Sunday, September 15, 2013

battle lines... (pm.15.sep.13)>

*Update @ 9:05pm... Humidity is down to 55% -- the lowest since this monsoon season began, more than three months ago.  A couple of showers and maybe some thunder could occur yet tonight, but a brand new air mass is decisively advancing.  Temp steady near 58F (14.5C).

*Update @ 7:40pm... Wow.  That was wicked.  Those thunderstorms have finally pushed well off to our southeast, leaving us with a few sprinkles, a north breeze and humidity which has dropped back down to 60%.  Our first real taste of continental Asian air in a long long long time.  It's 58F (14.4C) right now, but temps have been rising during the past hour, since most of the rain/hail has finally moved out. 

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Sunday's stats:

Low temp: 54.9F (13.3C) -- at 6:15pm
High temp: 70.5F (21.4C)
Rain/melted hail: 0.96" (2.4cm) -- updated @ 7:30pm

We're in the midst of a massive battle for territory this evening, and have been since about the middle of the afternoon.  Currently, north-northwest winds are gusting strongly as a large area of thunderstorms begins to collapse overhead.  There are still some thunder, lightning and moderate rain showers going on, but right now the main event seems to be the wind.  Between roughly 3:00 and 5:00pm, we had a couple of periods of heavy hail and some moderate/heavy rain -- and it seems like the thunder has been rolling almost continuously since about 2:30pm.

Ironically, humidity fell to 58% late this morning, which is the lowest I've recorded during this transition out of the monsoon season.  There were a few hours of fantastic sunshine until about 11:00am, when the latent moisture in the air began to rise, condense, and eventually fuel thunderstorm development.

A widespread area of showers and thunderstorms started developing late this morning over west-central Kashmir.  As it moved toward the southeast, other thundershower development was initiated here along the Dhauladhars.  By late afternoon we had a huge mass of rain/hail/thunder right along the front slopes of the Himalayas from southwest Kashmir into western Himachal Pradesh.  This development has been occurring right on the battle line between much drier air attempting to push in from central Asia, and lingering tropical moisture which is slowly pulling out of north India.

The dramatic push of that much drier air from central Asia (and whether or not it is going to permanently displace what remains of monsoon humidity and moisture) will be our main event during the coming week.  Stay tuned as we watch the seasons turn...

Monsoon info and CURRENT FORECAST details can be found on tabs above.