Friday, July 18, 2014

clean and green... (pm.18.jul.14)>

Friday's stats:

Low temp: 62.2F (16.8C)
High temp: 70.7F (21.5C)
Rainfall: 1.03" (2.6cm) -- updated at 8:05pm

There are lots of clouds around this evening, but mainly of the mid- and high-level variety -- so the visibility is very good in this air mass that has been washed clean by this afternoon's rains.  There were wild swings between clouds, sun and patchy fog this morning, along with some isolated very light rain showers.  But it became mostly cloudy and occasionally foggy toward noon, and remained that way as more substantial showers began to develop around 2:00pm.  Just after 3:00pm we started to get some heavier rain showers and thunder, which ended up delivering a healthy rainfall total by the time things started calming down just before 5:00pm.

We've got a rather unusual upper-air pattern developing across northern India, providing us with a northwesterly flow in the higher levels of the atmosphere which should hold fast until early next week.  That's confusing the computer models, apparently, and creating a variety of solutions over the course of the next five or six days.  At the same time, it does look like we'll continue to see a bit of a lessening of the overall moisture content of our air mass between now and late Monday.

In my opinion, we're going to continue to deal with a very good chance of occasional rain shower development right through the weekend, with some locally heavy downpours possible -- although I think our average humidity levels will be lower, and the percentage of sunshine higher in the midst of it all.  There are indications of a dramatic resurgence of deep and juicy tropical moisture, along with a better chance of persistently rainy conditions by Tuesday or Wednesday.  It's hard to see a below normal July rainfall total at this point...

CURRENT FORECAST details can be found on the tab above.