Thursday, December 26, 2013

seasonably chilly... (pm.26.dec.13)>

Thursday's stats:

Low temp: 41.9F (5.5C)
High temp: 49.3F (9.6C)
Precipitation: none

There are some lingering clumps of clouds in the vicinity of the mountains just after sunset this evening, otherwise it is mostly clear to the west and south.  Today was pretty similar to the past few days -- with both sunshine and patchy cloudiness, along with temperatures running fairly close to normal for the season.  A fresh surge of slightly cooler air has been filtering in since mid-day, but still nothing dramatically colder than what we've been used to during the past week or so.

The upper-air pattern remains a bit disturbed, with nearly constant weak ripples moving out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and tracking across Himachal and Jammu & Kashmir.  This is keeping our air mass in flux, with surges of cooler air from the north alternating with resurgences of slightly milder air from the south and southeast.  The difference has only been a matter of a couple of degrees in either direction, though.  If we had some decent moisture in the air, we'd be getting some scattered rain/snow showers -- but that's not the case, so occasional clouds has been all we've been able to come up with.

It looks like it will be status quo during the next three days or so, but then there are signs that a bit more moisture is going to be drawn northward into our area in advance of a storm system approaching the western Himalayas early next week.  Early computer model projections are showing this system flatten out and fall apart as it gets into our neighborhood... but we need to factor the risk of some kind of rain/snow event into the forecast over the 2013/2014 transition period.  Check back here to see how the latest data evolves.

CURRENT FORECAST details can be found on the tab above.