I guess we can be happy for them… Here’s how the day went.
Catalina miss, but an inch just next to Saddlebrooke
“WeathKit”
Got up a little late (4:06 AM), got behind, feeling kind of lazy, and then started thinking about Heathkit, Benton Harbor, MI. Perhaps you, too, had put one of their electronic kits together, ones that smoked after you plugged it in, like me. Oh, yeah. That was exciting! Perhaps I could do a “Weathkit” in the modern era. You would order it, being interested in weather and clouds as you are, and it would come in something like a shoebox, but then there would only be a thumb drive in it with a bunch of links for you to assemble your own weather forecast.
At first, of course, you’d be upset because you paid me so much for a thumb drive and complain that the packaging was overdone, misleading. And then on the thumb drive there would be, say, several links. They would be tuned, of course, from the region from which you ordered, except maybe one which would be a more general, global link in case you wanted to check the weather in world trouble spots. Lastly, there would be one to help you with the “final product” in case you bungled the whole thing like I did with my many Heathkits.
The links wouldn’t be labeled because that would be part of the joy of assembling your own weather forecast from them. You’d be so excited just to click on each one and see what it was, some of the fun and appeal of “Weathkit.” A prototype is shown below. Let me know how much you would pay for these on a 1 GB thumb drive….
Link9
Thanks; your opinion is important to us here at WeathKit (pronounced “weth-kit”, NOT “weeeeth-kit”, dammitall!)
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Got a trace of rain yesterday afternoon just after noon as a matter of fact, as Cu congestus piled up over the Cat Mountains and drifted over Catalina from the ENE. The day started much more promising than it ended up since cloud bases had lowered substantially from the prior day and were now just above the top of Ms. Lemmon. Rain had not been predicted at all the previous day and so the occurrence of even a trace was a bit of a model fumble, a flub. And, if you looked around, MUCH heavier showers were nearby.
Rain: its out of mind, but not out of sight
The summer rain season has departed from us here in Catalina, but its still evident on the horizon in Mexico, and even here in Arizona. Take a look at these distant Cumulonimbus cloud tops yesterday.
So, as we like to say around these parts, someone’s getting shafted (rain shafted, that is)
An example of conversational meteorology for everyday use:
Person 1: “Did you get shafted yesterday?”
Person 2: “Yeah, it was GREAT! Got more than an inch in just over 30 minutes!”
End of example.
Looking a few days ahead
While we are dry now, the summer rains are really pretty close (as represented by green pixels in this rendering of the WRF-GFS model, our best one).
Unfortunately, it keeps the “green pixies” away until the afternoon of September 4th; Elena, our hope for rain just after the first, stays too far west now this mod says.
However, as close as the rain is day after day in this mod, even a slight model flub, a “fumble” really, in keeping with the emerging college football season, could mean a random shower between now and the 4th. That’s our only hope from that one. But, to the rescue our Canadian friends and their model. That model still drags a part of tropical storm Elena’s moisture into AZ with a couple of showers indicated around here on the 1st and 2nd of September.
Looking farther ahead at less reliable results: green on green
The dry spell ends and a series of wet days are foreseen beginning on the 5th in SE AZ, and then spreading over various portions of the whole state (green pixels on the green of our State right now) from the 9th through the 14th in this same model. I mention this only because it was also predicted from yesterday’s model run from global data taken at 5 AM LST. Its not much to go on, but something. An example for the afternoon of September 12th where so much rain is predicted the pixels have turned blue (see scale at bottom to interpret amounts).
Not so good is the fact that this later predicted rain is associated with rather weak flow patterns, ones that inherently degrade the model’s reliability. So, don’t count on these rains, but it is there for now and has an itty bitty amount of credibility. Namely, its not hopeless that we are done with our summer rain season, as we know, can happen anytime now.
Silver lining
That silver lining referred to in the title, at the top of yesterday evening’s Cumulus congestus cloud in the first photo below. It went on to rain (second photo). But no silver linings in our models now days, if they could have linings. They seem to foretell nothing but dreary, soporific, boring, akin-to-a-science-talk at a major university1, dry weather today through the end of the month.
Forgetting about that tropical storm, Isaac, for the moment, one that seems to be grabbing all the headlines lately, filling our TEEVEEs with endless repetitive reports that could have been dredged up from “file footage”, OUR last hope for rain, it seems, and a good drenching one at that, is from Isaac’s opposite, Elena, a tropical storm now in the eastern Pacific.
Elena might eventually be steered northward and then northeastward with remnants moving into Arizona just after the beginning of the college football season; clouds and rain beginning to affect us September 2nd or 3rd. Where are the headlines about that?
Maybe after all, THAT possibility in Elena is our silver lining for the “dark”, droughty days ahead. Stay tuned.
The End.
1It was said by a colleague at the unversity I worked at that, “if boredom could kill, there would be a massacre every Friday afternoon at the department colloquium2.” Perhaps, having given several, I might killed a few people myself…. Unfortunately, the best scientists aren’t trained in how to talk about their work; its a problem we actually know about. We’re too busy to fine tune our presentations so that they are interesting.
2John Locatelli, private communication, late 1970s or so.
Rained yesterday…
You probably don’t believe me, but at 2:08 PM, a few drops came down from this Cumulonimbus debris cloud, one that drifted off the Catalinas. Likely you were inside watching fubball or something instead of checking on a possible trace of rain. Oh, well. I understand. You had more important things to do than see if it was raining and note it in your weather log book. You are keeping one aren’t you?
The proof?
Here, on the “trace detector”, a 1985 Corolla four-door, hatchback mini-SUV, mileage like a Prius before ethanol, some drops. BTW, yours for $12,000, comes with University of Washington Husky “W” insignia, also shown here, because I worked for the University of Washington and was a loyal company employee, i. e., supported all the company sports teams. Its just who I am.
BTW#2, the Pima County ALERT raingauge at White Tail, near Palisades Ranger Station, just off Catalina Highway on the way to Mt Lemmon, had more than an inch of rain yesterday from our isolated Cumulonimbus clouds! It seems to register the highest rainfall time and again. It might be a fun Sunday drive to go there and see what all that rain has done. They must be over 10 inches for just August alone!
Today?
U of AZ mod (11 PM run) is predicting an uptick in thunderstorms this afternoon, then dry tomorrow. Hoping for one more dump…. You never know when the last one will be this time of year.
Some more visual ice cream, this morning’s pretty virga:
The End.
Not expected, but it missed anyway
Woke up to Cumulonimbus clouds NW-N of Catalina. Hmmm. Here’s the unexpected, pretty sight just after sunrise:
Arrow point to shred cloud below base of the turret at left. This is a great example of how clashing winds build clouds. Above the shred clouds is that vigorously growing turret trying to reach the glaciation level.
Well, the end of the story (told in the captions) is that a windshift producing this line of heavy Cu and a Cb or two and it “struck” Catalina about 11 AM; the wind turned from the SW to the N, but the heavy line of clouds riding it were nowhere to be seen at that time; the last Cumulonimbus cloud disappearing beyond the Charoleau Gap. Tough to take after hopes up.
Only in the early afternoon did a gift of a few drops from a towering Cumulus directly overhead produce the final surprise. The drops fell from 1:22 PM to 1:23 PM. I rushed outside to see what the heck was doing it and here that cloud is (last two photos) from the bottom up.
1:23 PM also. Arrow points to ice, showing that this little guy got to the ice-forming level, and would have been another great subject for an aircraft study of ice formation.
Mods see afternoon isolated Cumulonimbus today.
The End.
Big fat Cumulus day
4 AM to 4 AM 24 h totals ending today, ones that catch that morning rain (except where noted):
2.12 inches near Chrysotile, AZ, NE of Globe.
2.06 inches Wet Beaver Creek, Oak Creek Canyon area.
1.85 White Tail, just west of Palisade RS off Catalina Highway.
1.39 Oracle Ridge near Oracle in Cat Mountains
PHX set daily record ending at midnight last night, 0.80 inches.
Here’s the AZ radar-derived rain from 5 AM to 5 AM from WSI Intellicast:
Catalina? A crummy 0.07 inches. Well, no rain is technically “crummy”.
Good chance that some or all of that rain yesterday morning fell from clouds not having any ice in them, that is, formed rain due to the “warm rain” process, a rarity in AZ. But, without an aircraft, its a dicey call.
1 PM Catalina temperature and dewpoint: 86 F and 73 F. Miami, FL, at the same time: 90 F, 72 F. Warmer and dryer in Miami at the same hour. Our dewpoint was higher here than in Miami, quite something. Our high dewpoints were helped by all the rain water evaporating yesterday against a background of already very moist tropical air.
The air was extremely humid here, but not hazy like back East on humid days. Interpretation? The air was very clean.
Its not the end of summer rain season even though a few dry days are ahead after today.
Cloud bases in the morning clouds were running 16-17 C, about 62-64 F, which means those clouds had about as much water condensed in them near their tops as any cloud could possibly have here.
AZ mod (here) thinks it can rain here in the late afternoon today. Excellent.
Some of my big fat Cumulus cloud shots from yesterday, ones that were just like ones in Florida and Gulf Coast this time of year.
Arizona: the Emerald State
Now THAT was a monsoon-like day yesterday, one right out of the western state of Kerala, India; the thick rain of mid-morning, seemingly thicker than most here, the clothes-gripping humidity outside, the strip of fog on the side of the western Ghats, oops, Catalina Mountains, the relatively gentle breezes in the rain, the subdued green hues under the overcast of light rain at the end of the unusual morning drencher, aspects that, en toto, made the morining seem so India-like to me (and I’ve been there in those Kerala rains). Take a look at our green state and State.
And while the rest of the day was sunny, humid and cool for us, the rain wasn’t over with another thunderbludgeoning last night after 9 PM that brought 0.25 inches and the day’s Catalina rain total to 1.02 inches. Drink up, desert!
Here are the rain reports from around Pima County. Looks like the “Catalina” foothills has the 24 h total winner at 1.38 inches. Here are other rain reports from around the State from the USGS. One of these stations, Chrysotile, NE of Globe, had 4.21 inches in the 24 h ending yesterday afternoon, also a total that is VERY Indian monsoon-like.
We also had a nice Altocumulus lenticularis at sunset, suggesting some wind aloft. Seemed almost fall-like seeing this because they are more common with our winter troughs.
Another Big Day ahead
Get ready! A disturbance over southern California will help organize our storms into ones like those that occur in central Florida today, grouping them into large clusters, with some eye-popping rain amounts likely somewhere in the State (“eye-popping”, 3 plus inches). Don’t be too surprised if you hear about a “tube” somewhere as well. Tubes happen in conditions like these.
After today, its “mostly” dry through the end of September, with the best chance of rain on the 27th-28th.
The End.
So many great clouds; so little camera memory (8 GB not enough for yesterday)
Just about. Ended up taking more than 300 photos yesterday (!), first 100 plus of the greenery next to the CDO wash (“its a jungle out there”) during a horseback ride, and of those spindily Cumulus clouds that were rising off Ms. Mt. Lemmon so early in the day (and oddly, with a lower, scattered layer of Stratus fractus clouds along the side of Sam Ridge). Those early skinny towers were full of portent about the day ahead, and those lower St fra, told about the unusually high humidity if you didn’t go outside!
A couple of photos from along the CDO wash and an example of those “stalagmite”-like Cumulus:
The spindily early Cumulus
These were an incredible sight on that early morning ride, truly, because of what they suggested for later on.
You can really get an appreciation for these guys puffing off “Smokestack Lemmon” from the U of AZ time lapse movie, as well as the power that was unleashed in those gorgeous, if volcanic, Cumulonimbus clouds later in the afternoon. I don’t believe I have seen as strong a convection day as we had yesterday before.
One measure of horrific convection, horrific updrafts in clouds is that little or nothing comes out of them. These kinds of Cumulonimbus are well known in the Plains States where giant clouds can form spewing anvils out that can cover much of a whole state. But, then, there is no rainshaft, or its very tiny.
Here’s an example from South Dakota of what is called a weak radar echo, or “echo-free vault” (the Cb seems to be “hollow” with no echo to great heights. sometimes in the middle of it).
The updraft in these severe storms is so strong that almost nothing can fall out, well maybe softball-sized hail; instead the all the water is transported high into the troposphere where only tiny ice crystals form at very low temperatures (liquid drops can be transported to temperatures below -30 C!) in updrafts of 50-60 mph or more in these situations (the measured record is about 100 mph). When this happens, too many ice crystals form and none can grow large enough to fall out until many minutes later, but then are 40,000 feet and can never reach the ground. That appeared to have happened here yesterday.
The South Dakota Cumulonimbus cloud shown was memorable because, like yesterday’s severe thunderstorm west of Catalina in the late afternoon and evening (shown below in its early stage), there was continuous lightning and thunder from overhead, high anvil; no cloud-to-ground strokes anywhere nearby in both situations. Those were likely occurring far off in and near the shafts on the horizons.
Rain amounts
The ALERT precip reports are here. White Tail, by Palisades Ranger Station on Catalina Highway, got another 1.50 inches yesterday and last night. It received 2.44 inches last Friday, and had another 1.25 inches on Sunday for a few day total over 5 inches now. Other local data can be found here and here.
Here in Catalina, we only received 0.08 inches, and that from some steady light rain overnight. Maybe today….
Today?
Well, no surprises for any met man, another strong day of convection. It will be interesting to see if there are more “low echo” Cumulonimbus clouds, ones with lots of high lightning, and a delayed emergence of a shaft, an emergence long after ice has proliferated aloft.
Getting bigger cam memory card….
The End.
Yesterday’s “be-a-moths”; what’s ahead in August and early September
Nice sunset yesterday, one consisting of_______, _________, ________ clouds, ones that always give us one of those “glad to be here” in Catalina, CDP, feelings. I might give the answers tomorrow, but please try to name these clouds and maybe get that, “Its fun being a cloud-maven, junior” T-shirt you’ve always wanted. It has clouds all over it, maybe even ones you’ve seen and logged!
Only got a trace of rain here in Catalina, though there were a few “be-a-moth” (as we used to say as kids) Cumulonimbus clouds here and there yesterday. Check the U of AZ time lapse movie at about 2:30 PM yesterday for a giant. A couple of examples from around here below:
There were several reports of more than an inch yesterday in the ALERT raingauge network.
What’s ahead?
As we know, we are beginning the overall decline in chances of rain each day now; the summer rain season is winding down gradually. Doesn’t mean that in any particular year like this one that it will, BUT you have to give credibility to longer term models outputs that are on the dry side because we’re not dealing with an unbiased coin. The head on the quarter getting flipped for the choice of kicking or receiving in a football game is getting heavier; go for the tail since the heavy head might cause tails to come up more often.
Lately the model runs have had a complete break in the summer rain season around the 25th for a couple of days, then a slow return to wetter conditions alternating with breaks. Go here, to IPS MeteoStar, to see their rendering of the WRF-GFS outputs from last night’s global data, concentrating on the Arizona portion of these maps.
So, what are the chances THIS output, with a reasonable amount of “green” (meteorologists love to color areas of precipitation green; always have and always will) in Arizona at the end of August and the first day or two in September will have summer rains lingering on?
Go next to the NOAA spaghetti factory here. Examine the contours for the end of the month and the first of September…. And, there you have it! Eureka! The confidence level you’ve been looking for.
The End.