About real clouds, weather, cloud seeding and science autobio life stories by WMO consolation prize-winning meteorologist, Art Rangno
Summer-like storm surprises with frequent thunder and a half inch of rain in 18 min
Here are the latest 24 h totals, ending this morning the 23rd at 3 AM AST from your Pima County ALERT gauge network. Our own amount over this period is embedded for comparison purposes:
Gauge 24 Name Location ID# hours —- —- —- —- —- —- —————– ——————— Catalina Area 1010 0.71 Golder Ranch Horseshoe Bend Rd in Saddlebrooke 1020 0.83 Oracle Ranger Station approximately 0.5 mi SW of Oracle 1040 0.87 Dodge Tank Edwin Rd 1.3 mi E of Lago Del Oro Parkway 1050 0.59 Cherry Spring approximately 1.5 mi W of Charouleau Gap 1060 1.10 Pig Spring approximately 1.1 mi NE of Charouleau Gap 1070 0.79 Cargodera Canyon NE corner of Catalina State Park 1080 0.79 CDO @ Rancho Solano Cañada Del Oro Wash NE of Saddlebrooke 1100 0.67 CDO @ Golder Rd Cañada Del Oro Wash at Golder Ranch Rd
xxxx 0.58 Sutherland Heights, Catalina
Santa Catalina Mountains 1030 1.14 Oracle Ridge Oracle Ridge, approximately 1.5 mi N of Rice Peak 1090 1.34 Mt. Lemmon Mount Lemmon 1110 1.22 CDO @ Coronado Camp Cañada Del Oro Wash 0.3 mi S of Coronado Camp 1130 0.87 Samaniego Peak Samaniego Peak on Samaniego Ridge 1140 0.79 Dan Saddle Dan Saddle on Oracle Ridge 2150 0.71 White Tail Catalina Hwy 0.8 mi W of Palisade Ranger Station 2280 0.71 Green Mountain Green Mountain 2290 0.35 Marshall Gulch Sabino Creek 0.6 mi SSE of Marshall Gulch
Yesterday, with it many twists and turns, with that significant rain overnight providing a happy, moist beginning. Then, there was a sad middle of the day when two windshifts passed, the second a major, long-lived one one bringing a substantial drop in temperature and fronted by a dramatic arcus cloud, but there was no rain to speak of with either……at first.
Then the surprise, the unlikely resolution of the sad middle of the day just as a dismal clearing advanced from the west: a highly unusual thunderama and cloud burst beginning at 1 PM, one gushing a half an inch of rain in 18 min! This, just when it looked like a total dud was certain from the passage of that front. That “TRW++” (weather text for an extra heavy thunderstorm), provided the happy ending, thus making it a day truly out of Hallmark. The total rain was 0.58 inches, with the three day total at 1.03 inches! Yay, flower help! Rain table at bottom.
Though it was late December and at the winter solstice, the breezy 63° F damp air yesterday morning made it feel like you had awakened from your long vacation flight and found yourself in Hawaii or Miami. It was a truly remarkable, even a joyful feeling.
With that strong upper low WAY off to the southwest of us yesterday morning, and moving right this way, you KNEW that the rain wasn’t over, that thought adding to the joy of yesterday’s early morning. 0.34 inches had fallen mostly during the night before, adding to the humid feel.
Too, yesterday morning’s joy had a withering effect on all those dry weeks that had preceded these past few days with measurable rain, maybe even withering the hard feelings that remain in many of us about those disappointing Big Niño forecasts of a wet Southwest last year. You were finally beginning to feel that you could let go of those hard, grinding, grudge-holding feelings you had against weather forecasters, the ones that misled us so much last year about the Big Winter in the Southwest due to the Big Niño, a record Niño, they told us, indeed, a “Godzilla Niño.” Then, what followed was, “The Big Winter that Didn’t Happen.” And it will be years before we get another Big Niño!
But, let us move on from that tirade to current events; you can see that I am personally completely over the hard feelings of last year’s disappointing forecasts and have moved ahead, as we need to do in life…
Now, finally (!), for yesterday’s clouds, so fantastic in all their presentations and drama, that one really could finally forget the busted Big Niño forecasts of last year2:
Oh, yeah, the cloud diary for yesterday, probably more than you need to know, but, what the heck:
The End
New storm marches toward Catalina! Due in tomorrow afternoon.
1Meteorologists, outside of Buffalo and Seattle, have inverted values regarding clear and cloudy.
2I hope we get 30 inches THIS water year, dammitall, busting this year’s seasonal forecasts of a dry Southwest.
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.