Saturday, December 19, 2015

christmas is a comin'... (pm.19.dec.15)>

Saturday's stats:

Low temp: 41.7F (5.4C)
High temp: 50.5F (10.3C)
Rainfall: none

It's a perfectly clear evening out there, with a bright half-moon directly overhead.  Today's temps were 1-2ºC milder than yesterday's -- and the mildest we've seen since back on Monday.  Only a few traces of cumulus clouds attempted to develop along the mountains this afternoon, with mid-December sunshine dominating.  It was still very chilly in the shade, but that nearly unlimited sunshine was welcome indeed.

We've found ourselves 'in-between' little disturbances rippling along the jetstream flow the last two days, and that's allowed us to enjoy these sunny skies.  But a couple of days ago we were talking about both Sunday and Tuesday being candidates for an increase in clouds, along with at least a slight risk of some random light rain shower development.  It's still looking like we'll see a weak disturbance move across northern India tomorrow, and again on Tuesday -- so -- even though a couple of the models are showing virtually no precipitation development, there are another couple of sets of data that are.  That means we have to be prepared for a less abundance of sunshine, along with that mentionable chance of a few raindrops somewhere around the area.  At this point, it appears that we'll lose that shower risk and also see a greater percentage of sunshine by Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

The misinformation with regard to temperatures continues to proliferate on the internet via mobile web-bot weather apps.  It has not been below zero (ºC) here in McLeod proper, though those apps show temps of -2 to -3ºC (27-28ºF).  If our lows were that cold, then we'd be seeing icicles from rooftops in the market instead of dripping water at dawn, and patches of ice in the streets and gutters instead of pools of water.  Not to mention the fact that there would be problems with water freezing in pipes during the pre-dawn hours.  Yes, it's quite cold... but not that cold.

Get a look at THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK for forecast details -- on a tab above.