Monday, October 7, 2013

moisture entrenched... (pm.07.oct.13)>

Monday's stats:

Low temp: 62.4F (16.9C)
High temp: 67.8F (19.9C)
Rainfall: trace

It is mostly cloudy at sunset this evening, with a few large patches of fog floating around as well.  Temperatures have budged very little today, since the sunshine gave way to cloud/fog development not long after 9am, and only reappeared briefly once or twice during the mid-afternoon.  As expected, the triggers necessary for shower/thundershower eruption were not present today -- so there have only been a couple of light sprinkles and a brief period of drizzle this afternoon/evening.

An unsually strong bubble of high pressure in the upper atmosphere extends from northern Pakistan and northern India into western Tibet this evening, and is still expect to dominate the overall weather pattern into the middle of the week.  Under normal circumstances, this kind of feature would be providing us with stable, dry and sunny weather here in our part of the world.  Unfortunately, massive amounts of moisture in the lower levels remain piled up against the mountains of north India, robbing us of any benefit, other than the general sinking motion of the air mass keeping the shower and thundershower development at bay -- for now.

There are indications that the risk of at least scattered shower activity will be on the rise again, especially during the Wednesday/Thursday time frame, as this big high pressure ridge drifts off to the east.  In addition, I am still seeing absolutely no reduction in the moisture content of this air mass here along the front slopes of the Dhauladhars until perhaps the weekend.  But honestly, the computer model data has been very close to worthless in projecting the character of our atmosphere beyond about 3-4 days, so I remain unconvinced of any long-term improvement possibilities.

Keep up with CURRENT FORECAST details on the tab at the top of the page.