Wednesday, June 15, 2016

the first taste... (pm.15.jun.16)>

Wednesday's stats:

Low temp: 65.8F (18.8C)
High temp: 73.1F (22.8C)
Rainfall: 0.42" (1.1cm)

It's drizzling at the moment, with mostly cloudy skies and patchy fog.  We've experienced a rather vivid preview of the monsoon season to come -- with clouds, rather thick fog at times, and humidity in the 80-95% range throughout the day.  Surprisingly, rainfall hasn't been heavy at all here in our immediate area (as of this evening), but there have been clusters of showers and thundershowers in all directions since late last night, so there have likely been some heavier rainfall totals than we've seen here in McLeod.  The thermometer moved little -- as we would expect with the high humidity and prevalence of cloud cover.

If you've been following the advance/onset of this year's monsoon (SUMMER INTO MONSOON tab above), you know that the leading edge of official monsoon conditions is still very far away from Himachal Pradesh, but since late yesterday we've started to get the first taste of what will become the norm during most of July, August and at least the first half of September.  This current and first surge of deep tropical moisture will retreat as we head into the weekend, but then it looks like that juicy moisture will slosh right back up against the mountains again early next week.  It's time to get prepared for the new realities.

If we can get a few hours of sunshine, it can get uncomfortably warm and muggy this time of year, but with clouds, occasional fog and periods of rain, it's actually quite pleasant.  In my opinion, pleasantly mild temps are one of the great positives once the monsoon season gets entrenched.