Friday, April 24, 2015

temps still above the norm... (am.24.apr.15)>

Again we have totally clear skies as the sun rises this morning.  I'm recording a mild overnight low temp of 61.7F (16.5C), and there has been no rainfall to report.  In fact, I've measured only 0.09" (2mm) of rain in the past week, which has been a nice turn-around.

The general situation of the past several days will persist into the weekend, with a warm air mass in place in the middle and lower levels of the atmosphere, and some random pools of colder air aloft.  That kind of scenario is great for sunshine during at least the first half of the day, but also keeps us slightly concerned about isolated thundershower development in the vicinity of the mountains by the mid-afternoon hours. Those thundershowers have avoided us the last couple of days -- concentrated a bit further to our southeast -- but we still need to be aware of the possibility both this afternoon and again on Saturday afternoon.  It looks like a push of warmer air aloft on Sunday may get rid of that minor instability factor, however.  Our temperatures throughout the weekend should stay in this slightly above normal range.

Some kind of a shift in the upper-level pattern on Monday will set us up for a better chance of at least scattered shower or thunderstorm action by Monday afternoon through Tuesday night.  The computer model output this morning is looking a bit different than it did yesterday, in terms of clearing things out for the rest of next week, but temperatures could be several degrees cooler.  That new pattern doesn't seem to be resolved though, so as always, we'll have to watch it day by day.

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