Sunday, May 10, 2015

stagnation... (am.10.may.15)>

The now-familiar hazy/dusty skies are still with us early this Sunday morning, along with some scattered clouds.  It's been an uneventful night, with no rainfall, and a very mild low temperature of 68.9F (20.5C) here at my location in the upper part of town.

We've now reached the point when it would be really nice to get a good round of showers and thunderstorms to recycle and cleanse this stagnant air mass which has been hanging around for the past week.  The big ridge of summertime high pressure in place across northwest India has been showing signs of weakening during the past 36 hours or so -- but not enough to allow the instability necessary to generate anything more than a couple of isolated afternoon thundershowers higher up along the mountains.  That's probably going to be the case again today -- with this mix of hazy sun and occasional clouds.  Temperatures may be ever-so-slightly below where they've been the last several days.

What we're waiting for is a wobbling upper-level disturbance with an associated pool of cooler air in the upper-atmosphere, which should be pushing into northern India by tomorrow (Mon) evening.  This feature will also be accompanied by a batch of moisture being drawn in from the Arabian Sea, and will give us a better chance of at least scattered shower/thunderstorm activity between late Monday and Wednesday.  The models aren't looking very impressive with rainfall amounts, but let's just see how it evolves.  Our temperatures will cool off several degrees, especially on Tuesday and Wednesday, but will likely rebound quickly during the latter part of the week.

THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK (tab above) has the details.