Saturday, April 20, 2013

action potential... (pm.20.apr.13)>

Saturday's stats:

Early morning low temp: 61.7F (16.5C)
Afternoon high temp: 76.8F (24.9C)
Rainfall: trace

It is partly cloudy just before sunset this evening after another seasonably warm day with alternating sunshine and clouds.  We even had a couple of brief periods of thunder as big cumulonimbus clouds attempted to get going over the mountains -- first right around noon, and then again during the mid-afternoon, when I actually had a couple of sprinkles of rain at my location in the upper part of town.  Humidity remains very low, however -- just 20-35% all day.

We're now knocking on the door of what we call the 'summer' season here in Himachal, as the warmest temperatures of the entire year occur in May and June, ahead of the cool-down which accompanies the arrival of the monsoon by the 1st of July.  The weather pattern is morphing into alignment with that, as a west-southwesterly flow establishes itself in the upper atmosphere.  Embedded in that flow will be regular ripples/disturbances between now and at least the middle of next week, giving us an increasing chance of scattered showers and thundershowers as more moisture-laden air surges in from the south.  It will be interesting to see whether we can come up with any significant rain during the coming several days, since we remain way way below normal for April rainfall up to this point.

Temperatures should remain quite warm unless we can get a good round of thundershowers to deliver a shot of temporarily cooler air.  All the CURRENT FORECAST details can be found on the tab at the top of the page.