Sunday, July 21, 2013

tropical variability... (pm.21.jul.13)>

Sunday's stats:

Low temp: 63.9F (17.7C)
High temp: 75.1F (23.9C)
Rainfall: 0.15" (4mm)

A day of rather extreme variability is drawing to a close.  Clouds, light showers, fog, and bursts of sunshine have been alternating back and forth since very early this morning.  I recorded the warmest temperature of the past week at around 9:00am, believe it or not, thanks to an extended sunny period that finally succumbed to clouds and fog as late morning arrived.  There were off-and-on periods of drizzle and light rain showers today, but not much in the rain gauge to show for it, at least at my location in the upper part of town.

The whole weather pattern is really kind of nondescript right now, with a seasonably tropical air mass sloshing back and forth along the front ranges of the mountains of northern India.  The computer models have only a marginally OK handle on the situation, as micro-scale features are really more dominant this time of year, and the model guidance doesn't have the resolution to pick up on some of the intricate details.  Those computer models are showing that we should be getting about 1.5" (3-4cm) of rain this evening and overnight, but so far, there hasn't been anything close to that, as far as I am aware.  But -- development is likely to be isolated and localized, so don't be surprised if some of us get a heavy downpour, and others do not.

There does appear to be a trend toward slightly lower humidity and lower rainfall coverage during the first part of this week, followed by another surge of more widespread saturation and potentially heavy rainfall starting on Thursday.  Rainfall at my spot in the upper part of McLeod is lagging below normal for July as of now, but it only takes a couple of major downpours to reverse that.

The CURRENT FORECAST, along with the MONSOON 2013 RAINFALL tally can be found on tabs above.