Tuesday, October 7, 2014

fundamental realignment... (pm.07.oct.14)>

Tuesday's stats:

Low temp: 55.8F (13.2C) -- at 2:20pm
High temp: 69.9F (21.1C)
Rainfall: 0.23" (6mm)

With the nearly full moon rising into mostly clear skies, we have one of the nicest evenings in recent memory happening for us.  Today has been another day of radical variability -- with plenty of sunshine this morning giving way to mostly cloudy skies and a period of fairly thick fog, which in turn led to a period of thundershowers during the 1:45 to 3:00pm range.  All of that was followed by rapid clearing that has left us with a very nice late afternoon and evening.  Temperatures swung dramatically as well... in response to the sun/clouds/rain.

Last evening I mentioned that we had a couple of upper-level disturbances on the way... and the first of those rippled across Himachal Pradesh this afternoon.  We're finally seeing some much drier air in the middle and upper-levels of the atmosphere beginning to filter into northern India -- and the cooler and drier air aloft overrunning lingering moisture at the surface is what stirred up our round of healthy thundershowers this afternoon.  But in the wake of those showers, we've gotten a taste of the drier air mass to come.

The next disturbance is over northern Pakistan this evening, and has triggered a large area of thundershowers up there.  Most of that activity should die overnight, but as the disturbance itself drifts across our area tomorrow (Wed), we may see more shower/thunder development.  The good news is that all of the available data continues to show a truly different kind of air mass settling across most of northwestern India by Thursday -- and this time it could signal a lasting turn toward drier/less humid conditions for us.