Spaghetti is back!

Due to some kind of server meltdown, the NOAA spaghetti plots, better,  “Lorenz plots” in honor of “Dr. Chaos”,  Edward N. Lorenz,  the ones my fans1 like so much,  have not been available.

But they’re back today!

But what are they telling us?  Gander this for Christmas Day:

Valid at 5 PM AST Christmas Day, December 25 th. I've annotated it especially for you.
Valid at 5 PM AST Christmas Day, December 25th.  I’ve annotated it especially for you.  The view is one where your looking down at where Santa lives from a big tower.  Not all annotations are accurate.

Don’t need to tell you that the weather looks like there’s a good chance of cold and threatening weather for Christmas Day.  Big trough implanting itself in the West around then.  Maybe those easterners who hogged all the cold air last winter will share some of it this winter.   The warmth we had last winter made it bad for horsey with all the fly larvae that survived.

Kind of bored now with the rain immeidately ahead, but only because everybody else is talking about it, too.  Its no fun when you don’t have a scoop and you’re just saying things that other people are already saying.  Even my brother in North Carolina, who knows nothing about weather,  told ME that it was going to rain here on Thursday!  How lame is that?  Of course, it is true that you won’t here anywhere else that the chance of measurable rain is more than 100% this week in Catalina ; at least I still have that.  Tell your friends.

When does it fall?  Sometime, maybe multiple times,  between Tuesday afternoon and Friday morning.   Hahaha, sort of.

Looks like the first trough and weather system will go over on Tuesday through Wednesday, chances of rain then, and yet another colder one on Wednesday night into Thursday.  So, 100% chance of measurable rain falling sometime between Tuesday afternoon and Friday morning, probably in several periods of rain.   Look for a frosty Lemmon Friday morning.

Predicted amounts from this keyboard?  Think the bottom of this several day period of individual rain events will be only a quarter of an inch.  Top, could be an inch, if everything falls into place.  Canadian mod from 5 PM AST global data yesterday, for now has dried up one of the storms, that on Thursday, the day the USA! model thinks is our best chance for good rains based on the virtually same global data!  Of note, the USA model based on 11 PM AST data, has begun to lessen our Thursday storm that bit.

This is the reason that the certainty of measurable rain here in Catalina is spread over such a several day period.

Your cloud day yesterday

Just various forms of Cirrus,  most seemingly from old contrails that produced exceptional parhelias (sun dogs, mock suns).

Very contrail-ee sunset, too,  as contrail lines advanced from the west.  They were likely more than an hour old when they passed over Catalina yesterday.

10:56 AM. Glistening rocks after the rain. Very nice.
10:56 AM. Glistening rocks after the rain. Very nice. Cu fractus at moutain tops.

 

2:36 PM. Nice example of the rare seen Cirrostratus fibratus (has lines in it).
2:36 PM. Nice example of the rare seen Cirrostratus fibratus (has lines in it).  Hope you logged it.

 

3:42 PM. Looks like old contrails to this old eye, resembling CIrrus radiatus. The "radiating" aspect may be due to perspective.
3:42 PM. Looks like old contrails to this old eye, resembling CIrrus radiatus. The “radiating” aspect may be due to perspective.

 

3:50 PM. Parhelia lights up in CIrrus. These, due to the high speed of Cirrus movement, only last seconds in thin streamers like these.
3:50 PM. Parhelia lights up in CIrrus. These, due to the high speed of Cirrus movement, only last seconds in thin streamers like these.  To get really spectacular optics the crystals up there have to be especially simple, like plates and stubby columns, maybe prisms as well.  When aircraft create contrails, there is an excess of ice crystals, far more than occur in natural Cirrus as a rule, and due to that high concentration, can’t grow much and usually stay as simple crystals, not develop complicated forms like bullet rosettes, crystals with stems sticking out every which way.
5:23 PM. Contrail-ee sunset. Pretty, but awful at the same time, since it shows how the natural sky can be impacted by us in our modern lives.
5:23 PM. Contrail-ee sunset. Pretty, but awful at the same time, since it shows how the natural sky can be impacted by us in our modern lives.  You wonder how much of us the earth can take?

The End

 

 

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1Why just recently C-M had a comment from a fan in Lebanon3,  that country near Israel, not the one in Ohio2!  Said it was warm there now, but normally it rains for days at time in the winter, and gets real cold.  You see, the eastern Mediterranean is, climatologically speaking, a trough bowl.  Troughs just hang out there a lot, creating something called the “Cypress Low.”  Though it only rains in the cool season, October through May,  as in Israel,  places in Lebanon get 25 -40 inches of rain during that time, and its exciting rain because it almost all falls from Cumulonimbus clouds, many with lightning! C-M is getting pretty excited, since he’s on record as wanting to go Lebanon to study the clouds there!  See Lingua Franca article from 1997!  He loves those Mediterranean wintertime Cu.  Hell, you probably threw it out, so here it is: Lingua Franca _1997.  See last sentence. last page.  Thanks.

2Speaking of Ohio, who can forget that great 1980s rant against urban sprawl in Ohio by Chrissie Hinds and the Pretenders!  Will it happen to Catalina after the road project?  An insurance agent told me that Catalina was to be absorbed by Oro Valley after it was completed.  Oro Valley says they know nothing about that.

3“Its great when you’re global!”

By Art Rangno

Retiree from a group specializing in airborne measurements of clouds and aerosols at the University of Washington (Cloud and Aerosol Research Group). The projects in which I participated were in many countries; from the Arctic to Brazil, from the Marshall Islands to South Africa.