Tuesday, August 19, 2014

oh so feeble... (pm.19.aug.14)>

Tuesday's stats:

Low temp: 64.0F (17.8C)
High temp: 74.8F (23.8C)
Rainfall: trace

My rain gauge has measured a total of 0.01" (less than 1mm) of rain in the past three days, which is now by far the driest stretch of weather since this monsoon season began to crank up in late June.

There have been a few fleeting patches of blue sky in the last half hour, otherwise we have mostly cloudy skies with patches of fog in the area as sunset approaches.  There were a few sprinkles of rain between about 2:00pm and 4:00pm, and there was a brief shower (maybe 3 or 4 minutes) at my location on Tushita Road below the mountaineering center around 3:00pm -- but it wasn't quite enough to register a measurement.  Once again our morning sunshine got challenged by rapid cloud/fog development by the late morning.

This relatively rain-free situation is highly unusual for this stage of August, but each year, we tend to get a few consecutive days of scant rainfall at least once or twice during the course of the entire monsoon season.  Now is our time for a break, apparently.  Still, there's enough latent moisture in the air (especially in the lower levels) to get piled up against the mountains -- providing us with a lot of cloudiness and fog.

It looks like conditions will become a bit more favorable for a return to more significant shower action as we head toward the end of the week.  Right now I see no surge of truly robust monsoon conditions during the coming several days or more, though, so it's probable that our total rainfall for the season is going to start lagging behind the normal pace... after running at least a bit ahead of normal up to this point.