Sunday, February 2, 2014

wet weather knocking... (pm.02.feb.14)>

*Update @ 8:23pm... According to my records, today was the 2nd warmest of 2014.  The number one title goes to 3 January, when I logged 57.0F (13.9C).  It is still a very mild 51.6F (10.9C), and temps should remain fairly steady overnight until/unless we get some rain development.

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Sunday's stats:

Low temp: 47.8F (8.8C)
High temp: 56.3F (13.5C)
Precipitation: none

Clouds have been thickening up since shortly past noon, and we now have overcast skies just after sunset this evening.  There was a good amount of sunshine during the morning hours which boosted my temp in the upper part of town to one of the mildest of 2014 -- it was definitely a very pleasant day for this time of year.  The humidity has yet to begin its rise, and has remained in the 35-50% range for most of the day.

My head is swimming with data as I've just combed through everything I can access during the past hour or so.  The current scenario that we've been talking about and anticipating for quite a few days seems to be on track here at the last minute.  The upper-level circulation and wave of dynamic energy which is the big 'game-changer' for this new week is now located over northeastern Iran, and will be carving out a broad long-wave low pressure trough in the upper atmosphere that will bring us a dramatic turn to colder and wetter weather.

The data this evening is more or less consistent and in fairly good agreement -- indicating that there will be precipitation development across all but perhaps the southwestern portions of Himachal Pradesh late tonight into early Monday.  We are still precariously close to the south-southwestern edge of significant rainfall here in McLeod, so it's going to be interesting to watch what happens during the coming 12-18 hours or so.  Computer models are still showing 2-3cm (0.8 - 1.2") of rain/melted snow here along the front slopes of the Dhauladhars by Tuesday morning, with snow potential most likely above 2100m (6900ft) or so.

It is now looking like any kind of sustained clearing trend is unlikely between this initial system and the next series of disturbances which will be fairly regular throughout the rest of the week.  That means it is going to be really hard to take the risk of periods of rain out of the forecast all the way through Friday -- with colder average atmospheric temps giving us a better chance of seeing some snow further downhill as the week unfolds.  A far cry from what we've dealt with the last 10 days!

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