Friday, October 4, 2013

stagnant moisture... (pm.04.oct.13)>

Friday's stats:

Low temp: 59.0F (15.0C)
High temp: 64.8F (18.2C)
Rainfall: trace

It doesn't take much meteorological equipment to tell us that the humidity has remained very high all day... the persistent clouds and fog tell the story.  We've had a few very short-lived glimpses of sunshine, but it has been a gloomy Friday overall.  Surprisingly, there has been very little rain today (thus far) -- just a few periods of sprinkles and very brief, light showers mainly during the afternoon hours.  Due to the scarcity of sunshine, today's temps have been the coolest of the season.

The weather pattern across south Asia remains bizarre for this time of year, to say the least.  There is obviously still a whole lot of moisture hanging around, with still no sign of a significant surge of drier air arriving to definitively sweep this stuff out of here.  However, there are some shifts in mainly the upper-atmospheric pattern taking place, which may bring some changes for us during the next couple of days.  An unusually strong area of high pressure in the upper-levels is projected to develop over the western HImalayan region by late Sunday, and remain parked over us through much of the coming week.  Unseasonably warm air aloft associated with this system is expected to stabilize the atmosphere, and squelch development of showers and thundershowers across most of north India.  Unfortunately, with surface-level moisture not really going anywhere, I am afraid that we could continue to see lots of cloudiness and fog in the coming days, despite the decreasing rain chances.

Temperatures have dropped a few degrees below normal the last couple of days (especially daytime high temps), and unless we can get some longer periods of sunshine, I think we'll average out slightly below normal for early October, even into the middle of next week.  By the way, we need just 0.63" (1.6cm) of rain to reach the normal/average total for the entire month of October.  That amount shouldn't be too hard to come by in the next 27 days.

The CURRENT FORECAST, along with lots of other weather info can be found on tabs at the top of the page.