Thursday, May 4, 2017

warming trend on the way... (pm.04.may.17)>

Thursday's stats:

Low temp: 54.7F (12.6C)
High temp: 72.6F (22.6C)
Rainfall: 0.17" (4mm)

The temperature just before sunset is very close to the high for the day, with just a few scattered clouds in the area.  It has been a truly 'variably cloudy' day, with all kinds of fluctuations between clouds and sunshine during the daylight hours.  All of the measurable rainfall you see in the stats at the top of this post occurred during the early morning hours, with at least three different episodes of light rain showers between about 1:30 and 6:30am.  We did have a few sprinkles late this afternoon, but that didn't add to the daily total.

Well this departing upper-level disturbance has played out pretty much according to expectations, with only light amounts of rain here in our immediate area, and heavier precipitation amounts in the higher elevations north and northeast of us.  It has served to cool us off a few degrees the last couple of days... putting us in the range of roughly 5-7ºF/3-4ºC cooler than normal for the early days of May.  But this taste of cooler weather is not going to last, it appears.

The upper-level pattern is already on the move, again, with warmer air flowing in aloft, as a big, broad high pressure ridge starts to build across most of south Asia during the coming several days.  This looks like it's going to be what we call a 'dirty ridge' of high pressure -- due to the fact that there will be some weak circulations embedded in the very light flow, along with some pockets of moisture.  That means that we're probably going to be contending with occasional periods of cloudiness, and even a barely mentionable risk of mainly PM thundershowers -- even as a fairly aggressive warming trend kicks in.

My last 80ºF+ (27ºC) temp was way back on the 21st of April, but it looks like we'll be heading above that mark sometime over the coming weekend.