“Storm” total climbs to 0.10 inches with latest 0.02 inches!

People were wearing jackets as temperatures got locked down below 80° F the past few days, the wind blew once in a while, sometime lifting baseball caps off “gray hairs”, and gray skies hovered over Sutherland Heights for TWO and a half days!

A surprise, few-minute gusher in the early afternoon yesterday was enough to tip the old Davis tipping bucket rain gauge once1, too, to add another 0.02 inches to the 0.08 inches we were drenched with the night before.

What’s ahead.  I dunno.

Really thought THIS storm was gonna be a doozie here, not in Mexico as it is now, for Pete’s Sake.  Some weeks ago it was read by my reader (s?)  here that we had only a 10% chance of LESS than 0.20 inches.  In fact, we had a 100% chance of 0.10 inches.

I did not see that coming.  But at least March 2016 has recorded SOME rain. Some insects benefited I’m sure.

Climate folks (Climate Prediction Center) are still predicting a wet March-May for us, at least as of mid-Feb.  Unfortunately, its only a little more than two inches that makes that three month period wetter than normal here in Catalinaland as we begin to dry out, and heat up.

Ann three month MAM forecast

Time for another, “I love this map so much”, so fully packed with portent:

"Valid" (what a joke) in two weeks, March 24th, 5 PM AST. Giant low moves SEWD toward the southern Cal coast. Strongest winds on the back side tells you its shifting southeastward. Look how big it is!
“Valid” (what a joke) in two weeks, March 24th, 5 PM AST. Giant low moves SEWD toward the Cal coast. Strongest winds on the back side tells you its shifting southeastward. Look how big it is!

Frankly, now as the jet stream in the northern hemisphere goes to HELL in the spring, the “Lorenz plots” or “spaghetti” are pretty clueless.  As an example of “clueless” look at the spaghetti plot that goes with the map above:

For March 23 at 5 PM AST. No real clustering of lines anywhere so forecasts will be wild for this far in advance. That low could really be anywhere. There's not quite so much chaos in the heart of winter when the jet is strongest and geographic jet stream anchors are strongest, like Asia.
For March 23 at 5 PM AST. No real clustering of lines anywhere so forecasts will be wild for this far in advance. That low could really be anywhere. There’s not quite so much chaos in the heart of winter when the jet is strongest and geographic jet stream anchors are strongest, like Asia.

Bottom line:  NO rain days ahead, maybe a close call over the next TWO friggin’ weeks.  Expect to see 90s on a day or two, as well.  “Dang”, as we say in the Great Southwest.

Some clouds of yore, including yesterday.

As a cloud maven junior person, you should compare the shots below and try to chronologically unscramble them using your photos.  Also, I would like you to name these clouds.  Please keep your answers to yourself.  hahaha  (ACtually I am being lazy and just threw these in “willy-nilly” (huh, what’s that from? Will have to look it up some day.)

Am working on a true science story-book talk, something I wanted to write up before “tipping the bucket” as we meteorologists say about death.  Its kindle-sized, maybe would take 3 h to present if it was an actual talk, having more than 250 ppt slide-pages!  I won’t be at the TUS book fair, however, this year….

The End.

DSC_2795 DSC_2794 DSC_2784 DSC_2782 DSC_2780 DSC_2775 DSC_2771 DSC_2767

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1FYI, when a meteorologist dies, we meteorologists  say that he has “tipped the bucket”, NOT “kicked the bucket.”  Its an  especially reverent phrase for us.

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.

3 comments

  1. Art: To use an old local meteorologist’s phrase, we’ll be “back into the bucket” here tonight! Lots of rain and wind coming- sure wish we could send in down to where it’s really needed. 🙂

    1. That’s a good one, Roland. Had not heard that one before.
      Yep, we JUST CANNOT get out of this non-El Niño pattern, one more resembling the La Nina’s of, say, 1998-99, where the rain falls mainly north of SFO!

      a

      1. Yes, I do remember the winter of 1998-99. However, I’m curious how your area did in the winter of 2006-07. That one was an El-Nino pattern, but like the one this year it was wet and stormy here- in fact, March 2007 was my wettest on record.

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