Yesterday’s “be-a-moths”; what’s ahead in August and early September

Nice sunset yesterday, one consisting of_______, _________, ________ clouds, ones that always give us one of those “glad to be here” in Catalina, CDP, feelings.  I might give the answers tomorrow, but please try to name these clouds and maybe get that, “Its fun being a cloud-maven, junior” T-shirt you’ve always wanted.  It has clouds all over it, maybe even ones you’ve seen and logged!

Only got a trace of rain here in Catalina, though there were a few “be-a-moth” (as we used to say as kids) Cumulonimbus clouds here and there yesterday.  Check the U of AZ time lapse movie at about 2:30 PM yesterday for a giant.  A couple of examples from around here below:

3:55 PM. Now if we were talking pancakes, this would definitely be a “tall stack.” It was quite a sight, and I hope one of you out there got under this and have a rain report for us today.  I would estimate, as you would now, in view of the little movement of the storms yesterday, bases about 8 C (pretty warm), that this giant gave someone 1-2 inches in the peak core.
5:44 PM. Here’s a complex of Cumulonimbus clouds SW of Tucson (left of Twin Peaks). The television got pretty worked up about these, as did the TEEVEE weather presenters last evening.

 

There were several reports of more than an inch yesterday in the ALERT raingauge network.

What’s ahead?

As we know, we are beginning the overall decline in chances of rain each day now; the summer rain season is winding down gradually. Doesn’t mean that in any particular year like this one that it will, BUT you have to give credibility to longer term models outputs that are on the dry side because we’re not dealing with an unbiased coin. The head on the quarter getting flipped for the choice of kicking or receiving in a football game is getting heavier; go for the tail since the heavy head might cause tails to come up more often.

Lately the model runs have had a complete break in the summer rain season around the 25th for a couple of days, then a slow return to wetter conditions alternating with breaks. Go here, to IPS MeteoStar, to see their rendering of the WRF-GFS outputs from last night’s global data, concentrating on the Arizona portion of these maps.

So, what are the chances THIS output, with a reasonable amount of “green” (meteorologists love to color areas of precipitation green; always have and always will) in Arizona at the end of August and the first day or two in September will have summer rains lingering on?

Go next to the NOAA spaghetti factory here.  Examine the contours for the end of the month and the first of September….   And, there you have it!  Eureka!  The confidence level you’ve been looking for.

The End.

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.