Wednesday, May 24, 2017

himalayan summer... (pm.24.may.17)>

Wednesday's stats:

Low temp: 64.9F (18.3C)
High temp: 83.4F (28.6C)
Rainfall: none

Cloudiness associated with clusters of thundershowers from western Kashmir into northern Himachal Pradesh can be seen to our north and northwest this evening, but those thundershowers are in their dying phase as the sun sets.  We had another day of nearly full morning sunshine, followed by increasing mountain cloudiness, and then off-and-on rumbles of thunder through the majority of the afternoon.  I never saw so much as a drop of rain, but there could have been some trace amounts of rainfall somewhere around our area.  Temperatures continued their upward climb, as we were expecting.

Today's high temp was just a fraction of a degree shy of the normal high for this date -- and if this weather pattern continues to progress according to plan, we should be rising above normal tomorrow, and stay there all the way through the weekend.  We are right on the eastern fringes of a large area of summertime high pressure which continues to strengthen from eastern Saudi Arabia into Pakistan.  There's still a marginally unstable atmosphere across the western and central Himalayas, however, which keeps us from being able to totally ignore the risk of some mainly PM thundershower development in the vicinity of the mountains.   Friday through Sunday might be our best opportunity to escape that afternoon/evening thunder potential, but even then we're talking about a 10-20% chance of something popping up.

After a very warm weekend, we could see some slight cooling during the first half of next week, along with shower/thunder chances increasing temporarily.  All in all things are not looking terribly out of the ordinary for our mid-summer along the edge of the north Indian Himalayas... in anticipation of pre-monsoon conditions which will start to build during the month of June.