Saturday, April 22, 2017

the heat breaks... (pm.22.apr.17)>

Saturday's stats:

Low temp: 58.6F (14.8C)
High temp: 78.3F (25.7C)
Rainfall: 0.16" (4mm)

Today our extended spell of unseasonably warm weather broke -- with both high and low temps the coolest since about ten days ago.  And, with a few periods of light rain showers, we had the first measurable rainfall in just over two weeks.  Things started out very rocky early this morning, with thundershowers and extremely strong wind gusts during the wee hours -- that's when we received the vast majority of the day's rainfall total (as of 6:30pm).  There were other brief showers during the early afternoon, and again late afternoon, with clouds only giving way to a small amount of sunshine a few times in the midst of all that.

A rather deep area of low pressure aloft is being carved out to our west, from extreme eastern Iran into Afghanistan this evening; and this is going to be our main weather feature during the next three or four days.  It's bringing together a few different ingredients, including some significantly colder air in the upper-levels of the atmosphere, a moderate amount of moisture, and a fairly impressive amount of dynamic energy.  With leftover warmer air in the surface layers, this will keep us in a moderately unstable situation all the way through Tuesday, with a good chance of a few more periods and waves of showers and thunderstorms.  There should be significant breaks in the action in between spells of showers/thunder, but we need to be on notice for rapidly changing conditions... both day and night.

Temperatures will average out much cooler into the middle of next week, after our recent long streak of mid to late May warmth.  But this time of year, 'much cooler' simply means that we will be closer to normal for the end of April, which is actually a very pleasant zone to be in.