Saturday, November 21, 2015

intricacies and fallacies... (pm.21.nov.15)>

Saturday's stats:

Low temp: 55.9F (13.3C)
High temp: 63.5F (17.5C)
Rainfall: none

Once again this evening we've got mostly clear skies, apart from some light haze, and just a minor scattering of thin cirrus clouds.  My high temp in the upper part of town was the warmest I've recorded since last Sunday, and quite mild for the latter one-third of November.  Even our early morning low was very mild for the season, as we caught a taste of the bubble of warmer air aloft that's responsible for the current strong inversion in place across northern India.  Suffice it to say that it has been another fantastic autumn day around here.

For the last several days we've been talking about that inversion -- consisting of a shallow layer of cooler air trapped in the surface layers, below relatively warmer air in the middle and upper-levels of the atmosphere.  This is a common occurrence across north India during the fall and winter seasons, and can often deliver cooler nighttime temperatures in the lower elevations and onto the plains than we're getting here at 1800 meters (5900ft). And that's been the case the last few nights/early mornings.  That's why it's too bad that the wrong information delivered through modern services via robot mobile apps (and lack of ground-truth info from the IMD) leads many people to avoid McLeod Ganj during the winter season, when we actually have brighter skies, better air quality and quite a few milder nights here than points well below and south of us.  Lucky us -- less tourists means less traffic and chaos.  I'm good with that.

Anyway... this good weather should continue, in general, with sunshine perhaps yielding to a bit more mid- and high cloudiness next week.  Upper-level energy and developing low pressure to our west will try hard to press into Himalayan north India during the next several days, but right now, all of the models are keeping any precipitation development north of us.  Still, we'll have to watch it.  Temps should remain easy to take for this time of year...

Forecast details can be found on THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK tab at the top of the page.