Today we celebrate the model in techno-pop song, and not only the human ones, but also the ones that give us hope (or not) for rain in Arizona. (Advisory: If you listen to the Kraftwerk 1980s tune above, you won’t be able to get rid of that melody all day!) Speaking of today, see farther below after lesson in reading spaghetti.
Below, two model outputs for the almost the exact same time separated by only 6 h of obs as input for the late afternoon and evening of Wednesday, April 23rd.
One outputm the first one, suggests we’re in for another, unseasonal, blazing heat wave like the current one for Arizona. while the other a wet, cold blast into the Great Basin, with windy conditions here and a major cool down just ahead; the latter leads to sequence of troughs that leads to rain here, with eventually exceptionally COLD weather, and considerable snow in the mountains!
In the East, the first one above suggests that winter will seem likes its continuing into summer with a super cold wave for late April, while the model output below shows nothing special going on at all.
Sadly, the one above with the oven lit here (big ridge in the West and the amazing vortex in the Midwest_, is the one that was computed on data 6 h LATER than the one below, the one that looks pretty exciting for us, even if its just a cool down with a bunch of wind. “Later”, as you imagine, usually implies more accuracy.
Who you gonna call to see which of these astoundingly different model outputs has the most credibility, which one is the most likely model ghost buster? The NOAA spaghetti factory! See below:
On the map above, the deep vortex in the Midwest has almost no support at all (you would have to see a LOT of blue lines in the US and not in Canada for that support), while the West Coast has a lot of support for a big trough to blast in (lots of blue lines along the West Coast).
In sum, it would appear that the chance for rain late in the month is not completely bogus, but a very a big heat wave is. Rather, keep coats handy for later in the month. See rain in AZ below associated with the more credible output (from IPS MeteoStar’s rendering):
Clouds….
About like yesterday. But there’s a real “storm” up there of sorts. If you were on Mt Everest and Mt Everest was here where Ms. Mt. Lemmon is, there would be a real blizzard up there at the top; 50 kt winds, light, dust-like snow off and on all day. In normal speak, there will be lots of Cirrus, Altostratus (huge gray areas), those former clouds composed of ice crystals, some Altocu (droplet clouds) mixed in.
Gotta run–lots of company now….
The End.
