Tuesday, April 11, 2017

fantastic stuff... (pm.11.apr.17)>

Tuesday's stats:

Low temp: 55.8F (13.2C)
High temp: 73.5F (23.1C)
Rainfall: none

A day like today hits the bull's-eye of weather perfection, with mostly sunny skies and temperatures squarely in the middle of the comfort zone.  My high temp in the upper part of town was the warmest in eight days, since before we began our descent into a cooler and stormier pattern on Tuesday of last week.  It has taken a few more days to shake off the cooler air lingering in the wake of that storm system, but we've finally turned the corner today.  There were again only a few feeble cumulus clouds over the mountains this afternoon, and at sunset we have totally clear skies.

Well here we go... models the last few days have been showing an impressive warming trend kicking in during this mid-week period, and they have been spot-on so far.  We should be warming further, day-by-day, rising above normal for the middle of April during the latter half of this week.  Although our air mass is very stable right now, a weak upper-level disturbance zipping through on Friday could bring us a brief period of instability, and because of that, a small chance of some isolated thundershower activity.  But at least as of right now, rain chances are only in the 20-40% range.

Our warming trend could stall a bit on Friday and Saturday, but then a massive ridge of midsummer-like high pressure is forecast to develop and park itself over Pakistan and northwest India during much of next week.  I'm trying not to go berserk with the temperature forecast starting on Easter Sunday, but it certainly looks like we could be dealing with an early summer heat wave...