Thursday, July 24, 2014

damp and soggy... (pm.24.jul.14)>

Thursday's stats: 

Low temp: 64.4F (18.0C)
High temp: 67.8F (19.9C)
Rainfall since midnight: 1.27" (3.2cm)

Our sky is totally overcast this evening, but the visibility is actually pretty good, with most of the lower clouds and patches of fog clinging only to the mountains to our north and east.  Today has been one of the few days this monsoon season during which there was absolutely ZERO sunshine -- and you can see that from the lack of temperature variation (stats above).  There is no rain falling at the moment, but we've had drizzle and some periods of light to moderate rain virtually all day, with just a few short breaks now and then.

Two things have surprised me during the past 36 to 48 hours or so:  1) The fact that the rain has been of generally light to moderate intensity, and 2)  The very long/extended duration of rain episodes.  I guess these two factors have balanced out, because we've still come up with some fairly respectable mid-monsoon rainfall totals the last couple of days -- with even heavier amounts down in Dharamsala, apparently.  Our air mass remains very close to the saturation point, with humidity readings in the 85-100% range recently.

A deep and rich southeasterly flow of moisture-laden air will continue to feed into our area during the next few days, so it's likely that we'll be continuing to deal with occasional waves of rain developing and redeveloping.  The big question is whether or not we'll be able to come up with some heavier rainfall totals here in the immediate McLeod Ganj vicinity.  I think the answer is YES, but it's very hard to say when that's going to happen -- perhaps soon, or maybe not until sometime this weekend.  It would be nice if the data/technology could give us more help with that...

CURRENT FORECAST and UPDATED RAINFALL TALLY info can be found on tabs above.