“Do meteorologists suppress thunderstorms?”-Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 2005

In view of the serious consequences of missed rainfall in an Arizona summer, and being a meteorologist, I felt it was important to address a longstanding question among fellow meteorologists, to clear the air, as it were, about what my role might have been in the deflection of massive storms that appeared to be coming to Catalina, but then dissipated mysteriously.  Perhaps this investigation will shed light on the three recent consecutive missed days with no major rains in Catalina while major rains fell very nearby.

There have been some rumors and innuendoes.

Perhaps if a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can affect the weather (eventually) in Texas (from “chaos theory” where itty bitty things can mess everything up), perhaps my excessive running around in the yard taking photographs of giant clouds could have had an effect, changing the airflow in some counterproductive way.

In pursuit of truth, I am providing my three readers with some intellectual, philosophical material to consider today; this research published in a respectable peer-reviewed journal, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (aka, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc.,  or just “Bull.”, for short).  This article is in the same philosophical domain as that article in Physics Today (I think it was) many years ago: “Can watching the Mets play baseball (on television) affect the outcome of the game?1”

Please contemplate this article below today, and then look into your own heart about how YOU yourself might have been deflecting storms.  Maybe there aren’t any studies out there answering that question yet, and so we don’t know do we? But…..

Do Meteorologists Suppress Thunderstorms?

No.

While a quite technical, comprehensive article in which meteorologists in 28 cities around the US were examined for their effect on storms.  If you don’t believe MY answer,  the gist of this article is on p353:

“According to our data and methods, a meteorologist’s hometown is no more likely to be a weather hole or hot spot than is any random place around the conterminous United States.”

I guess that settles that…or does it?

(X-Files, Twilight Zone, etc., music here (11 11_Extraordinary Claims 1)2.

 

The weather ahead

The Canadian model has us on the edge of rain for another two-three days, then the summer rain season resumes.  Similarly, the WRF-GFS model run from the U of WA has rain moving back into our area this Saturday afternoon.  Maybe I’ll run around the house a couple of times. move some air around, and see if I can speed this return up some….

Anomalous cloud sighting

6:30 PM. This photo has been enhanced that bit to bring that “lone ranger” Cu better into view.

Now this was truly strange, I thought, in view of the totally flat, Cumulus “pancake-us” clouds.  Off in the far horizon to the SW, was this ONE towering Cumulus!  Not sure I have seen such a cloud anomaly, and not really sure why THAT one stuck up so much.  You’d have to guess that the moisture and temperature profile down that way was quite abit different that what we had here, but then, you would normally have seen many more clouds like that off on the horizon.  Strange indeed, to me.  There it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1Haven’t been able to find that classic, but will eventually.

2Credit:  The National Science Foundation for funding Bill Nye the Science Guy programs, and to the Walt Disney Studios for creating those wonderful liittle ditties at the end of each show.

“Curve ball” of a Cumulonimbus strikes out Catalina again

It looked like it was coming straight down the middle. I didn’t see any rotation on it.   It was coming toward ME… and to Catalina.  We were going to get “shafted”, rain shafted that is, at last!

I started taking video, shooting numerous still shots of the mammoth-behemoth, churning, tropical-like, boiling-roiling Cumulonimbus cloud rolling in from the southwest toward Catalina, lightning sparking every minute or two at one point.  Pileus veils appeared and disappeared as the tops shot upward through moist layers.  What is a pileus?  Hint:  Its not Latin for somebody who flies an airplane.  But, continuing about airplanes….

If only I had a plane, I dreamed, to go inside them, fully explore and experience them in a quantitative way, those voluptuous turrets!  To penetrate their depths with instrumentation like we would used to do in the olden days at the University of Washington, recording the hail/graupel bursts on the pilot’s window, ones where it was like someone had thrown rice at the window, the huge amounts of supercooled liquid water piling up on the airframe, the plane trembling, rocking in turbulence, turbulence whose effects could only be mitigated by Marezine, the lightning strikes on the fuselage, the white knuckled, almost euphoric, glad-to-be-alive feeling afterward.

Yes, those were the good old days.

While our dogs were cowering, made restless by the approaching thunder,  I dusted off my rain gage collector, looked inside it, as you all should do, for telltale signs of recent bird visitations, droppings that might hinder the rush of water into the inner collector, or even block it all together.   Once having cleaned it off, I sprayed the outer collector with WD-40 so that the drops would roll quickly into the inner collector without the least resisitance, allowing the tipping bucket of the Davis Vantage Pro II Extra Deluxe Mark IV rain gage and weather station system to report rain as rapidly as possible.

This was going to be a great rain, it would make up for the prior two day’s of disappointments and sadness, really. BTW, its quite normal for meteorologists to feel like they live in a “hole” where the best rains hardly ever hit.

In case you didn’t call in sick yesterday as was suggested here so that you could see the those majestic Cumulonimbus clouds roll in, and in paritcular, missed this one below that literally rumbled toward Catalina from the direction of Twin Peaks, here is a sequence of shots taken at 12:53 PM, 1 PM, 1:07 PM, and 1:28 PM.  Rain seemed imminent.
Of course, it fizzled out.  Three strikes!  Three days in a row of near misses!
This one got SO CLOSE!  And as you see below, there were flanking bases even as it neared, absolutely necessary for continued life of the storm.  Without those flanking clouds, a Cumulonimbus can have a shockingly short life span, maybe 20-30 minutes of rain to the ground.
As you can see below, those dark bases sans rain shafts (flanking dark cloud bases) were a good sign that the approaching storm was going to continue propagating into Catalina with gusto, and gusts as well, as the flanking clouds piled up into new Cumulonimbus clouds, riding on top of the outflow winds of the rainshaft.

But no, the flanking clouds disappeared in minutes, leaving only the sad stratiform remains of that once proud Cumulonimbus.  Below, 2:57 PM, one of the saddest cloud sights of all, Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus, orphaned from their parent Cumulonimbus cloud, set adrift, and adrift, without being fed from below, well, they die.  Light, ever so light, rain was falling when this photos was taken.
Eventually the steady, very light rain added it up to 0.02 inches.  I felt like I was back in Seattle because the way that rain was falling yesterday afternoon, was EXACTLY like the rain that Mr. Cloud-maven person experienced year in and year out in Seattle, Washington.  Yep, that’s how it rains in SEA most of the time and you experienced that right here in Catalina yesterday afternoon.
The day ended with a remarkable clearing of all the low clouds, not a Cumulus could be seen from horizon to horizon.  But we did have “pretty Cirrus” (spissatus) clouds, also orphaned from Cumulonimbus, to make a nice sunset.
Today, after the early morning rainbow, one that I didn’t get a photo of?
Gee, the dewpoints are still high, we have a surprising amount of mid-level clouds this morning, some with turrets and showers, yet the U of A weather model suggests no rain later today based on what it sees.   Hmmmm.  Its usually correct in these matters, though I hope some surprise is waiting for us late this afternoon anyway.
The End.
Kind of upset I missed getting a shot of that unusual morning rainbow because the camera had no SD card again, so I think instead, out of spite, I will put in a recent photo of some kind of beetle.


Grazed and confused

Man, its tough to get rain here sometimes.  Not sure why we seem to be in a death zone for Cumulonimbus clouds lately.  Yesterday, a really great shower plodded toward Catalina and only to fade on the east side, and propagate off to the west and over the Tortolita Mountains (veered down the sideline, in football speak).  I guess we should feel lucky that, due to the lightly raining “stratiform” (blanket cloud) residual cloud from this strong storm, we got 0.02 inches here last evening.  Coulda been worse, of course.  (BTW, if you’re an old rocker and want to hear, “Dazed and Confused”, to which I allude to in the title, go here.)

Here’s the photo record in thumbnails, which I thought was interesting enough because this moderate-sized shower really exploded into something large as it approached from near the Tucson Mountains. You can also go here to get the full version as seen from the top of the Wildcat Dept of Atmos. Meteoro.


4:54 PM. Nice and cute; its even heading this way, but way too far away to make it, given the short lifetimes of small Cumulonimbus clouds.

5:04 PM. Huh? Its STILL coming, and seems to be developing a new “crop”; those flanking, non-raining clouds that might grow to take the place of the raining one. Oh, it’ll never make it. Too small.

5:36 PM. Its not small anymore! Holy Smokes! And look at those “fountain-of-youth-required-for-new-life-new dump for Cumulonimbus flanking clouds! This could be great dump here!

6:04 PM. Here, the side of the storm approaching Catalina. The flanking lower cloud deck has disappearing and only light to moderate rain is upwind now. Without re-inforcements from below, that approaching rain will only get lighter and lighter as it approaches. Dang.

6:11 PM. Awesome, but somehow “wrong”, falling over there. An almost black flanking cloud, piled high on top, was forced there by the outflow winds from the original storm as it dropped its first heavy load in Oro Valley. Because those winds aren’t symmetrical blowing out from the rainshaft, it happened that the strongest winds and uplift over them went over there. Dang#2


7:07 PM. Its raining lightly here now, coded “R–” or “RW–” in your log book. The cloud would be termed, Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus (namely, debris cloud, trash clouds from our glorious Cbs).

To finish off with something more positive, this sunrise photo taken just now while a few drops of rain were falling.

 

The Weather Ahead.

Drying trend starts on Wednesday, the 25th and lasts a couple of days.  The Enviro Canada model saw this coming some days ago, the US WRF-GFS not so much, but they agree now.

The clouds and Cbs return on the 29th with July finishing strong in activity.

In the meantime, another great day ahead, one with large Cumulonimbus clouds and scenes like the past few days are on tap.

More,  later.

It is later.

Here is the U of A model output for today, hour by hour.  Lots of activity seen for us in Catland beginning after 12 Noon with numerous showers developing by then, but nothing for tomorrow and the next day.

Maybe you should call in sick today, and enjoy the sky all day.

The End.

 

Stuck in the middle; only 0.03 inches in Catalina from Kansas skies

“Shafts to the left of me, shafts to the right of me, but here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”  (Yeah, and without any rain.)   Who can’t forget Stealers Wheel?  Most everybody I guess.

Here is an example of a “middle”, an empty region between rainshafts in this case.  You don’t want to be there.  Boring, as in “baby I’m bored”, for emphasis.  But that’s what we “Catalonians” got yesterday, the middle.

1:51 PM

As the three of you who follow this blog know, I don’t usually concentrate photographing the “middle” or “tweeners” as some baseball-cloudcentric fans might call these kinds of scenes; I like to show the shaft. I NEVER get tired of shafts, or, in fact,  being “shafted” by rainshafts.

Never will.

I did think, in taking this first shot, that the dark base ahead of the “middle” would drop its load on me.  I had already prepared a story in my mind with a “happy” flash flood ending.  I readied my camera, got the tripod out.

But, no.  It missed me and my gage, slipping off to the right, or to west from the spot above, dumping its load on north Oro Valley and Saddlebrooke.  I can’t wait to see how much rain the rainloggers over there report this morning compared to my crummy 0.03 inches.  Oh, well.  There was generally about 0.4 to an inch in the Catalinas. Hooray!  More green, more water!

Commercial break:

In trying to make the best of a situation that was fast becoming a disappointment, I noticed some birds floating around in the updraft of the dark base as it came almost overhead.  Suddenly,  I realized, as I started to carry out my niche of photographing cloud bottoms, that a cloud bottom photo with some kind of bird in it, who knows what, probably using the updraft into this cloud base to ride on, a kind of “bird surfing” would likely appeal to the “bird set”,  Audubonners and the like, etc., thus expanding my commercial base  beyond just the cloud bottom crowd.  It was a quite a striking, moneyful thought.

BTW, these birds are doing what cloud seeding aircraft do, circle in the updraft below cloud bases and release nuclei, sometimes “hygroscopic” nuclei, ones that form drops, and sometimes “ice nuclei”, ones that form ice crystals.  See, at last I got some education in!  You got schooled!  Didn’t see that one coming did you?

I’ll address whether cloud seeding works in a rant some day…

Below, the resulting symbiotic photo, now named, “Base and Birds, or the more accessible, “Surfing Birds.”  It will cost you one dollar to download it….hahahah, sort of.  “Hey”, let us not forget the words of the great Danny Elfman, Oingo Boingo:  “There’s nothing wrong with capitalism…don’t try to make me feel guilty…”)

—-end of commercial break

1:51 PM. Birds, surfing air, below cloud base.  

BTW, the discerning cloud bottomer will notice that this base has some inconsistencies, is not quite solid, suggesting its not due to a large continuous updraft area;  only part of it is.   This was a clue that there could be a disappointment.

Kansas skies?Oh yeah, there were some itty bitty tubes on the front side of that jack hammer of a storm that rolled into Oro Valley from Tucson yesterday around 1:50 PM.  Take a look below.  Second time in a week have seen a “tube”.  Getting very tubular around here.  Check out the U of A time lapse movie for a real fright night day as that big boy goes by.  “Totally awesome!”

Some nice lightning around, too.  Here are a couple of those shots to end things off with.

1:49 PM. Tubes?

Finally, a nice sunset peering through a hole in an Altostratus cumulonimbogenitus opacus overcast that ended our day–english translation, thick debris clouds leftover from our many thunderstorms yesterday.

2:04 PM. Should probably go inside now…

Today?

Another day, another dollop?  Photogenic Cumulonimbus clouds all around again this afternoon. Let’s hope its more than a dollop today.

More details here from the U of A and here from our friendly NWS, always there when you need them and when you don’t.

 

The End.

 

 

 

 

2:07 PM. Yikes!   Checking…still alive, definitely going inside NOW!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7:31 PM. Calming sunset. It’s been an exhausting day for cloud-maven person.


Yesterday’s drama, forecasting for picnics, etc.

In case you missed it, and you probably did because you were still in bed while I was doing things for you, there was a pretty sunrise to start the day yesterday, one that would not disappoint later by being a dry one.  After all, we’re here in the peak of our summer rain season.

 

Got 0.27 inches here, and 0.40 inches in Sutherland Heights.  (The U of AZ rainfall network will have lots of data, some places getting over an inch yesterday. Pima County amounts here.)

 

BTW, as mind wanders, the real monsoon in India is a a little below normal this year so far.   But, check out these forecast maps from IPS Meteostar and look at the west coast of India.  It rains every day all day for the 15 days of the computer model run.  Nothing really too unusual about that, rain every day all day on the western Ghats, 10-20 inches a week. Now THAT is a monsoon!  Thought you might like a little distraction, get you out of any ruts you might be, get you thinking “outside the box” for a change.

 

OUR story, the long and winding one, continues below, though it can be seen in totality, in the short form in the U of A time lapse movie.  This is a great U of A movie, with several “dump trucks” going by.  Its amazing how much water can just suddenly be unloaded by a cloud!

 

Also, lenticular clouds (hover clouds) can be seen at the beginning and end of the movie downstream of the Cat Mountains, unusual for summer.
5:27 AM. Altocumulus opacus, no snow virga. What’s the top temperature? Hint: warmer than -10 C (14 F).
7:27 AM.  You’re finally up and you see this grayness due to Altocu/Stratocu.  You start to fret over whether it can rain later in the afternoon with all these clouds keeping the temperature down.
10:32 AM. Your mood begins to brighten just like the sky;  the temperature is soaring while the mid-level clouds thin, and Cumulus begin arising over Ms. Lemmon, trailing overhead toward YOU.  You feel special.
1:32 PM. You’ve been patient, and FINALLY the clouds trailing off Lemmon are beginning to look like they might erupt into Cumulonimbus ones;  bases are firming up, coalescing.
1:58 PM. Its looking really good. Nice compact bottom almost overhead. You’re getting euphoric, well, hopeful.
2:00 PM. Only TWO minutes later and the load is on the way down! This is the time you want to be at a picnic 2 minutes earlier and amaze people by saying, “RUN for your car! NOW!”, though they probably wouldn’t pay any attention to you unless you knew them and they knew you were cloudcentric.
2:02 PM. Picnic’s over.
2:03 PM. ONE minute later! The Fat Lady has sung.
2:19 PM. Downspout from Cumulonimbus cloud moves on across to Oro Valley to “excite” other picnickers.
2:22 PM. This beauty off to the north. Name? Cumulonimbus calvus (fibrous nature of top not yet fully evident, though a practiced eye can detected the cotton candy ice composition in the two pronged top. In front of it, a Cumulus congestus. Check that shaft!  What day! Fantastic scenes all around.

 

 

 

 

 

The weather ahead.

U of A mod results not yet available at this hour (5:08 AM), but other model outputs suggest another three days, including today, of the kinds of scenes shown above.
Every day will be that bit different in shower coverage, of course, that governed by subtleties in the flow aloft, grade of moisture supply, dewpoints, etc.

But those days ahead will be great enough, our deserts being drenched here and there, the desert foilage exploding.  Enjoy those clouds while they’re here.

The End.

Black is beautiful

Here in this part of Catalina another 0.11 inches dropped from the sky in two weak, but great thundershowers yesterday afternoon, one that will help keep the greening of the desert coming on strong. As many of you know, my photographic niche is cloud bottoms, particular dark ones, and to me, beautiful, dramatic ones when rain or hail filaments begin shredding the air below them, followed by the dump.

Below are a couple of those bottom shots from yesterday. This cloud trucked off from over Catalina toward the SW and over Oro Valley/Marana where it began to rain.

3:55 PM. The bottom of a small Cumulus congestus (it was at least 6,000 feet thick, 2 km) at the time this photo was taken, trust me.
3:57 PM. A closer look at this nice dark bottom; was hoping for signs of rain strands as you probably were, too.  However, they came out later, several miles away.

Later, two weak, but welcome thunderstorms rolled off the Cat Mountains from the NE, giving us 0.05 and then 0.06 inches in the second. Below, here they come!

4:13 PM. Thunderstorm one.
6:37 PM.  Thunderstorm two. Close strike caused a power outage here.

Yesterday’s rain totals can be found here (rainlog.com) and with the Pima County Flood Control Network. Some areas in and near Tucson recorded over an inch again. How fine.

Today?

The dewpoints are higher, cloud bases are a bit lower, and so monster dumps in the area are VIRTUALLY guaranteed (never can tell exactly where they will be).  However, conditions aloft are also conducive to larger shower areas than yesterday’s were, that is, large clusters of Cumulonimbus clouds are more likely today, meaning larger areas covered by rain, and longer durations of rain.  Cool.  You can get the “skinny” from the U of A model here.

Quiz

5:54 AM. What are these rays called?
2:14 PM. Where am I?  The heaviest rain in all of Arizona fell here yesterday.
5:29 PM. Why wasn’t it raining on the Catalinas from these dark clouds?
6:16 PM. Where is virga and snow falling out? “If you miss one more, you’ll be out.”
7:19 PM. “Who was buried in Grant’s Tomb?”  A nice sunset, as almost always here, with a little snow virga hanging down from dense Altocumulus clouds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weather ahead.

Rain in the area, the models say, every day for the next few days.  Check here and with Bob (our local expert), who seems to be mad a lot, even titling his blog, “madweather.”  I guess he’s not afraid, like some men, of showing his emotions.   I get mad myself, but usually its when it doesn’t rain on me that day.

The literal greening of Catalina and its environs

Yesterday in the State Lands:



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, enough about ME; what about the weather?

No rain today around here, according to our best model output, which, of course, is that issued by the University of Arizona Wildcats Dept of Atmospheric Meteorology.   But tomorrow, oh yeah, tomorrow, its BACK!

The end.

The greening of July

Update at 7:17 AM:  while mods had a dry day today (e.g., U of A yesterday), NWS has a much higher chance at 30% for our area today, and it sure looks like a higher chance.  (U of A Beowulf Cluster mod not available this morning for hi res check.)

While trying to get through the next couple of predicted days with lesser chance of rain though it doesn’t feel like it right now at 7:17 AM, and after a disappointing  0.02 inches yesterday afternoon, I wanted to check the Arizona rain futures in two models, the N-viro Can U-ro (as we would write it today) and the USA WRF-“Goofus”, both spoken with affection, to see how much “green” they have for us.  “Green1” has been the chosen color for rain by meteorologists, a particularly colorful people, who as children had an extra wide assortment of Crayolas and colored pencils.

Both models have a LOT of green in Arizona during the next 6-15 days except, as noted, for today and tomorrow where rain is marginal.

Below, as example from the Environ Can mod result for the evening of July 22nd.  Note green splotches in AZ, lower right hand corner (blue is very light rain; yellows and reds are heavier rains).

Along with the positions of rain here, in the upper left hand corner, is the forecast for where “our” big fat summer anticyclone is going to be on that day: centered way over the state where Dorothy used to live.  The air circulating around that high, clockwise, is circulating moist air into Arizona (while baking Dorothy and a lot of other people in the nation’s mid-section).  I love these maps and what they portend for AZ over the next week!

Below a sample chart for even farther out into the future from a rendering of WRF_GFS from IPS Meteostar for the evening of August 1st.   There is still “green” in Arizona, this time around Yuma, and there has been green in Arizona every day!  With our great start, it could mean that we will experience one of the wettest July’s ever in SE AZ!  The droughty weather pendulum may have swung back to make things up to us.

How do we know such medium range forecasts are have a better chance than usual of verifying?

Of course, if you are a regular part of this blogpire, you will know the answer.

It comes from the NOAA Spaghetti factory.  We meteorologists, not satisfied with one model run, like to mess them up at the start, and then look at the various “perturbed” model runs fro the 500 millibar level, and see if there is one “answer” that remains “strong”, still visible in the output amongst all the many contours of the wrecked ones. The middle of the troposphere, that domain where all weather occurs, is at about 500 millibars of pressure; sea level pressure averages around 1000 millibars (1013.6 millibars is the bottom of the “standard” atmosphere.  We like to see what the pressure patterns are like in the middle because things clarify up there, that’s where you can find jet streams, those steering currents for storms at the ground.

OK, now the punch line, don’t laugh too hard.

Below is the (humorous) plot from NOAA based on last evening’s global data for the 500 mb level due to combining:

1) the model run using the actual measurements made around the world at 5 PM AST,

2) and along with that one run, many model runs due to inputing slightly erroneous data at the beginning of the run.

Many of you will see this as a “knee-slapper”, and it really is because its a faulty production with too many contours.

But, in spite of a faulty NOAA run, there is still some information about our “big fat anticyclone” and where the most likely position will be on the evening of August 1st, some two weeks from now.  Believe or not, it is a powerful tool.

That likeliest of positions of our big fat anticyclone is that little dark spot over the Four Corners area mostly devoid of lines in this humorous output.  On this map, the Four Corners area is straight above the yellow legend line segment. At left,  a close-up of that Four Corners area with the fewest lines.

In the summer, Arizonans “need” to have a high in the middle of the troposphere to the north or east.  And that’s where the signal is strongest, represented by a center of that high situated over the Four Corners area even when the model has been degraded by bad measurements.

So, in sum, look for lots of rain in Arizona overall during the rest of July.  How nice, except when telephone poles are blown over, as happened on Sunday.

 

PS:  I took a lot of great cloud scenes yesterday afternoon and evening, but you need to have an SD card installed in your camera before a photograph is recorded. So no photos.  I hope this is a useful hint for photographers out there.

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1“Green” in the meteorological color scheme of things, means rain, an area where the models think it will have rained is colored green as a rule.  Green has been the choice of meteorologists for liquid precip ever since weather began, back in the early 20th Century at the Bergen School of Meteorology in Norway.  Why did those Norwegian meteorologists with names like Bjerknes, Palmén, Holmboe, Godske, Petterssen, Rossby, Bergeron, choose green for rain?  Just because.

 

Another dramatic Catalina weather day-the book

OK, this one’s a little long, lots of twists and turns in the weather plot before its over….but as the Arthur, I felt they were needed (that is so funny! 🙁
We’ll start with the “end” of the book; cut to the chase: the mods have another possible big day this afternoon,  Check it out here.
The result of heavy rain in the Catalina Mountains late yesterday afternoon is shown below.  These shots were about 2 h after the main dumps up there had occurred.  Some neighbors and me was just standing around chatting, had come down to see if there was ANY flow in the CDO.  Nope.  But, since we were having a good time, kept on chatting.  Then, the roar!   (BTW, you could hear the Sutherland Wash roaring from about a mile away.  Must’ve been something over there.)
7:16 PM. Sittin’ around chattin’ up neighbors and vice versa. Nothing seems to be happening in the dry CDO wash at E Wilds Road.
7:28.00 PM.  Oops.
7:28 PM plus 3 tenths of a second

Amounts around here in and near Catalina were generally between 0.4 and 2 inches, with the lower amounts here and up at Sutherland Heights, darn. You can see the Pima County rain table (here) and the U of AZ rain network totals here (they’re usually not complete until later in the morning).   These are totals for the 24 h ending at 7 AM.  You can also review yesterday’s cloud action in the U of AZ time lapse movie for yesterday, rated R for violence.  Max totals in NW Tucson were over THREE inches!

 

 

Below is a review of yesterday, beginning with an attempt at some true art, one I’ve entitled for a possible museum showing, “Ants and Castellanus.”  Remember, Altocumulus castellanus/floccus are a good indicator of an “unstable” atmosphere at the level they formed at.  The ants, flying ones, tell you that there was good soil moisture, which is actually important in keeping the boundary layer air moist by replenishing it during a warm day. It was good seeing those ants in swarms like that, they seem to be having a lot of fun, exuberated by moisture, perhaps thinking of more soil moisture ahead.

So, in this ONE photo I took for you, you have TWO indicators that are suggestive of the day ahead;  it might rain again1.  You could tell your friends things like this and sound quite wise concerning nature.  Really something like this should be in the Farmer’s Almanac.

Frankly, while the best models we have available had quite the rain over us yesterday afternoon by 4 PM, it didn’t shape that way.  It was still dry and not much going on.  I am guessing that the colossal amount of rain-cooled air from the previous rain day kept the trigger point (the high temperature) for huge clouds a bit delayed, but it was only by about 1-2 hours!  The rain arrived here between 5:30 and 6 PM.  Pretty remarkable accuracy, never mind the bugs, when you think about it.

Often on days like this, where the atmosphere is primed for huge clouds, they go through cycles where it seems like all of sudden they putting themselves together, bases clustering for an upward explosion, but then a few minutes later, the whole sky looks in disarray, the bases having broken into small segments, tops of the clouds ragged.  That happened a couple of times yesterday afternoon and so I wondered if the explosions would ever happen. Sometimes, in time lapse films you can get a sense of this as waves, gravity waves like ocean ones, in the atmosphere pass by with the clouds in films seeming to all fatten up at once, and then subside as the wave passes.

But then, it happened, all of a sudden, first an cloud on the west end of Tucson, south of us, which had been struggling, began massing, “shafting” (putting out multiple rainshafts), and putting out lighting.  That was it, with the model background of massive clouds, you knew that this was it, the sky was going to go bonkers all over. With but a brief interruption, it did.  I was beside myself snapping photos every few seconds, being out of control again with these stupendous scenes of transition and drama!

Here are too many:

2:49 PM. Its supposed to be raining all around, but nothing is happening. Clouds are ragged and “ill-formed.”
3:09 PM. OK, lookin’ good, base massing over Cat Mountains.
3:09 PM. Phooey, falling apart, stagnating.
4:09 PM. Ok, at last; this is looking good, VERY good.
4:23 PM.  Bigger and better, now “shafting” (producing rainshafts).
4:30 PM. Phooey, fizzling out.
4:34 PM. When did this happen? This looks tremendous. Must be that SW wind pushing out of the dying showers to S-SW and lifting the air over the Catalinas.
4:39 PM. Here come the strands, the ones that lead the dump! I might get something, its gonna be close.
4:42 PM. “Thar she blows!” But I will be missed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5:17 PM. When did this happen#2? This is an incredible sight; an outflow from some GIGANTIC complex roaring past and over Pusch Ridge toward Marana.
5:21 PM. Only four minutes later but look how far its pushed out from Tucson!
5:30 PM. Outflow winds and arcus clouds push into Oro Valley.
5:35 PM. In the meantime, the dump on the west side of the Catalinas, shown here, is beginning to push air back toward Oro Valley leading to clashing winds to invigorate clouds not yet raining upwind of Catalina.
5:39 PM. Outflow winds from the Catalinas produce this diabolical sky. About this time, and for another half hour, lightning in the clouds overhead and toward Charoleau Gap occurred every 1-2 seconds! Yeow.

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1I would consult some computer models before taking that thought too much farther.  For example, if the computer models are showing rain later in the day, and you’ve seen some castellanus and flying ants, I would definitely mention this proverb to friends, say, during a morning walk.  Otherwise, keep it in your back pocket.