Atmosphere Comparison

[Jim]

The endless chatter of weather.

[tibber]

I just saw this animation posted by NASA and it's absolutely fascinating.

Ignore all the crap about hurricanes and Saharan dust and pay attention to the smoke from fires in the Pacific northwest and northern Rockies. ( @Tibber all the Glacier NP fires show up). The animation runs for three months, August to October.

This is captured by the new GOES-16 satellite previously discussed in this thread.

pretty cool. I wish it would move a little slower cuz I had to watch it a couple times; which is not necessarily a bad thing. Ophelia was quite something too.

[azbackpackr]

@chumley
Wow!

[Jim]

At least from what is being discussed in the California Weather Blog, this current ridge that is setting up may last at least for 2 weeks, possibly for most of December. Who knows, maybe the entire month, and if prior winters with similar ridges are any indication, most of the winter. So, the record dry fall may extend onward. We seem to have clean air now in the Valley, but with high pressure this time of year we can expect the air quality to decrease as the weeks progress! Rain or snow? Maybe in January?

[azbackpackr]

It's so windy, had to cancel a 4-day paddle trip. Going out to the Mojave National Preserve instead, but I hear it's windy everywhere in this region. Yesterday before sunset it was 60 degrees in Bullhead, which felt just about like the Arctic after two months of balmy bliss.

[Jim]

Though long range, and less reliable as such, this graphic shows the current forecast for dry conditions for us well into the month.

[outdoor_lover]

Weatherman blew it again... Not sure what it is about Aravaipa and my Fall Trips there... Looked at the Forecast Saturday Night before I left... Sun, Mon, Tues, Wed... "Sunny, 0% Chance of Rain across the Board... No Partly Sunnys, No Partly Cloudys, nothing but Sun and No Rain Chance... Looked at the "Scudder" Type Clouds coming in on Monday Night and Hmmmm..... Yep, Rained On and Off most of Tuesday Morning... Heavy Overcast All Day.... No Rain Gear except a Cheap Poncho, so I slept in pretty late Tuesday Morning... Glad I had a Tent this Time....

[jonathanpatt]

Rained over 1/2" outside of Portal overnight and dropped snow on the Chiricahuas down to around 6,000'.

[Jim]

Yup, a first low in a looooooonng time. Mostly affecteding northern Mexico, Southwest New Mexico, and Southeast Arizona, especially the Sky Islands, but water is water! we had some here in Phoenix, too. Finally!

Still dry up north in and on the western Mogollon Rim and San Francisco Peaks.

[SuperstitionGuy]

3 tenths of an inch last night in Apache Junction.
Probably better than that in the mountains to the east of us.

[big_load]

After an unusually warm autumn, we got our first snow in NJ last week - then our second and third. I hope this isn't a big snow year, because I hate going out to play bumper cars on the way to work.

[Jim]

Maybe they don't read this thread, but I am wondering what the snow totals looked like for Wrightson? I would think above 8,000' or 9,000' there was as much as a foot of new snow, but I am unsure.

Pima County Flood Control Precipitation maps, and rainlog .org both show some pretty good rain or precipitation totals for SE AZ, with a spot at 6400' on the north slope of Wrightson reporting 83/100ths, so I think there was at least 8 inches when the liquid turned to snow. Tucson had some nice totals, too. Lots of decent desert rainfall amounts for December in the Olde Pueblo, and more down near Patagonia, and the border near Mexico (olde).

[chumley]

Notoriously inaccurate radar estimates showed the Ritas as having received less precipitation than the Catalinas.

Mt. Lemmon observed snowfall readings at 9am Monday ranged from 6.0 inches at Ski Valley (8,350), 5.4", 4.0" and 3.6" at various spots in Summerhaven, and 2.9" at Willow Canyon (7,018).

[azbackpackr]

I'm finally seeing some rain. That's because it's raining here in North Carolina! First rain I've seen in months.

[Jim]

It is +6 degrees up in Flagstaff right now. I don't miss that! Not really that cold for there, either. We're in the middle to upper 30s, which is plenty cold for this first full day of Winter. It is sort of unusual that SE AZ and the Sky Islands got snow and rain before the western Rim and western deserts. I wonder when these areas will?

[rwstorm]

24 degrees at my house this morning...toasty!!

[chumley]

So-called "lake effect" snow has long since caused impressive storms in very local areas along the Great Lakes. Syracuse, Buffalo and Rochester, New York, among others, regularly receive similar annual snowfall totals as Flagstaff. But they are also subject to crazy events which drop incredible amounts of snow in a short period of time as happened this week in Erie, PA, where over 5 feet of snow fell in two days.

Here's a very cool photo of the clouds that produce those "lake effect" storms.



https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/imagery-and-data

[big_load]

We have single digits here in NW Jersey. It's been quite a bit below normal since Christmas Eve, when we got a few inches of fresh snow. Not enough to ski on, though.

[Jim]

A recent photo of a low Horseshoe lake prompted me to post something I will post here.

We have now had a pretty dry last half of summer/ monsoon season, and a record dry fall for Arizona, certainly the watershed areas. This has lasted into winter, and models forecast this for some time. This pattern may persist for the entire season. When was the last time something like this happened? 2005-2006 was when I think there was basically no winter precip for a lot of the state. I thought it was highly unusual that SE AZ had rain and snow in the sky islands.

I wonder, is there a recorded winter where there was none?

This isn't just Arizona, though, California appears to be headed back to severe drought, if people are interested in that.

[SuperstitionGuy]

We have now had a pretty dry last half of summer/ monsoon season, and a record dry fall for Arizona, certainly the watershed areas. This has lasted into winter, and models forecast this for some time. This pattern may persist for the entire season. When was the last time something like this happened? 2005-2006 was when I think there was basically no winter precip for a lot of the state. I wonder, is there a recorded winter where there was none?

I thinketh it is like unto something called the "desert effect".

[big_load]

It's been so cold NJ that birds are trying to get into the house.