Tuesday, April 30, 2013

still no thundershower... (pm.30.apr.13)>

Tuesday's stats:

Early morning low temp: 61.3F (16.3C)
Afternoon high temp: 76.1F (24.5C)
Rainfall: none

It's an incredibly nice evening... with sunshine and just a few mid- and high clouds, along with pleasant temperatures and low humidity.  The thundershower development we've been waiting for ever since late Sunday still hasn't materialized, allowing us to finish off the last few days of April with dry and comfortably warm weather conditions.

Computer model guidance has been pretty far off-base the last several days with regard to the impact this latest upper-level disturbance would have on us here in Himachal.  The center of circulation remains well off to our northwest, and has made very little progress in our direction.  This has allowed very warm temperatures in the upper-atmosphere to stay anchored over most of northern India, keeping things calm and stable.  Also, the advertised surge of moisture coming in from the south ahead of this system hasn't shown itself, so even if this air mass was less stable, there is very little fuel to work with.  Having said all that -- there's still time for things to get more juicy and unstable during the coming 24-30 hours as considerably colder air arrives aloft, and the atmosphere moistens up a bit.  It's best not to get complacent about the potential for a round of thunderstorms sometime before tomorrow (Wed) night.

With a pool of cold air aloft, there could be some instability over the mountains which could lead to an afternoon thundershower on Thursday, but a dry early summer air mass is going to be the dominant feature across the western Himalayan region as we approach the weekend.  Right now it looks like temperatures will be very close to normal for early May by Saturday, and remain there into at least early next week.

Get the CURRENT FORECAST on the tab at the top of the page.