Thursday, February 13, 2014

one more good one... (am.13.feb.14)>

It's absolutely clear at sunrise, for the second morning in a row.  I'm recording an early morning low temp of 42.4F (5.8C), which is the mildest up here on Tushita Road below the mountaineering center in more than a week.  The humidity is currently 38%, and there has been no precipitation overnight.

A ridge of stable high pressure is still the dominant weather feature across northwest India, and will keep things quiet and temperatures mild for one more day.  Although moisture is beginning to surge northward across central India, we should remain high and dry, with a good amount of sunshine until perhaps sometime this afternoon when there could be some cloud development.  Enjoy the relatively mild temps today, because much colder air will be moving back in very soon.

An upper-level circulation center is located over southeastern Iran this morning, and will move into central Pakistan by this time tomorrow morning, then shift slowly eastward and linger over northwest India through Saturday.  Another batch of very cold air will sweep in from the west and northwest in association with this system, as a good surge of moisture-laden air gets transported north-northwestward in advance.  That means we are seeing the set-up for a potential winter storm event across most of Himachal Pradesh and surrounding areas between tomorrow (Fri) morning and late Saturday.  There is still a perplexing amount of discrepancy between the three or four major sets of computer model data -- with one model showing us getting totally clobbered, another model keeping most of the significant rain/snow development just to our east, and another one somewhat in the middle of those two extremes.

At any rate, it still appears that this is going to be a cold system, with the freezing level projected to be low enough for us to be concerned about some accumulating snowfall in McLeod -- assuming there is actual development of precipitation in our area.  Savor today's mild weather, but be prepared for dramatic changes by tomorrow morning...

CURRENT FORECAST specifics are on the tab above.