Thinking about buying into the wind turbine thing….
Also, I’m hearing complaints about Catalina weather from anonymous sources. First, in late winter, it was “too dry.” Then recently, it was “too hot.” Now, I am hearing, “its too windy, I can’t take my horse out, my baseball cap blew off, etc.”
What have we become?
Hot, dry and windy, as in haboobs, dust devils, straight line thunderstorm winds, happen all the time in DESERTS. I am trying to think of a word for it, oh, there it is, we have become, “crybabies.” Yes, we have become “weather crybabies.” Me, too. It doesn’t rain enough in the desert and I haven’t really seen a good dust devil yet this spring.
OK, look for more dirt in the house today as winds perk up to 40-50 mph in momentary puffs over the next 24 h or so. However, for perspective, Hurricane Bud (110 mph sustained max winds) is about to strike the Mexican coast, so we really don’t have much to complain about in comparison except the fact that the remnants of Hurricane Bud will not come up here, but instead go over to Texas after crossing Mexico. Had this Big Trough causing all the low pressure and winds been a few hundred miles farther west, little Bud might have been swept up this way. Pretty upset by the bad “weather” draw we got so I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to complain a bit.
Take a look at this behemoth trough on the University of Washington 500 mb map for 5 AM AST this morning. Its truly gigantic, and has a really cold core over northern California with snow levels down to. The full loop is here. The clouds of Bud are in the extreme lower right hand corner.
Below this map is the surface pressure pattern showing the huge low center in the Great Basin, like a giant vacuum cleaner up there that is sucking the life out of the air around it and that air to the south of us, hence why that air is rushing northward across us with such enthusiasm; it wants to go right into the center and fill it up.
So why are there clouds and precip? Its too dry, of course, darn it. No tropical air can get to us with such a strong jet stream coming out of the Pacific and around that trough. The Pacific air, where it is deep and moist enough for rain and snow, is constrained within the jet stream core at 500 mb, and that core air will never reach us! Below, this morning’s sounding from Tucson, courtesy of the Wyoming Cowboys, in case you didn’t believe me that it was too dry. If the two heavy lines come together, it would be moist and clouds would be present, and as you can see, that doesn’t happen on this morning’s balloon sounding. And won’t happen, except for maybe rogue lenticular cloud, or, as the Beowulf Cluster at the U of A sees here, a scattered Cumulis humilis of no consequence this afternoon except maybe to produce nice shadows on our glorious mountains. Naturally, cooler air is on its way, too. More details here at the NWS.
The End
