Friday, January 8, 2016

brief excitement now over... (pm.08.jan.16)>

Friday's stats:

Low temp: 38.5F (3.6C)
High temp: 50.8F (10.4C)
Precipitation since midnight: 0.30" (8mm) -- rain and melted hail/sleet
24 hour precipitation: 0.31" (8mm)

There are some clouds lingering mainly right along the mountains this evening as darkness settles in, otherwise our skies are mainly clear to the south.  You can see from the precipitation stats that we ended up with a respectable amount of rain, small hail and a bit of sleet during the past 24 hours -- nearly all of that happening during a couple of periods of thundershowers this morning.  One round occurred right around 8:00am, and then the next more intense round (with the small hail and sleet) hit us between 10:30 and 11:00am.  Thereafter, there were only a couple of very brief episodes of sprinkles and very light showers randomly until about 2:30 or 3:00pm.  That chilly low temp of 38.5F (3.6C) occurred during the late morning thunder/rain/hail episode.

The freezing level has remained quite high, and you can see by glancing up-mountain that the minor coating of white (mix of snow, sleet and hail) is just barely below Triund.

What's left of the upper-level disturbance responsible for today's inclemency has now rolled into western Tibet, and already a weak ridge of high pressure is trying to nudge its way into northwest India.  A shallow cooler air mass is in place, however, and will give us a colder night than we've experienced since Christmas.  This shot of cooler air isn't going to last very long, it seems, as milder air will be flowing back northward as early as tomorrow (Sat), and especially on Sunday and Monday.  A ripple of energy aloft will move through on Tuesday and Wednesday, putting a stop to the warming trend, with another risk of a period or two of mainly light showers toward the end of next week.

It was nice to get a little weather excitement today, but it's still truly amateur hour as far as normal January conditions are concerned...  Check out THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK tab for forecast specifics.