Sunday, April 10, 2016

the parade of disturbances... (pm.10.apr.16)>

Sunday's stats:

Low temp: 59.2F (15.1C)
High temp: 70.1F (21.2C)
Rainfall: none

Other than a few breaks in the clouds to our west, we're under a mostly overcast sky just prior to sunset this evening.  We came up with more sunshine today than we saw yesterday, but there was still quite a lot of cloudiness to deal with, holding our temperatures just a shade below expectations.  At least up to this point, we've had no rainfall at all.

The entire month of April thus far we've found ourselves in an 'in between' kind of weather pattern.  There have been no genuine storm systems of any significance in our part of the world, but neither has it been totally quiet and uneventful.  We've had a persistent west-southwesterly flow for the most part, delivering a parade of weak upper-level disturbances.  Each of those ripples in the flow aloft has been able to kick up extensive patches of mainly mid- and/or high level cloudiness, along with some brief periods of showers and thunder now and then.  In the midst of that, we've also seen some nice hours of sunshine -- but even then, the clouds and sprinkles of rain have never been very far away.

Another one of those disturbances will be in the area tonight through Monday evening, but then it does look like we may see a shift in the pattern which could allow our atmosphere to stabilize a bit.  The upper-level flow will shift more to the northwest starting on Tuesday... with a rather impressive ridge of high pressure showing up on the models by the end of the week.  Although it's hard to say that the risk of mainly PM showers/thunder will totally go away, it's looking more settled as the week progresses.  Temperatures could rise to their highest of the season and year by Friday or Saturday.

THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK contains the forecast specs.