Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Yesterday - Cold Midlevel Air Leads To Late Day Showers


Cold trough at 500 mb dominates the West this morning - 12 UTC analysis above from NCAR shows -29 C at Tucson and -33 C at Flagstaff. Lows this morning were quite chilly: 20 F at Empire RAWS, 23 F at Sasabe RAWS, 26 F here at house with heavy frost, 31 F at DM, and 32 F at TUS. We used to track quite close to the lows at Empire, but there's been local development and considerable tree and plant growth, so that microclimate of what was once open deserty yard has warmed, but an amble down to the wash takes one into Empire type temperatures.


As the cold, midlevel air moved overhead late yesterday some short-stubby Cbs and showers developed. The radar above (base scan from NCAR) is for 06:15 pm MST. Image below is stolen from Art Rangno's blog (link to the right) and shows showers south of Catalina area about 05:53 pm. Ended up with very light shower here at house after dark, giving us a Trace for the day. 



Finally, Jack Hales webpage (link also to right) has a sublink to a widespread mosaic of webcams that is always interesting to scan. Some locales have enough lighting that nighttime images can be viewed. Here are two pre-sunrise images - above from Jackson, Wyoming, and below from Rexburg, Idaho.

Rexburg is along Idaho Highway 20 between Idaho Falls and Ashton to the northeast, at the start of the upper Snake River country. My dad was born in Ashton, so it's not surprising that we often headed for Island Park area and some summer fishing. His father was a dry-land wheat farmer in the Ashton area and was hailed-out two summer's in a row - he gave up on the farming and moved the family to California, just before the 1930's Depression knocked most everybody down again.. Thunder, lightning, and hail were influencing my life well before I was born.







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