About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
5 PM AST data, last evening 11 AM AST data
8 Feb 9 Feb
Th, Feb 9 🙁
F, Feb 10 🙁
Sa, Feb 11 🙁
Su, Feb 12 🙁
M, Feb 13 🙁
T, Feb 14 🙂 🙂
W, Feb 15 🙂 🙂
Th, Feb 16 🙁 🙂
F, Feb 17 🙁
Sa, Feb 18 🙁
Su, Feb 19 🙁 🙂
M, Feb 20 🙁
T, Feb 21 🙁
W, Feb 22 🙁
Th, Feb 23 🙁
Symbolia: 🙁 = sunny, no chance of rain; 🙂 = rain possible
Forecasts based on WRF-GFS model run from 00 GMT, 9 Feb data.
The End
Trying to feel better today about the huge miss, that “gutter ball” low that is slipping down the Baja coast toward MMZT (“Mazatlan” in weather identifier jargon) right now as I write, and trying to forget about what it could have been. Reminds me, too, of that critical dropped pass in the Superbowl by some guy in the last 40 seconds that could have changed the game, or that girlfriend who found out I was older than she thought and I went off the relationship possibility radar after that, etc. From the University of Washington, to sigh about, this map series for 500 millibars . Its good to sigh about things, shows you’re alive inside, have feelings that get crushed every so often. Hahahaha, sort of.
You will see that the winds at 500 millibars (18,000 feet ASL or so) around the Baja low are stronger on the back side (the green lines are closer together on the west side compared to the east side). Therefore, to paraphrase, “Don’t need no model” to know that this low going to head SE and away from us. Maybe it’ll reach the Galapagos Islands….dammitall.
As the low moves farther and farther away, the gradual ascent of air that produces all those clouds you see drifting up toward us from the south, weakens. The rain lessens, too, the clouds begin to thin and lift above the ground as they move into AZ. That’s what happens in these situations. That upper low needs to stay close for the clouds to remain thick be rain producers here.
So, even though the clouds look great on the satellite images, and are producing rain to the south of us here in Catalina, and are heading this way, they end up thinning and weakening as they do. Expect to see a lot of virga today from heavy Altostratus opacus clouds (mostly deep ice clouds), and that’s about it. But even a sprinkle would be nice, just to remind us again that it can still rain here.
Here is is, THREE chances the mods now say after having nothing just yesterday at this time. Two minimal events have shown up; one on the Sunday the 12th and again on the 14th, THEN this behemoth of a storm on the 23-24th, shown below! I am beside myself with excitement dreaming about how important I might be to my friends a couple of days before it hits! Though we know, by now, that what is shown below is as likely to be realized as an ice crystal forming in HELL, nevertheless, it is HOPE. Check it this out from IPS Meteorstar’s rendering of our US WRF-GOOFUS (“goofus” after about a week in advance) model and be happy! “Totally awesome!”
The temperature of those “supercooled” clouds was around -20 C, perfect for aircraft to make holes and ice canals in them, a kind of inadvertent cloud seeding. Here are a couple of shots, the first, a hole with an ice patch in the middle, 2) and ice canal, and three strange optics caused by aircraft-produced ice crystals.
Enjoy, or be upset by artifact ice.
Continuing the theme about meteorologists and the excitement we get over bad storms, a weather student at the University of Washington was beside himself and sent an e-mail to all of us on the weather list, in case the rest of us missed it, this NWS bad storm news for the Hawaiian Islands and giant surf. Seemed kind of funny, this extra effort to bring to our attention a really bad situation there. I do have to admit wanting to go see the waves crashing on the rocks and world class surfers who will come in their droves to surf’em. I had to smile reading this:
“Check out the front page of www.weather.gov right now – the unusual front Greg Hakim mentioned at the end of weather discussion today is the top story, above the map. If it’s changed by the time you’re reading this, here’s the message:
…Threat of Coastal Inundation for the Hawaiian Islands and the Marshall Islands…
Published: Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:27:29 EST
High Surf Warnings are in effect for Hawaii, where the 10 to 20 foot waves observed today are expected to rise to 18-35 feet tonight. High tides and strong winds are expected to impact the Hawaiian Islands as a cold front moves across the area. This will increase the potential for coastal inundation, with potential impacts including road over-wash, sand or rocks on the roadways, and water approaching exposed property areas. The Marshall Islands have the potential to be similarly impacted. Details…”
Like an errant bowling ball (you remember bowling, don’t you?), the models are now pretty much in agreement that instead a “strike”, or at least a “spare”, or even a few “pins” being knocked down here in Catalina, by our approaching, spinning “ball” of low pressure, it is now foreseen to end up as a “gutter ball”, bypassing the “lane” entirely and heading off to to coast of southern Mexico, the way the Canadian forecast model had been saying all along. The US model had rain here for days on end, and it passed much closer to us. But not now. Below is the latest awful depiction from IPS Meteostar if you haven’t seen it yourself, one valid for Wednesday evening at 11 PM AST:
This is one of the worst forecast maps I have ever seen. You can see where the low ends up, over Cabo!
I felt I had to prepare you mentally since no models I can find out there have any rain here with that system now. And there is no rain seen in the next 15 days in the US WRF-GFS model, either! So La Nina!
This is an odd configuration down there off Mexico, too. This is normally the dry season in central and southern Mexico, so some Mazatlanians and Puerto Vallartans are going to get quite the winter surprise down there in a couple of days. It would be fun to go down there and see the surprise on the faces of vacationers and locals when this thing hits, to see, really how weather impacts people. As a meteorologist, I feel much more important when important weather strikes. People want to talk to you then and ask things; “How long is this going to last?” “Have you ever seen this happen before?” You’re really kind of the focal point of everyone’s life then. You’ve probably noticed how excited TEEVEE weather presenters get when weather is the lead in the news, with that kind of haughty smile, or pretending to be sad, because a hurricane just hit, or six feet of snow fell somewhere.
But when important weather hits, they become the stars of the news programs, and maybe “stars” for a couple of days! Yes, that’s what we weathermen and women like, odd weather, NOT normal weather where we have to think of “happy talk” and jokes and things to say to our fellow anchors instead of talking about something important. I have to say I am a part of that weather culture, too. But with no storm at hand, I will not be so important to my friends today1.
Iridescent clouds are ones with especially tiny droplets that produce rainbow colors because the light is diffracted around the drops, and in doing so the white light from the sun is broken up into into its various wavelengths and colors that go with them (reddish, longer wavelengths, bluish, shorter wavelengths. For a nice explanation and spectacular examples, go here. Yesterday’s iridescence appeared yesterday in newly formed Cirrocumulus clouds.
Revealing personal note——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-1This whole “storm-now-missing-us” thing and loss of importance reminds, too, of John Denver, and when he died in that plane crash. In those days before that happened, people used to say I looked like John Denver or thought I was John Denver, strangers even, and maybe I cultivated that look to make myself seem more important than I really was. It was great having a stranger want to talk to me, often a woman as it turned out. But then when John Denver died, I was sad, not for John or anything like that, though I did like some of his songs, but because I knew I pretty soon people would not ask me if I was John Denver and want my autograph, as happened in a Durango, Colorado, supermarket where I lived. I was pretty bummed out back then, really, and that’s the way I feel about this “gutter ball” thing today. Below, me as “John Denver.” BTW, mom liked to be “Marilyn Monroe” so that she would seem more important, so this is kind of a family culture we Rangnos have to boost our self-esteems. It really helps when you’re only a weatherman or other ordinary person to be somebody famous! There was a guy just last night at the Fox Theatre here in Tucson pretending to be former Beatle, John Lennon! I’ll bet he felt great because it was just like John Lennon actually being there!
Its been February for awhile, Groundhog Day has passed without incident, and I suppose some climatological information might be of interest. February has the highest average rainfall of any WINTER month, though it has come up short in promise so far with a big fat zero. The models tell us that there is still a chance of rain this mid-week. And, of course, as the prior rains have this winter, the coming chance of rain involves another one of those erratic cutoff lows, ones that the models have a hard time with, humans, too. Here’s a preview from IPS Meteostar based on last evening’s data taken at 11 PM AST. The chart below is valid for Wednesday evening at 11 PM, about the time rain chances are greatest. As you can see, the strongest winds around this low (brownish regions) are on the west and southwest side, meaning that the low will move off to the southeast, farther away from us after Wednesday evening rather than come toward us. “Dang!” The Canadian model has this cut off low going off the south boundary of their forecast map, somewhere down toward the Equator, a complete miss that is just too horrible to contemplate. In that event, maybe Acapulco will get some rain .
In the meantime, below is a chart of the days on which it has rained over the past 35 years here in Catalina. Looks pretty noisy, no sign of a decrease in chances of rain through the whole month, no sign of any “singularities1“, short term climate deviations. The decreasing chance of rain, something we know is going to happen, is not yet seen. Hard to grasp how quickly that period where the rain chance drops off to almost zero is “bearing down” on us, as a fan of the Arizona Wildcats might put it.
The End
1A technical discussion of what climate “singularities” are and how to find SOME of them here: Mapes_climate harmonics_mapesetal
While waiting for the chance of rain mid-week next week, I thought I would tell another science story…
Rain drops bigger than about 5 mm in diameter (only about 0.2 inches) are thought, mainly through lab experiments, to break up into smaller drops before they reach sizes larger than that. Also, they had not been reported to reach sizes larger than that until the mid-1980s when researchers sampling modest Cumulus congestus clouds topping out at only around 14,000 feet around the Hawiaan Islands reported intercepting drops that were 4-8 mm in diameter. This was pretty big news.
Later, while flying with the University of Washington’s research aircraft we intercepted (imaged with aircraft laser probes) drops that were 8.6 mm across and more likely as large as a centimeter, and not on one, but two different occasions separated by a few years. These were larger than the ones reported by the Hawaiian researchers. (Yes!!!! Spiking football now!!!)
First, the award-certificate for those who might be skeptical, and whose display is best part of today’s blog! I mean, really, I could have put 257 worms in my mouth or that sort of tawdry thing, but this was much better, more digestible. Oddly, neither Peter V. Hobbs, my co-author, and I know how we got this Guinness Certificate; it just came in the mail sometime after our article, Super-Large Raindrops appeared in the journal, Geophysical Research Letters in 2004. You know, it wasn’t that great of a “certificate” either. I thought it would be on onion paper, or some other exclusive bond. Instead, it was on something like a cheap, thin cardboard paper. Still…….
The two instances of where these giant drops were encountered were in completely different, contrasting aerosol environments: one in a clean, smog-free, oceanic environment near the equator in the Marshall Islands, and the other under a smoke-filled Cumulus congestus cloud in Rondonia, Brazil, an area where there were many fires where the tropical forest was being burned away. (We were in Brazil 1995 along with other research aircraft to study the nature and extent of the smoke being produced by those awful fires.) Since any rain is thought to be hard to produce in smoky clouds that do not get to the Cumulonimbus stage, giant drops from them was news, too. Of course, many of you out there enjoy photographing images of raindrop splatters on various surfaces as kind of a hobby, particularly as rain begins to fall. Below, is an example from a friend of that sort who prefers to photograph those splatters as they occur on cement as an artform. I think her work is in a local gallery…
So, knowing how much general interest there is out there in rain for desert dwellers, which still might occur on Wednesday or Thursday, is the reason for today’s blog on huge raindrops.
Below is an example of what rain drops look like when they imaged by laser probes on the University of Washington’s research aircraft as we flew through those two instances of giant raindrops. The images of the drops are the shadows of them. As they pass under the wing of the aircraft, some go through a laser beam without being disturbed. The laser shines on photosensitive diodes that get turned off and recorded when they are shadowed. They stay off until the laser beam hits them again, thus recording the dimensions of whatever it was has passed by. You then look at the diodes that were turned off for the tiny fraction of a second that something went through (for our aircraft, around 100 to 120 mph) and get an image of it that tells you whether it was a drop, ice crystal, snowflake, graupel, whatever. Pretty amazing when you think about it. You’ll have to click on it to really see anything.
The large red drops on the left side in the bottom rows are the partial images of the record setting drops. The probe elements were not wide enough to see the whole drop. On the right side is an ellipse fitting routine applied to the raindrop images we recorded that better displays the true size of partially viewed drops. In this case, that algorithm suggested the very largest were about 1 cm (you can use that as a scale for the other ones), but because it is an estimate, does not count in the record books. Only the actual measurized size was considered in the Guinness record. The top two panels are from the Brazil encounter, and the bottom two panels are from the one near Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands.
Here are some photos of the two areas we flew in so that you can see how different they were in character. First, Kwajalein Atoll (note the gigantic runway, constructed in WWII, had its own cloud on calm days !). Second, an example of a moderate-sized Cumulonimbus cloud, one similar in size or even a bit larger than the one Mr. Cloud-maven person himself was directing the University of Washington’s Convair-580 research aircraft into, targeting the heavier strands of rain that first falls from convective clouds. It was so GORGEOUS there in Kwajalein! I loved it there. The skies, the sunsets! Oh, my.
Kwajalein Atoll, BTW, is the terminus of the Vandenberg missle launches. As yet another aside, on the TEEVEE there in Kwajalein, there were announcements in big red letters, like the ones for severe weather, that told you when a missle had been launched at Kwakalein from Vandenberg, and when it was coming into the middle of the Atoll (you hoped!) Folks would then gather on one of the Atoll beaches to watch the show. It was so exciting!
As an aside, I have to tell you that one of the charms of that place, run by Raytheon, a name you are familiar with around here, was that you could not own a car, or house, or just about anything else, paid no taxes if you were a permanent employee, etc. You had to have a bicycle for transportation for the most part. It was like the atmosphere of a small (“communist”, hahaha) town (3500 lived and worked there). Everyone went outside and walked or rode down the streets in the evenings. Another charm was that the manager of the Kwajalein Missile Range site had hair down to his waist! It was AMAZING! Both he and his wife seemed to be in their late 30s with two little kids, and told me how much they loved it there! Many others did, too.
Now on to the smoky environment in the State of Rodonia, Brazil, 1995, in the “dry season”, where the other giant drops were encountered. Rodonia, at that time of year and in those days, was a pyromaniacs paradise.
First, the University of Washington’s research aircraft sitting on the runway in Porto Velho, Rodonia, Brazil. By clicking on this image, and looking under the wing on the left, you can see the “Y” shaped probe that imaged the giant drops as they flew by. Other images show the “Green Ocean” in smoke, and some ground shots that show how widespread fire was there. In fact, after a couple of months there, we kind of got “into the culture” and wanted to burn some things up ourselves. Check the fire along the highways! No “Fire Danger is High” signs there! I think its time to reprise Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” (which is just about everywhere else in Brazil, anyway) to get you in the mood for the shots to follow. I will be jumping around now… (Too bad Beethoven couldn’t write songs as good as this, but then he wasn’t that great with words….) The last shot is a sunny day in Cuiaba, a large interior city of Brazil, during the burn season.
As an epilogue it should be pointed out that Brazil is making good progress in controlling the amount of burning compared to that which was going on in 1995.
Below is the region of “pyrocumulus congestus clouds (those due to fires below them) where the giant drops were encountered, near the city of Maraba, Brazil. It was a little different than Kwaj!
The End (at last)
For those of you who have forgotten that heavy metal pioneering band, Deep Purple, and their hit, “Smoke on the Water”, to which this post sort of alludes to, straining really, take this. It was kind of fun to see this “songumentary”, because it was about something that really happened. In a line out of Spinal Tap, the parody heavy metal band, one review considered Deep Purple, “the globe’s loudest band.” How funny!
Here’s the “fire in the sky” at sunrise yesterday, and in case you missed it. Fabulous blaze of fire underlighting those Altostrastus clouds with their snow virga.
Then, in the afternoon, we had these sky gems; Altocumulus clouds, mostly of the floccus and castellanus varieties, some shedding ice in what up there would have felt like snow flurries. For those three of you who follow this page, you can guess immediately how cold those ice-shedding Altocumulus clouds were: colder than -10 C, and probably colder than -15 C without even looking at a temperature sounding.
The weather ahead; discouraging.
The models have been gradually reducing the chances of rain since the last blog about rain ahead, and when they do show rain on or around February 7th, its been reduced from what was once going to be a substantial period of rain to a minor event. Hence, the models have truly come up with “smoke and mirrors”; looks real but its not.
..like the continuing puddles of water we see on a hot day in the distance on the road. So, in the model outputs of late, there have been a couple of rainy “puddles” for southern Arizona on the horizon, 10 days out and more. Still too far out to be reliable; they might “dry up”, as our highway puddles appear to do.
But, I would have slept in if I hadn’t been “provoked” into a blogulent life this morning by CONTINUING RAIN in the model forecasts for southern AZ. Here are the key elements from last evening’s new results: It still rains on February 12th, though the amounts have been scaled back; not the deluge suggested yesterday. However, a soaking rain is now indicated for February 6th, a week earlier from an entirely different system (!), previously shown as a near miss or a mere wisp of rain.
Its all good, because a pattern change is taking place, and while the details and timing of rain will be erratic for awhile, its likely that the pattern change to one that provides rain here is more likely, not “in the bag”, of course, by any means.
What would be great about a February wet spell is not only the effect it will have on our spring growth and sustaining the road to a good wildflower bloom, but also just to see decent rain in the heart of the La Nina rain deflector period. As you likely know, the power of a La Nina to deflect storms from the Southwest is greatest in late winter and spring. Rooting for rain now into spring is definitely like rooting for a 20 point underdog in fubball.
Here are some images from last night’s model output, rendered by IPS Meteostar, my favorite for these. The first for Monday, February 6th, “bulls eye”, and the second for the February 12th storm. Contrast the flow shown on the jet stream maps (panels 3 and 4) with what we have today (last panel) to see why we weather folk call it a pattern change. Look where the jet stream crosses the coast these days and where it is on the rainy forecast days ahead.
As you can see, by the 12th, Cal will also feel the impact of another round of furious weather after the January lashings that brought 10-20 inches of rain to extreme northern portions of the State and in southern Oregon. The largest total I have found from the later January deluges was….33.56 inches in just NINE days at Red M0und, Oregon, just north of Brookings! Time to start thinking about another trip to Shelter Cove, CA, and the King Range. Hmmm. Just kidding! I would not willingly miss a drop of rain that falls here, just too beautiful a site to see rain fall in the desert. We love rain here!
The End.
Factoid: If you are a snow birder from Prospect Creek, Alaska, about 180 miles north of Fairbanks, I am quite sure you are happy to be here and not there; the temperature yesterday morning at Prospect Creek was -77 F! The US record low temperature is -80 F set at Prospect Creek in 1971. Must be like living in liquid nitrogen there in the winter.
Finally, the dark tunnel of pleasant, dry weather may be coming to an end, I am happy to say. The WRF-GOOFUS model longer range output has been showing RAIN in southern Arizona for two or three runs out around the 7th to 14th of February. Of course, those who follow this blog know that RAIN predicted in southern Arizona that far away is like the square root of -1. It doesn’t really exist; its imaginary. Still, it COULD happen, and you get a little more confidence when it shows up in more than one model run. The USA! WRF-GFS model is really very good out to about five-seven days, but gets “goofus” after that, you almost always can’t rely on what it says with rare exceptions. But, that having been said, remember that our models are still a lot better than economic forecasting models. Think of the unforeseen “black” stock market days that come up! Q. E. D. They don’t know what the HELL they are doing over there. Just kidding.
Below, some happy thoughts should accrue from viewing the images below if not already in place due to coffee. Think of flowers. And, if you’re like me, you’re happier overall and feel better about yourself thinking about a future rain in a desert region. Below, what the WRF-GOOFUS model thinks February 12th will look like, based on thinking done on last evening’s (5 PM AST) global data. This is so good I have reproduced TWO renderings from IPS Meteostar for that day. It can hardly get ‘”greener” (show more precip) in the entire Southwest than what this storm is supposed to do on February 12th, and we even see some dark “green” (heavier rain), turning into blue (even heavier rain) in southern Arizona in this sequence. Streams would likely run in places in southern AZ with this overall scenario. Its a great thought!
BTW, the later model run, just six hours after this one (based on 11 PM AST data, but whose awake then to take good obs and there aren’t that many anyway?) took a lot of this rain away and so I didn’t want to show it because its who I am. (hahahaha, sort of)
On a more mundane level, another fabulous AZ sunset last evening caused by…..what kind of clouds am I? Moslty Altostratus (really thick all or mostly ice clouds) and Altocumulus (mostly droplet clouds far horizon and very thin). See far below.
The End.
“Pomp”, in the form of some thunder and lightning, and a few hail stones between 10 and 10:30 PM AST; “circumstance” with a pretty strong trough going by. But they only delivered a hundredth of an inch of rain at the ground here in Catalina. I guess the bugs will be satisfied, but it was a tiny bit disappointing to me. Was hoping for TWO hundredths. The U of AZ computer model did a nice job foretelling a tenth or less of rain. The most rain reported around here is 0.12 inches way up in the Catalina Mountains at CDO and Coronado Camp.
In case you missed it, here’s when and where the lightning occurred from Strikestar-Astrogenic systems. The last panel, lower left, shows those surprise lightning strikes that occurred around 10:15 to 10:30 PM AST last night. BTW, these folks have the best presentation of lightning occurrences that I have been able to find, one that includes non-ground strikes.
Now its sit and wait in the sun for maybe two weeks or more for precip. The closest thing to a storm here in the next FIFTEEN days that the models (courtesy of IPS Meteostar) are showing is this very strong upper low and trough that, as shown below over the Four Corners area, passes by too far to the east of us on February 1st-2nd to be considered a threat.
This system been showing up on the models for days and days, sometimes as one that can bring rain here, but it hasn’t been shown that way lately in the models. The fact that it has been persistent as a feature that affects the Southwest is a good sign that something major will pass by us in early February, and at the least will bring quite a chill whether we get precip or not.
In the meantime, we will have to be content with a long, long stretch of a sunny weather malaise, where almost everyday is perfect for a winter day.
Clouds?
Here are some from yesterday, and again, a great, late-blooming sunset. Almost gave up on it happening. First, the nice strand of Cirrus yesterday morning that heralded the thicker layers behind it and shots of those multi-layered clouds consisting of Altocumulus, Altostratus (the smooth one), and then the sunset “bloom.”
The End.
Well, how can we forget that mournful Leonard Cohen song? And the sweet rendition of that tune by Judy Collins? It was played a lot in Seattle, of course, where I’m from. But, it also looks like it might be apt for late today right here in Catalina. Check out this “incoming” here from the U of AZ Weather Department’s model output here. This loop of rain areas will show you how the precip creeps toward us during the day, eventually overrunning almost the whole State of AZ. “Oh happy day”, to quote another song title. Just hope we get more than the tenth of an inch the model projects, all of which falls overnight tonight after midnight. (Hmmmm. Seems a little slow to me.)
Here’s a loop of satellite imagery and the surface pressure maps for the past 24 h from the University of Washington. The interesting thing about these maps, is how one hurricane-like center with lots of isobars off the Pacific NW coast crashes into British Columbia while a new low develops off the California coast and is now pummeling central and southern California while heading to the southeast and toward us. Reminds me of someone getting a “spare” in bowling by knocking two widely separated pins to the left and right to get it.
Why would storms divide in their paths like that? You have to look aloft at the steering by the jet stream. Low centers separating like that always means there is a split, a dividing point in the flow. Higher level pressure maps from the UW shows that. Below is a 300 millibar pressure map (about 9 km above sea level or around 30,000 feet), a level where the jet stream is just about the best developed. Notice how part of the flow whirls around the big vortex in the northern Gulf of Alaska and toward BC, while a more powerful branch dips toward California. Its that trough, that bend in the winds just now off California, that will come barreling through here tonight bringing that surface low center now near SFO with it–well, what’s left of it after it gets wrecked by mountains. The next chance for rain/snow is in early February.
Nice clouds again yesterday. Here are a few shots, including another nice sunset. The haze you saw was dust, leftover from the strong winds of the previous day in western AZ. The first, Cirrus over dust. The second, some Altocumulus with Cirrus, and finally, Altostratus with some under lit Altocumulus in the distance.
