Tuesday, May 12, 2015

rain risk remains... (pm.12.may.15)>

Tuesday's stats:

Low temp: 54.5F (12.5C)
High temp: 70.1F (21.2C)
Rainfall: 0.75" (1.9cm)

We have mostly cloudy skies at sunset this evening... at the end of a day dominated by clouds and occasional very light rain showers.  Our rainfall tally since midnight is significant, but only 0.03" (around 1mm) of that occurred after about 5:15am.  We did come up with a few glimpses of sunshine, mainly during the mid- to late afternoon, but it wasn't enough to get the thermometer moving all that much.  According to my records, today has been the coolest since the 26th of April.

The combination of upper-level energy, a big pocket of cooler air aloft, and a rather large batch of moisture is going to keep us in a position to receive on-and-off periods of showers and possible thunderstorms all the way into Thursday.  There will be plenty of dry hours between now and then, along with some periods of sun, but there's enough instability packed into this atmosphere to keep us on edge during the next 48 hours or so. It's also likely that our temperatures will remain considerably cooler than normal for mid-May at least until Friday.

Starting on Friday, we should return to a more stable situation featuring a greater amount of sunshine along with dramatically rising temperatures.  I think we'll quickly rebound into the above normal/average range for the season over the weekend into early next week, with the only rain chances confined to isolated afternoon thundershower development.  There's plenty of summertime heat ahead of us...

Forecast details can be found on THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK tab above.