Tuesday, February 26, 2013

yet another storm... (am.26.feb.13)>

It's mostly cloudy at sunrise this morning.  I've recorded an overnight low of 49.1F (9.5C), which is the mildest in my books since the early morning of the 23rd of December.  We're not going to get the nice sunshine today that we were able to enjoy yesterday during the morning and early afternoon hours, but a very mild air mass is already in place, and that could allow temperatures to rise slightly above 60F for the second day in a row.

A strong storm system centered over Afghanistan this morning is already well-developed, and edging slowly to the east.  There is a large pool of much colder air in the upper-atmosphere associated with this system, and that's going to make for some major instability across northern India by tonight and Wednesday.  We may see a couple of thundershowers popping up by late today, but the best chance of thunderstorms with potentially heavy rainfall will be on Wednesday into Wednesday evening.  Computer models are showing very impressive rainfall amounts -- on the order of 3-5cm (1.2-2.0") -- which could bring us close to 25cm (10") of rain for our final February total.  We might as well end a very wet month with another round of significant rain!

With much colder air in the upper-levels, there will likely be another heavy dumping of snow above 2500m/8200ft or so, which will give us even more insurance for our springtime water supply.

This storm will exit early Thursday, with a rapid return to pleasant temperatures for the Feb/March transition -- and it's still looking like the weekend will feature very nice early spring-like weather conditions.

I'll post updates at the top of this page if we get any developing action later today.