The wetness ahead

The most wetness I could find for Catalina residents is in this here model run from last evening, 11 PM AST.    Rains on the 27th into the 28th, as was mentioned as a possibility here some days previously,  then it rains from the 29th into February 1st (new!)  Prior model runs before this one last last night are much drier;  are not shown, nor will they be discussed.

Gut feeling,  which is what we meteorologists went on before the era of computer models, and frankly,  its a feeling coming from a forecaster who suffers from “desert precipophilia1“,  makes me think this wetter model run will be more correct than the bad, drier model runs that preceded it.

However, the rain in the first episode, 27th-28th, this from that system deep in the tropics, looks awful light, probably from mid-level clouds.  Just looks like its not going to have much left when it gets here.   An awful of rain, however,  will have fallen on the ocean west and southwest of Baja California, though, before it arrives.

The later storm at the end of the month looks stronger.  See the panel below, which I have pinched off IPS MeteoStar and have placed here since I suspect you won’t really look at it and I have to do pretty much everything for you:

Valid at 11 PM, January 30th. The colored regions denote those area where the model has calculated that precipitation has fallen during the PRIOR 12 h. Blue denotes heavier precip. Arrows have been added to show where we are in Catalina, AZ.
Valid at 11 PM, January 30th. The colored regions denote those area where the model has calculated that precipitation has fallen during the PRIOR 12 h. Blue denotes heavier precip. A bunch of arrows have been added to show approximately where we are in Catalina, AZ.  This is from our WRF-GFS model output based on last evening’s 11 PM global data, as rendered by IPS MeteoStar, a company who will be soon charging for these images it appears, they are that good. Nice rains in TX and OK, too.

Is spaghetti supportive of a wet Catalina in the near future,  this latest off-the-computer-presses-to-you model run?

Not so much.

But then spaghetti let me down when I told a friend that “it was in the bag” for rain in Monterrey, CA on the 17 or 18th of Jan, about 12 days ahead of time, based on spaghetti.   Didn’t rain at all.   “Hey, take a bite out of credibility.”

So, we’ve been chastened royally here, as a British citizen might say;  the deliberate errors in the “ensemble” plots sometimes aren’t big enough apparently compared to the goof ball measurements that sometimes come in.  So, I’ve downplayed the idea that spaghetti is all knowing.   It could be WRONG/misleading at times, anyway.

However, to balance the spaghetti picture, the encroaching trough coming in over us tomorrow WAS well predicted, long in advance.  Unfortunately, it looks a little too dry to produce measurable rain, just a drop in temperatures.  But, there should be some nice cloud scenes.

Some recent clouds

5:52 PM, Jan 18th. Nice patchy Cirrus with a couple of flakes of droplet Altocumulus clouds floating around below them.
5:52 PM, Jan 18th. Nice patchy Cirrus clouds with a couple of flakes of droplet Altocumulus clouds floating around below them.
2:25 PM. Patchy Cirrus fibratus or "intortus"--the latter meaning kind of a tangled mess in appearance.
2:25 PM. Patchy Cirrus fibratus or “intortus”–the latter meaning kind of a tangled mess in appearance.
4:46 PM. Cirrocumulus undulatus.
4:43 PM. Cirrocumulus undulatus, those just-formed clouds on the  right, and at the upwind side of this complex (air movement from right to left up there).  Those clouds on the right likely start out as very small droplets, but then freeze almost instantaneously, followed by fine trails of ice crystals that begin to settle out.   You can see this fallout happening in the older thin Cirrus clouds at the upper right.  Gravity waves like this, resembling ocean swells,  ones that  produce the “undulatus” variety of clouds,  are common in atmosphere.  When the air is very near saturation, we get to see them.
4:56 PM. Kind of the same thing happening here, though a old contrail has messed things up a bit (angles toward the right lower corner).
4:56 PM. Kind of the same thing happening here, though a old contrail has messed things up a bit (angles toward the right lower corner).  Middle right, you can see the very fine trails of ice crystals heading down.

 

The End

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1Does not appear to have a biogenic culprit.  The origin of this affliction is currently unknown.

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.