Tuesday, May 23, 2017

time for another warm-up... (pm.23.may.17)>

Tuesday's stats:

Low temp: 63.1F (17.3C)
High temp: 80.7F (27.1C)
Rainfall: trace

We're in the midst of a beautiful evening, and we also had a beautiful morning... but in between there was a flare-up of thundershowers over the mountains which just barely grazed us here in town.  At my location on Tushita Road just below the mountaineering center there was only a trace of rainfall -- in the form of about 20 minutes worth of sprinkles and drizzle -- right around 3:30pm.  There was also a good amount of thunder preceding that.  Otherwise we had a lot of sunshine up until about 1:30pm, and have had more nice sun this evening.  My high temp today was the warmest since Saturday.

Our overall weather pattern is showing strong signs of improvement over the course of the coming several days -- and that should take us through the weekend into the very first part of next week.  A big ridge of high pressure is trying hard to nudge its way into northwest India from the southwest, and that's already triggering a warming trend that should become even more aggressive by the end of the week.  However, lingering pockets of cooler air aloft, and the ever-present weak ripples and wiggles floating through in the upper atmosphere will keep us concerned about at least a slight chance of some thundershower development during the PM hours.  Some of the data is also suggesting we could get some nocturnal thundershower action as well.  Despite all that, we should have a majority of dry hours and intense summer sunshine during the days ahead.

The highest temperature I've recorded this season/year so far was 89.6ºF/32.0ºC back on the 8th of this month.  There is a chance we could be making a return to temps in that general category by the weekend.