Wednesday, March 12, 2014

evening delight... (pm.12.mar.14)>

Wednesday's stats:

Low temp: 41.0F (5.0C)
High temp: 50.9F (10.5C)
Rainfall since 7:00am: 0.16" (4mm)
Storm total rainfall (since Monday morning): 1.87" (4.7cm)

It is an absolutely gorgeous evening, with mostly clear skies and a setting sun illuminating the snow-smothered Dhauladhars.  Scattered showers and a few rumbles of thunder lingered until almost 2:30pm -- a couple of hours longer than expected -- but then our skies cleared out dramatically during the mid- to late afternoon.  Temperatures were a few degrees cooler than anticipated, thanks to those showers which were still occurring during the early afternoon.  At any rate, we're now getting what we've been waiting for.

The overall weather pattern is now on the brink of major changes, which will set us on course for more of a springtime scenario during the coming days.  In the near term, a rapidly building ridge of high pressure in the upper atmosphere is pushing into northern India, and will provide us with generally quiet and stable conditions into the weekend.  There will be some waves of high clouds, however, which will keep us from enjoying full sunshine.  The warmth potential of the atmosphere between tomorrow and Sunday is quite impressive, but due to the occasional high clouds, I'm holding back from forecasting high temps rising much above the low 60s (F).  But -- that's STILL quite a bit warmer than anything I've recorded this season so far.  If we end up getting much more sun than clouds, we can expect even warmer temps.

A weak upper-level disturbance will glide across northern India on Saturday into Sunday, but right now it appears that the best chances of showers will be further to our north and east.  Then, a stronger disturbance is showing up for Monday into Tuesday which could bring us a better chance of rain, along with a temporary cool-down.

The CURRENT FORECAST specifics are on the tab at the top of the page.