Thursday, February 27, 2014

shivratri treat... (pm.27.feb.14)>

*Update @ 8:25pm...  It's currently 41.9F (5.5C) with some high clouds and stars.  It seems that 0.75" to 2.5" amounts of small hail and snow grains/pellets accumulated over a very wide area between roughly 3:30 and 4:15pm -- with the lesser amounts in McLeod, and the higher amounts obviously further uphill towards Tushita, Naddi, Dharamkot and Upper Bhagsu.  There were probably closer to 4 inches even higher.  This is one of the latest accumulating snowfalls I can remember here at my location.

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Thursday's stats:

Low temp: 39.0F (3.9C) -- at 4:00pm
High temp: 52.5F (11.4C) -- at 9:20am
Precipitation: 0.51" (1.3cm) -- melted*
Snow/hail: 1.2" (3.0cm)*
*updated

We're back to partly cloudy skies again this evening, after a very interesting afternoon.  Though we've had a lot of alternations between clouds and sun all day, the clouds really thickened up after 2:00pm, and some thunder started rumbling at 2:30pm or so.  Just after 3:40pm there was a full-blown thundershower in progress, with very cold air aloft producing a very impressive late February dumping of hail and snow grains/pellets.  I had just over an inch of accumulation at my house on Tushita Road, but since surface temperatures were well above freezing, melting began immediately.  Speaking of temps -- the high occurred in the morning, and the low in the late afternoon.

The same factors are in play that we've been anticipating and talking about both morning and evening for the past few days.  1) an upper-level disturbance and circulation to our west (now over central Pakistan) which is going to drift only slowly to the east between now and Sunday.  2) moisture creeping up from the south.  3) colder air in the mid- and upper-levels sagging into north India from central Asia.  This combination of variables is now coming into sync, and will continue to provide us with occasional rounds of showers and thunder for the next few days.  It's not going to rain (and/or snow) continuously by any means -- but our air mass will be threateningly unstable.

Even with some sunshine at times, our temps have been and will remain well below normal for the Feb/March transition.  And as we learned today, there is enough cold air aloft for us not to ignore the threat of some of the icier forms of precipitation.

CURRENT FORECAST specifics are on the tab above.