Monday, March 3, 2014

briefly brighter... (am.03.mar.14)>

There are some high, thin cirrus clouds moving in from the west at sunrise this morning, otherwise it's looking much much brighter at the start of the day than it has since last Thursday morning.  Last night's showers abruptly ended just before 8:00pm and skies cleared out quickly -- that means there has been no additional precipitation since last report -- leaving us with 3.02" (7.7cm) for our four-day rainfall total since Thursday afternoon.  My overnight low temp here in the upper part of town has been 39.7F (4.3C), which occurred around midnight.  It is currently 41.4F (5.2C) with a humidity reading of 44%.

We're in the midst of a brief period of quiet weather at the moment, but already clouds are beginning to spread in from the west, in advance of the next upper-level disturbance which is now centered over northern Afghanistan.  That gives us very little time to recover.  This next system is expected to take a more northerly track, with most of the dynamic energy passing across the northern half of Jammu & Kashmir tomorrow into Wednesday.  However, it looks like we'll have a fairly good chance of some occasional rain showers in our area -- thanks to lingering latent moisture in our air mass, and at least moderate instability.  A few showers could develop as early as tonight, but the best chance of significant rainfall will be from mid-day Tuesday through Wednesday evening.  Though temperatures will remain way below the average for early March, it should be several degrees warmer than it was over the weekend.

During the last couple of days, extended range computer models and upper-air charts are showing the first tangible signs of a shift to more of a springtime weather pattern.  This may start to occur by the very end of this week.  It doesn't mean temperatures will sky-rocket and rain chances will totally disappear, but we may see some moves in a more favorable direction...

Get the CURRENT FORECAST details on the tab above.