Yesterday’s clouds, dust, and smoke; virga ahead

It was zero visibility in Parhrump, Nevada, yesterday afternoon with wind gusts to 85 mph, as the cold front was about to crash on by.   I guess we were lucky to only have 40-50 mph puffs of wind here in Catalinaland overnight, and not so much dust (yet).  A sharp, but dry cold front is bearing down on us, but the low center that was so intense yesterday over Nevada, then moved across Utah, has faded trying to move through the Rockies.  This means that the winds will be much less than yesterday.

Does that mean no dust around Catalina today?  Nope.  Those strong winds in Nevada and western Arizona yesterday raised a lot of fine (as in tiny) dust particles that are likely to be suspended for a day or two, and so we’ll likely see dusty skies today, without so much wind anyway.

We had some nice Altocumulus/Cirrocumulus lenticular clouds in the afternoon yesterday.  I wonder if you saw them?   They weren’t around for long.  Here’s what they looked like.

The last shot is of a cigar-shaped flying saucer with multicolored lights, OR, a Cirrocumulus lenticularis showing some slight iridescence (which are those rainbow colors near the edges of the cloud due to diffraction).    You have to look very hard to detect coloration in this cloud shot, but its there.  Diffraction is the bending of sun’s white light as it passes around the tiny (micron-sized) drops in the cloud and that leads to a separation of the white light into its components of reddish, greenish, blueish colors.

Take yer choice on what was photographed, but it is true that clouds such as lenticulars have been reported as flying saucers that “hover” then disappear.  This cloud was completely gone in one to two minutes after this photo AND was stationary, as lenticulars are in the face of strong winds aloft and at the ground, which also influences the observer’s reports of unexplained “hovering.”  This little cloud had been much larger ten minutes before reaching this size.

You can probably understand why such reporting might happen when you look at how smooth this little lenticular was.  And sometimes, when nearer the sun’s position, the colors caused by diffraction are quite vivid. 

Wildfire smoke

Also, in the late afternoon some smoke from the Nogales wildfire headed our way. It gave a great example of what young smoke looks like, that is, smoke recently emitted from a fire nearby. Its always got lots of gradations of the smoke in it because it hasn’t been around long enough for turbulence to mix out the smoke into a homogenous layer.   This happens when smoke has been around for days and days and has traveled thousands of miles, and so its one way of telling that a smoke layer has come from a long distance.

Sometimes high, smooth, long-range transport smoke layers can be mistaken for Cirrostratus, hold yer hat, “nebulosus”, a completely smooth ice cloud without much internal detail.  Below, the smoke from the Nogales area as it headed northward toward Catalina.

Rain possible?

It seems as dry as this system is, about all we can hope for is a trace.

It does appear that there will be enough moisture by tonight and for a couple of days as this cold air over us hangs around that we will see high-based (that is, probably based at or above the top of Mt. Lemmon) Cumulus and Stratocumulus clouds, and with the low temperatures aloft, ice should be able to form in them–which as you know, means virga, snow falling out and melting on the way down.

However, it would appear that only sprinkles are possible at ground level here in Catalina.

What to do?

You won’t want to miss entering the fact that a sprinkle occurred in your weather journal, one that might only last a minute or two, and so its best if you keep, say, your car parked outside where a layer of dust can accumulate, and then, when the rain drops fall, they will leave impressions in the dust.

The full moon of last evening, FYI.

Factoid:  it is thought that the moon was originally part of the earth, the result of a gigantic (!!!) impact that sent part of the earth out into space which then became our moon.  This theory would explain the synchronization of the moon’s face with the earth, that is, having the same face toward the earth.  Hmmm.  Hope we don’t have another one of those soon.  Two moons would be mind boggling.


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.