Sunday, February 16, 2014

a positive transition... (pm.16.feb.14)>

Sunday's stats:

Low temp: 32.5F (0.3C)
High temp: 43.3F (6.3C)
Snow/ice pellets: 0.9" (2.3cm) 
Melted precipitation: 0.32" (0.8cm)

It is becoming partly cloudy at sunset this evening, with the clouds gradually breaking up after our nearly two hour period of snow and ice pellets between 3:30 and 5:30pm.  There was even some serious thunder and lightning a few times during that time.  The morning dawned promising enough with lots of sunshine, but clouds began building just before the noon hour, and by 3:00pm it started to look pretty threatening up-mountain from us.  Today's high temp occurred just after 11:00am, with temperatures falling again throughout the afternoon.

Well, we knew there would be some instability around this afternoon, due to the leftovers of our recent storm system -- in the form of a weak bit of circulation and some extremely cold air in the upper-levels of the atmosphere.  The warming of the surface thanks to morning sunshine was all it took to set things off, with that classic Dhauladhar instability effect kicking in.  With the loss of the daytime heating, we've seen our atmosphere begin to stabilize again as the sun sets.

A ridge of high pressure will start to build in tonight and tomorrow, with frigid temperatures aloft gradually being replaced by a milder air mass during the coming 24 to 36 hours.  This should provide us with stable conditions for the next couple of days, along with a fairly dramatic warming trend.  Our temps are so far below normal right now, it's going to take a heck of a lot of warming to get us up to where we should be during the latter half of February -- and I doubt that we'll make it that far.  Still, it's going to feel much nicer during most of this coming week than it has during the past few days.

Unfortunately, there will be more disturbances approaching northern India from the west by the end of the week, bringing another increase in clouds along with a chance of few rain showers starting on Wednesday.  In fact, it's now looking like we could have another risk of some significant precipitation in our area by late Friday and Saturday, as temperatures dip yet again.

Check the CURRENT FORECAST details on the tab above.