Thursday, May 25, 2017

weekend warming... (pm.25.may.17)>

Thursday's stats:

Low temp: 64.2F (17.9C)
High temp: 83.4F (28.6C)
Rainfall: 0.12" (3mm)

It's been a weird day, temperature-wise, with the low occurring around 2:30pm during our thundershower, and the high temp just an hour before that -- and this evening as we get closer to sunset, the temperature has rebounded to within 2ºF/1ºC of the day's high.  We had full sunshine until the late morning when the customary mountain cloud development began, and then we were back to mostly sunny skies by about 3:30pm after our rather brief period of thundershowers.  As you can see from the stats above, I only received a small amount of rain at my location in the upper part of town.

Today's high was exactly the same as yesterday's, thanks to that blast of thundershowers which occurred right at the time of maximum heating, keeping temps at least 2-3ºF/1-2ºC cooler than they would have been.  But we've still got some impressive warming on the way during the coming three days, as a full-on summertime air mass continues to build across northwest India.  Of course our atmosphere refuses to stabilize completely, so the almost daily thundershower risk along the mountains is hard to remove from the forecast -- but really, the bigger news will be the borderline HOT temps expected over the weekend.  In fact, it still looks like we could be challenging the highest temps of the season and the year.

A large batch of moisture will creep in from the southeast by Monday and Tuesday, as slightly cooler air aloft seeps in... and that will bring in the risk of more significant rainfall for a few days next week.  Thereafter, another major warming trend is being hinted at by extended range models as the first week of June unfolds...