Saturday, September 28, 2013

more to deal with... (am.28.sep.13)>

*Update @ 8:56am... It's still cloudy, and we now have some steady light rain falling.  Satellite pics show the potential for some clearing in a couple of hours, but we'll have to watch.  Temp: 62F (16.7C).  Humidity: 83%.

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There's a solid deck of mid-level clouds blanketing the area early this morning -- leftovers from scattered thundershowers overnight.  There have also been a few sprinkles of rain at my location within the past half hour or so.  My rain gauge shows an additional 0.32" (8mm) since about 9pm last night, with nearly all of that occurring during the wave of thundershowers between roughly 1:30 and 4:30am -- bringing the 24 hour total up to 1.55" (3.9cm).  It's 61F (16C), with humidity at 84% to start the day.

Last evening's rowdy thunderstorm was the first in the subsequent development of widespread showers and thundershowers across Himachal and southwestern parts of Jammu & Kashmir overnight.  A minor disturbance in the upper-atmosphere was all it took to ignite the large pool of moisture that had been just sitting and waiting all day for some kind of trigger.  This morning that disturbance/circulation is sitting almost directly over northwestern Himachal, but it may have already exhausted most of its energy.  And with all these leftover clouds, it may be difficult to get the sunshine required to start the lifting and condensing process all over again.  Still... be on guard and prepared for a period or two of showers and thundershowers once again today, and on Sunday as well.

According to all the computer model data and upper-air profiles, the atmosphere over northwest India should be slowly and gradually drying out next week.  There is still no dramatic insurgence of dry and crisp air from central Asia showing up, but the thicker tropical moisture should be retreating to the south and east, day by day, into the middle of the week.  RIght now I don't expect that to completely erase the periods of mainly PM clouds and fog, but it may lower our chance of showers as we cross into October.

Details for the next five days can be found on the CURRENT FORECAST tab above.