Warm and cold “combo” storm’s rains in route, and sooner rather than later!

Wow, over the past 24-36 h the models have been wetting it up more and more for Catalina!  Check this depiction out for the first day of the rains, now on the 26th, this Saturday. from our Canadian friends and their big weather forecasting model–rains not waiting until Monday, the 28th as the models were predicting a couple of days ago:

Valid at 5 PM AST, Saturday, the 26th. The green areas are where the model thinks it has rained in the prior 12 h. Where the green goes to yellow or orange, the model is very excited about a LOT of rain in those regions.

 I’ve added arrows to point out the vast area of rain arriving the western coast of all of North America from Anchorage to near Mazatlan from a combination of storms. Don’t see that happen too often; maybe in December 1994 or was it January 1995 was the last time when it started raining in Seattle and San Diego at the same time?

This is because our little low in the sub-tropics, now off’n Baja, will be shoved out of its position earlier and with more water in it, after fiddling around out there, not doing much, by an encroachment of the westerlies. Spinners, like that one off Baja right now, don’t like that and they really go to pieces. Instead of being circles with the air going round and round, sitting more or less over the same spot, they become “waves”, “troughs”, little dents in the westerlies that whoosh on toward the east or northeast, more commonly, carrying all that juicy moisture with them.

Here’s the scene from last night at 5 PM AST from the U of WA:

And look what happens after our tropical spurt, it just keeps on preciping as a polar trough from deep in the main westerly current drops down into the SW from the Pac NW.  This could be real great for precip here.   In cuisine, this sequence is going to be  be like having a bowl of chicken soup followed by a bowl of ice cream.

And, this rain, likely ending on the 28th with a close call for snow here in Catalina with temps in the last bit of rain down into the 30s.

Earlier  guesstimate of half an inch here Catalina, made too soon for truly responsible weather journalism, might even be too low.  Imagine?   We need a good rain so badly!  Think of the cost benefit of this precip for all of AZ if these storms play out like this.   And, this close in time, our models should be pretty accurate.  So, lots of reasons to be happy for crops and critters today!

Yesterday’s Cirrus and Cumulus (?)

Some gorgeous Cirrus formations floated slowly overhead yesterday, first going one way and then another as the day worn on.  I wonder if you noticed that band of Cirrus that sat overhead almost all day before trudging off to the south and then disappeared?  That change in winds at Cirrus-level during the day yesterday, is evident in the U of AZ time lapse.

Here are a couple of shots of that overhead band that hung up there almost all day–began to think that the photos I have been posting are “too pretty”, and so I thought I would add some grittiness to them:

 

 

Finally, can you find the Cumulus (fractus)? Believe it or not, there were large Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds near Nogales yesterday afternoon, and lightning was spotted from there!