Thursday, January 23, 2014

lots of white above... (am.23.jan.14)>

It is mostly clear just before sunrise this morning -- the temperature is 39.1F (3.9C), and humidity is 70%.  The low temp since midnight has been 37.0F (2.8C), and my rain gauge shows a whopping total of 3.25" (8.3cm) of precipitation (rain and melted snow).  Nearly 3" (7.6cm) of that occurred between 5pm and midnight!  A quick look out the window early this morning shows that the snow line ended up just barely above McLeod Ganj, pretty much as expected.

I woke up around 2:25am and looked out to see a clear sky and a bright moon -- so there was definitely a very sharp and dramatic back-side to our storm system.  Once the last batch of precipitation moved through, it took most of the cloudiness with it as well.  Other than the fresh white snow on the hills, there's not much lingering evidence of yesterday's action.  I find it amazing that my total precipitation almost exactly matches the projections of the most aggressive of all the available computer model data.  When I first saw a bull's eye of 3.2"/8cm painted basically right on top of us this time yesterday morning as I was going through the data, I was flabbergasted.  But that's indeed what we got!

It will be awhile before snowfall reports start coming in, but a basic 10:1 ratio for snow:rain would imply that 2-3 feet of new snow is on the slopes above us.  Excellent news for everyone.  And as a side note -- isn't it amazing that we made it through the last 24 hours without a power cut??

Moving forward... it looks like we'll lapse back into a generally quiet and uneventful weather pattern during the coming several days at least, and perhaps all the way through the end of the month.  Although there will be a few minor ripples in the upper-level flow, there are currently no significant disturbances showing up on the weather charts, with the moisture content of our air mass expected to be quite low.  Temperatures are seasonably cold this morning, but we should be quickly rising above normal for late January as the weekend arrives.

Get CURRENT FORECAST details on the tab above.