Sunday, March 16, 2014

warmest since october... (pm.16.mar.14)>

Sunday's stats:

Low temp: 56.3F (13.5C)
High temp: 68.4F (20.2C)
Rainfall: none

It's cloudy out there at sunset this evening, but what a day we've had.  Though there have been a few periods of mainly high clouds throughout the day, there was also a lot of sunshine -- especially during the middle of the day when the sun angle is highest and the maximum heating normally occurs.  My high temp in the upper part of town (see above) was the warmest I've recorded since way back on the 19th of October, and thus obviously the new warmest temp of the season and of 2014.

Clouds have really thickened up this evening as another wave of energy gets spit out ahead of an upper-level disturbance and circulation center now located over extreme eastern Iran.  This system is going to be our main weather-maker over the course of the coming 48-60 hours or so, gradually putting an end to our recent stretch of quiet and very mild conditions.  Although we have a lot of cloud development getting going in the mid- and upper-levels, it's going to take until the second half of Monday for us to come under the influence of the strong instability necessary to generate significant shower and thunderstorm development.  An updated projection of the most likely period to receive the majority of rainfall appears to be between Monday afternoon and Tuesday late afternoon.  I think around 0.75" to 1.5" (2-4cm) of precipitation is a reasonable prediction at this point.

I'm afraid we're going to lose these recent very pleasant temperatures, though we shouldn't sink to the levels we had to deal with during storm systems of the past month and a half.  It's getting harder and harder for large batches of wintry air to get this far south and stick around for long.  Things are looking pretty good for the latter half of the week, with a mix of clouds and sun and temps running a few degrees below average for mid-March.

CURRENT FORECAST info can be found on the tab above.