Tuesday, December 8, 2015

storm system organizing... (pm.08.dec.15)>

Tuesday's stats:

Low temp: 52.2F (11.2C)
High temp: 60.6F (15.9C)
Rainfall: none

It's an unseasonably mild early December evening, with quite a lot of high cloudiness overhead.  Today's temps have been a bit above what was expected, in spite of the fact that the sunshine struggled fiercely with the numerous waves of high clouds trekking from west to east across the sky.  Humidity at my location ranged from 33% to 50%.

We're in an 'in-between' phase right now, as the high pressure ridge of the past week continues to weaken and break down, and a brand new storm system continues to organize well to our west.  The center of a rather strong upper-level low pressure circulation is over extreme northeastern Iran this evening, and will be moving slowly in our direction during the coming 48 hours or so.  This time of year there's not a huge amount of moisture to be found, but this system will gather whatever is available as it approaches, and push it up against the Himalayan ranges of northwest India between Thursday and very early Saturday.  It's also bringing with it the coldest batch of air of this new winter season.

All of that means we may be facing some dramatic changes as we move into the latter part of this week.  I think we're safe tomorrow (Wed), but things start to go downhill on Thursday -- or even by Wednesday night according to one rogue set of computer model data.  From what I'm seeing tonight, I think our best chance of rain and mountain snow breaking out will occur sometime on Thursday afternoon, with good precipitation chances staying in the forecast until roughly midnight Friday night.  Temperatures will plummet during that period, and I think there's little doubt we'll experience the coldest temps of this season so far.  Fortunately the sun will return in earnest starting on Saturday, and stay with us at least through early next week.

Check out THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK tab above if you're interested in all the forecast details.