Tuesday, February 11, 2014

cold streak continues... (am.11.feb.14)>

*Update @ 3:44pm... There is a nice snow shower in progress right now... and we've had a couple of brief periods of snowflakes since just before 3pm.  This has been triggered by some afternoon mountain instability, and should diminish as evening sets in.  Although the temp is 40.6F (4.8C), the freezing level is obviously not too far above.  The ground is too warm for lasting accumulations, but it's nice to see some snow nonetheless!

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It is partly cloudy as the sun rises this Tuesday morning, and the humidity is 70%.  I'm recording a low temp of 36.3F (2.4C), which is one of the coldest temps of the season at my location.  There were a few sprinkles, snow flakes, and random very light showers overnight, but I'm stretching it a bit to say that there is 0.01" (less than 1mm) wetting the bottom of my rain gauge.  It looks like there could have been some accumulating light snow in the hills above town.

Our recent weak upper-level disturbance which provided us with a very cloudy and gloomy Monday will be moving east of us by mid-day, as it leaves a fresh very cold air mass in its wake.  I think there is still a risk of an isolated light shower (of rain or snow) somewhere in our vicinity today, but that will be about it.  The good news is that a building ridge of high pressure by tonight will bring us a couple of potentially brighter and milder days (Wed and Thu).  We're in the midst of the coldest streak of temperatures of this entire winter season, but it looks like we could briefly go above 50F (10C) on Thursday, before the arrival of our next threat of wintry weather conditions.

It is getting a bit late in the season for this -- but we've got what looks to be a very significant winter storm which will be moving in as early as Friday morning, and lasting through much of Saturday.  This system will be tapping moisture from both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, and drawing it right up along the front slopes of the north Indian Himalayas.  Another batch of very cold mid-winter air will accompany the upper-level circulation as it eases in from the west, and that spells an interesting weekend for us.  Currently there are projections of some heavy precipitation right on top of us (more than 4cm/1.6"), so we'll be watching carefully to see how it all evolves...

CURRENT FORECAST details are available on the tab above.