Tuesday, January 21, 2014

something substantial?... (pm.21.jan.14)>

*Update @ 7:02pm... There have been a couple of moderate rain showers during the past 15 minutes or so, with some gusty winds as well.  The festivities are kicking off on time or even a bit earlier than expected, for a change.

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Tuesday's stats:

Low temp: 45.1F (7.3C)
High temp: 56.1F (13.4C)
Precipitation: trace (*update to follow)

The sky is dark and threatening just after sunset this evening, and we've even had some brief sprinkles of rain since around 5pm.  The sunshine was more prevalent than expected from the mid-morning until just after noon, however, and that boosted our high temp into the well above normal range for the second day in a row.  Clouds rapidly thickened up again during the afternoon, and the temp dropped several degrees very quickly in response.

We're just now starting to feel the effects of our next disturbance/storm system, as the center of its circulation eases very slowly across southern Pakistan.  This system's snail's pace movement has allowed plenty of time for lots of moisture from the Arabian Sea to get drawn northward in the south-southwesterly flow ahead of it.  And that could end up being the difference between what happens during the next 36 hours, and what has happened with all the previous storm systems this month.  I'm surprised about the consensus of all the latest computer model data -- showing a fairly widespread area of 1-3cm (0.4-1.2") of rain across most of Himachal Pradesh between tonight and Thursday morning -- but keeping in mind the fact that we've fallen far short of projected precip totals with each and every disturbance that has passed through here this month.

The upper-level circulation will be moving across northern Rajasthan and Punjab by tomorrow night, and if all of this deep moisture is solidly in place by that time, we stand a very good chance of seeing the most rain and/or snow around here since New Year's Eve.  Right now it would appear that the rain/snow line might hover just above the immediate McLeod area, but as always, we'll have to monitor the situation moment by moment... if and when the steady precipitation starts to fall.

It looks like things will dry out and calm down quickly by Thursday afternoon, with a quick temperature rebound as the weekend arrives.

Check out the CURRENT FORECAST details on the tab at the top of the page.