here by then, another door opens into winter, which seems to be gone right this moment, and, being March, you might be thinking, “la-dee-dah, no more winter here in southeast Arizona.” But as I often point out to my reader, and while trying to be a bit delicate about it, “You’d be so WRONG! I can’t even describe how WRONG you would be!” So keep that balloon-like parka ready, heck, there could even be some snowflakes with this.

And, of course, I am a be little disappointed, well, royally, because you should have seen this coming in the red dot-plot at left for Catalina on March 8th already, and I wouldn’t have to admonish you again. Oh, well.

BTW, the “red dot” is a baseball term used to describe the appearance of a slider coming at the batter–there’s a red dot in the center of the ball caused by the spin and where most of the red lacings appear to be concentrated because the pitcher had to grip the ball a certain way. Seen’em, at one time. Of course, you wouldn’t remember the great pitchers like Lee Goldammer of Canova, SD, or Dave Gassman; the latter amassing over 4,000 strikeouts in South Dakota summer baseball league play. It was a big story in the Mitchell Republic–they keep track of that stuff there (amazing and charming). Lee Goldammer pitched a DOUBLE header and his team won the SD State Tournament back in the late 1960s. (All true!) You see, Lee Goldammer struck me out on three pitches in 1972¹. Man he was good! I had hardly gotten to the plate, and I was walking back again!

Had a nice sunset a couple of days ago, some pretty Cirrus clouds again. Where I’m from (Seattle), Cirrus and sunsets are generally obscured by Stratus, Stratocumulus, and every other kind of cloud imaginable so that you don’t see them often because those clouds extend for thousands of miles to the west where the sun is setting.

————————————–

¹I was working that summer for North American Weather Consultants as a “radar meteorologist” in Mitchell, SD, directing up to four cloud seeding aircraft around thunderstorms. But when it wasn’t raining, I could play baseball for the Mitchell Commercial Bank team. The project was under the aegis of the South Dakota School of Mines, was statewide in 1972. Unfortunately, for the people on the ground, one of the aircraft was seeding a storm in June of that year hat dropped 14 inches of rain in the Black Hills, and the ensuing flash flood took over 200 lives. “Hey”, it wasn’t one of my aircraft. Ours were in the other end of the State.

Cloud seeding was absolved in the disaster, which was correct; the weather set up that day did it. No puny aircraft releasing stuff could have had any effect whatsoever. However, had that 14 inches filled a dry reservoir to the top and saved a city from a water famine, what would the seeding company have claimed in that case?

I know. It happened when I worked a project in India, the water famine there making the cover of Time magazine in 1975. The reservoirs in Madras (now, “Chennai”), India, where I was assigned by Atmospherics, Inc., as a “radar meteorologist” whose job again was to direct a seeding aircraft around storms, were at the bottom, just about nothing left, when I arrived on July 14th, 1975.

But on the third day I was there, July 16th, 1975, a colossal group of thunderstorms developed over the catchment area of the Madras reservoirs and, naturally, our one twin-engined Cessna was up seeding it. It was my job to see that we had a plane up around the thunderstorms.

Five to 10 inches fell in that complex of thunderstorms with tops over 50,000 feet, and there was a flow into the Madras reservoir (oh, really?) for the first time in the month of July in about 14 years. July is normally a pretty dry month in the eastern part of India, with Madras averaging just over 4 inches, only a little more than we do here in Catalina in July. The main rainy season in Madras is October and November, during the “northeast” monsoon. This is what those giants looked like:

Looking west-northwest from the Madras Internation AP at Meenambakkam, India — Looking west-northwest from the Madras International AP at Meenambakkam, India, 1975.

But as a meteorologist, I saw that a low center had formed aloft over southern India, weakening the normally dry westerly flow of the “southwest monsoon” across southern India after it goes over the western Ghats. This weakening allowed the moist air of the Bay of Bengal to rush westward and collide with that drier westerly flow and set up a “convergence zone” where the two winds clashed and the air was forced upward forming huge, quasi-stationary Cumulonimbus clouds.

Below, what I look like when I am in India and starting to be skeptical about this whole thing, “Is this going to be another cloud seeding chapter like the one in the Colorado Rockies, to graze the subject of baseball again?”

First row, 2nd from left. Our pilot sits next to me.

As before in Rapid City, the weather set up the deluge; no aircraft releases could have made the least difference in such powerful thunderstorms. While the leader of the seeding project did not take credit for the odd flow into the reservoir that July, it was pointed out to the media, without further comment that, “yes, we were up seeding it.”

The odd storm with that comment, sans a description of the weather set up that did it, made it too obvious to the uninformed that seeding had done it. The Indian met service was, of course, outraged, and did their best to “fill in the blanks”, but the sponsor of the project, the Tamil Nadu state government, was unconvinced because it was obvious to them what had happened, and, after all, it was what they paid for!

I had already been disillusioned while working as a forecaster for a big, randomized cloud seeding project in Durango, Colorado by 1975, and this project was to add more “fuel to the reanalysis fire” that I was later to be known for. (hahaha, “known for”; I was despised in some quarters for checking their work after they had published it and it was being cited by big scientists, and I mean huge, like the ones in the National Academies, but like you when you thought summer was here NOW and there would be no more cold weather, THEY were so WRONG! I can’t even describe how WRONG those national academy scientists were, like the ones in Malone et al 1974 in their “Climate and Weather Modification; Progress and Problems” tome.) ((I knew they were wrong because they talked about clouds and weather associated with cloud seeding experiments in the Rockies, and I was seeing how at odds those clouds and weather was with the way it had been portrayed in the journal literature by the scientists who conducted the precursor experiments to the one I was working on in Durango.)) (((Wow, this is quite a footnote, if it is still one.))) ((((Still worked up about that 1974 National Academy of Sciences report, but don’t get me going on the 2003 updated one, which they botched royally, including not even citing the work I did correctly! How bad is that??????)))) As the title of today states, “seeing red.”

The reason for going to India in the first place was that it had been indicated in our peer-reviewed journals that randomized seeding in Florida, that clouds like ones in India, had responded to cloud seeding. Besides, I had an ovwerwhelming desire to see giant, tropical Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds up close! BTW, the Florida results fizzled out in a second randomized phase.

End of footnote I think….

Some answers to pop ice quiz yesterday and, enhanced science content

I thought today I would provide some answers to yesterday’s pop “ice-Q” quiz a new expression I just now made up except that I just now also found out that its already “out there” for a computer graphics card and some refrigerators.

But ignoring that fact completely, you might try using it in a sentence today: “My ice-Q level is gradually getting higher these days. I’ve been working on it for some time now.” Lot easier to say than “ice IQ.” Thanks in advance for using “ice-Q” in a sentence today! You’ll have to make it clear that you’re not referring to a graphics enhancing video card or to overclocking a computer and a refrigerator of some kind.

I thought, too, that maybe I need more science content; maybe I’m kidding around too much, teasing you with droll, well, maybe sophomoric humor, and ludicrously WRONG content, like indicating on a diagram that the Equator goes through Hawaii and that the day of the week changes when you cross the Equator. That was so funny! (Or was it?) ((Well, I laughed…)) (((Hmmmmm…maybe a laugh track¹would help, like on all those TEEVEE shows that seem to indicate that America has the sense of humor of a moron.))) ((((Is this too strong?))))

So, today I thought I would ramp up the science content, give you something a little heavier to think about, give the old noggin’ some real exercise. Below, from Agee et al. in the February 15 issue of Science just out. I put it in extra big letters so you won’t miss anything:

Its about a bit of Mars found in Morocco at something like the Tucson Gem and Mineral show. If you ever dreamed of being a spaceperson and wanted to go to Mars to see what’s like, you don’t have to go. Some of its already here. Seems the planet was shooting stuff at us, oh, maybe “2.089” billion years ago. Some of Mars is at lot closer than you think, too. Its just over in New Mexico at the UNM Meteoritic Museum in ABQ! How great is that?

Some answers

Below, some of the very SAME photos you saw yesterday with arrows and writing on them. OK, I am repeating things. But you know what, life is a lot easier when you repeat things rather than have to think up new things.

End of answers.

Now I will look at the weather way ahead…

First, I did see a bunch of NOAA tornado watches out associated with our cold trough, now those watches are for central Florida, so it was good to hear that other than a scare, some big ones didn’t occur. You can get all the warnings and watches here, BTW.

Nothing out there, really, for us for two weeks or more. A close call for precip and another cold surge happens around the 9-10th of March, that’s about it.

Oh, me, another LONG dry spell ahead. Are we REALLY going to have a third drier-than-normal late winter and spring in a row? Sure looks like it now with February on line to be just short of an inch compared with our inch and a half average. Dang.

With no weather ahead, will likely hibernate for awhile. Watch some TEEVEE (hahahaha).

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¹Try “hysterical at this site.

Pancakes with ice; testing your ice IQ

AKA, Cumulus humilis virgae, or, with virga. While there were plenty of small Cumulus around yesterday, it wasn’t until after 1 PM that trace amounts of virga could be seen starting to emit from them as they got colder during the day. I think I did, too. By the end of the day, cloud BOTTOMS of those little clouds were about -20 C (-4 F)! Poor guys. Tops were likely only a little cooler, at -22 or -23 C. Those Stratocumulus bottoms topping the mountains in the third photo were about -5 C (23 F) already.

Here’s what happened yesterday. First, the tail of the frontal cloud band came by, dropped a few flakes on the Catalinas before rushing off. Here is that precip, barely detectable on the Tucson radar:

1. 7:43 AM. A haze caused by falling snow tops Samaniego Ridge. Ms.Lemmon is obscured.

2. 8:43 AM. The dramatic looking backside of the frontal cloud band (looks like merged different layers of Stratocumulus) closes the book on precip. The lack of precip suggests cloud tops are warmer than -10 C.

3. 9:06 AM. Final goodbye. Crenelated tops of castellanus, kind of cute, nice looking I thought. Stratocumulus clouds now top Samaniego Ridge, no precip evident, just cloud bases, but you knew that. I think its great I’ve taught you SO MUCH!

12:01 PM. Cumulus fractus amid the dust. Twin Peaks was obscured for awhile as the gusty winds developed later in the morning. — 4. 12:01 PM. Cumulus fractus amid the dust. Twin Peaks were obscured briefly in dust as the gusty winds developed later in the morning.

5. 12:41 PM. Pancakes over the Catalinas, hold the ice.

1:16 PM. Then the ice! Can you find it? More educational than "Where's Waldo", though both are good for the brain. — 6. 1:16 PM. Then the ice! Can you find it? More educational than “Where’s Waldo”, though both are good for the brain. 15 points.

7. 1:24 PM. Some more of that ice. This should be a little easier to find, but not really easy. Remember, ice means precip in these clouds! 15 points.

1:31 PM. Its still dusty, windy, I've been sitting out in it now for almost 2 h making this ice ID test up. This is the next level of detection. Can you find the ice amid a dusty sky? 10 points. — 8. 1:31 PM. Its still dusty, windy, I’ve been sitting out in it now for almost 2 h making this ice ID test up. This is the next level of detection. Can you find the ice amid a dusty sky? 10 points.

2:12 PM. Find the ice. Another tough one worth 10 points. — 9. 2:12 PM. Another tough one worth 10 points. The Catalinas are still so pretty with those cloud shadows traversing across them.

10. 2:42 PM. A lot more ice, but farther away. This was part of a southward moving snow band that dissipated before reaching the Catalinas. 5 points.

4:45 PM. Where's the ice? 1 point. — 11. 4:45 PM. Where’s the ice? 1 point.

Extra credit:

What are the concentrations of ice particles in those clouds shown at 1:16 PM through 2:12 PM, photos Nos. 6-9? How about in the last two photos? 25 points.

Answer: Probably less than 5 per liter of those larger than, say, 150 microns in maximum dimension in 6-9, likely 10s per liter in photos Nos. 10-11.

Why know something as arcane as this?

Because it impresses the neighbors, for one thing, because then you can go on and on about the Wegner-Bergeron-Findeisen precipitation mechanism in “mixed phase” clouds, or simply impugn them, with the words from the Walt Disney Studios science song lyric in “Water Cycle Jump¹“;

“Your brain is on vacation/if you don’t know about precipitation.”

Second, if you’re into “vigilante science”, as Mr. Cloud Maven person was in parts of his science career, knowing concentrations of ice in clouds by sight will help you clean up some of the messes in the domain of cloud seeding when people report concentrations of ice that are too low. But an extra low ice concentration report benefits them because it helps make the clouds seem like they need some of that seeding to make ice and then more precipitation. Then a big contract is let based on bogus cloud reports, ones that you damn well know are goofy just by looking at the clouds, or checking out rawinsonde cloud tops when its raining from them… I could go on, and on, and on….. Someday…will tell those stories.

I hope that helps explain why this is important. If not, oh well.

The weather way ahead.

Well, you all know about the hot ahead. Now some rain pixels have shown up on March 10th. Not worth showing, but will keep an eye on them.

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I am euphoric that this song is now online! I loved that song! Gritty but great, except the part where it is asserted that condensation leads to precipitation. Condensation (and the ice form of “deposition”) is only the first step. Also, if you like easy listening, boring music, don’t go to this site; it might be too much for you.

Condensation by itself can NEVER lead to precipitation. You got to have ice or those larger cloud droplets (again, let us call to mind, Hocking, 1959, Jonas and Hocking 1970 was it?) that cloud droplets do not stick together UNLESS they are around 38 um in diameter and larger, and then there have to be quite a lot of those that size and larger to “bump and stick” (sounds like volleyball) to form a true raindrop (mm sizes). You see, cloud droplets pretty much stop growing due to condensation at sizes TOO SMALL to fall out of a cloud as precip! They’d evaporate in the first 50 feet out the cloud bottom. NEVER forget that as a cloud maven junior!

Cold shock

A really strong trough scrapes Catalina today on its way to Texas. Just ahead of the coldest air aloft, is a cold front sweeping southward toward Catalina this very minute. Should arrive with a “pressure check”–barometer turns sharply upward–before 10 AM AST. You’ll know it when you notice the wind has picked, then go outside to see what’s going on, and find that its blowing out of the north-northwest in gusts to 20-30 mph. You will also notice that the temperature isn’t going anywhere, may top out in the upper 40s today even though its starting out in the low forties as we speak, figuratively speaking.

Also with this trough up there is a band of clouds (higher based Stratocumulus ones) producing light precip down into central AZ now. Cloud tops are running well below -15 C, and so you expect stuff to fall out the bottom in the form of virga because its cold enough for ice and snow to form in them. Here’s the satellite “skinny” (from IPS MeteoStar) as we used to say so long ago:

For 5:45 AM AST this morning, Sunday, February 24th.

You can follow the progress of this front here, too, by noting where the temperature is LOWER than where it was yesterday. (Remember, as a CMJ, you always refer to temperatures as “higher” or “lower”; places you above the “pack”, though it is a bit snooty I suppose.) ((But this is who we are, we don’t call sprinkles, “drizzle”, and we don’t call rain mixed with snow, “sleet”.)) ((( Face turning red just thinking about those common misperceptions.)))

Valid for 11 AM AST. That core overhead, usually the boundary between precip and no precip to the ground here in the great SW, suggests light snow on the Catalinas today. — Valid for 11 AM AST. That core overhead, usually the boundary between precip and no precip to the ground here in the great SW, suggests light snowshowers on the Catalinas today. (Our best model outputs for local situations, from the U of AZ (“hey”, how about Wildcat basketball this year!) has no precip on the Catalinas today, just a close call to the N and E, so we’re going up against the BEST over a trace of snow :}

The weather ahead

After the dustup today, its cool for awhile, below normal for us, but then this happens at the beginning of March (based on the global data taken at 5 PM AST last evening). I’ve added two arrows with question marks to see if you have been paying attention.

What do the arrows point to, that is, what are the technical terms for these bulges and dips in the 500 millibar pattern (answers below, not printed upside down because WordPress doesn’t know how to do that):

Valid for 5 PM AST, March 2nd, a Saturday.

Answers to quiz: “Gi-normous ridge” (in the West) and “gi-normous” trough in the East.

This is the CLASSIC, often observed pattern of “warm in the West” and “cold in the East”, and as far as the “ensembles of spaghetti” go, you can HARDLY have more confidence that this will happen, even though its about a week away. This is a very strong signal for both regioins So it abnormally hot here in the early part of March. People will be complaining back East about cold; count on it.

OK, now lets look at a WEAK signal in these plots, weak just about everywhere, meaning anything can happen. This is for the end of the calculation period where they deliberately input slight errors to see how much of a difference it makes in the model outcomes:

Valid for 5 PM AST, March 10. Not much help, suggestion of a weak, dry trough in this region. These plots mostly look like this “bowl of rubber bands” 15 days out. That’s just the way it is, slight differences can make a huge difference in weather that far out. Tipping points can be relatively small.

Finally, our present trough will be a huge weathermaker in the South. While it would be great to chase this trough as generates exciting weather, you also KNOW that there is going to be some significant damage from severe storms and tornadoes with it.

Ending this now (6:49 AM) with Stratocumulus clouds with virga visible W-N; not yet to Cat Mountains. Want to finish before I see too much; wouldn’t be fair to U of AZ model… hahaha, sort of.

The End.