Thursday, October 3, 2013

soggy october so far... (pm.03.oct.13)>

Thursday's stats:

Low temp: 59.7F (15.4C)
High temp: 66.2F (19.0C)
Rainfall: 0.32" (8mm)

This evening there are patches of clouds and fog drifting around, which are keeping conditions quite variable.  There was a great view of the sunset just a few minutes ago, but then the fog drifted in again, cutting visibility way down.  It has been that kind of a day, with numerous shifts between sun, clouds and some fog, with some random sprinkles and rumbles of thunder this morning which led to a period of mainly light to moderate rain between about 2:00 and 3:30pm.  My total for the day in the upper part of town pushes us above 2" (5cm) for October, which is already just two-thirds of an inch short of the normal amount for the entire month.

I don't think I've seen a humidity reading below 60% in at least a week, which is a succinct indicator of what kind of atmosphere we've been dealing with.  A large and stagnant pool of moisture remains sprawled across almost all of northern India, and it only takes a bit of warming from the sun and weak disturbances drifting through aloft to produce widespread cloudiness, patchy fog, and scattered showers and thundershowers -- especially here along the front slopes of the mountains.  As I've mentioned before, the upper-air pattern looks much more like early September than early October, and that means the jet stream is keeping drier continental Asian air well to our north.

In spite of all that, suddenly, computer model data today is showing a slightly more aggressive reduction in the moisture content of the air mass over northwest India starting on Saturday, and continuing into early next week.  I need to see if this trend is consistent as new data comes out during the next 24-36 hours or so before I am tempted to get excited.  But right now it looks like we could be seeing some marginal improvement in overall conditions around the corner -- in the form of decreasing rain chances and slightly lower average humidity.  Check back for updates.

CURRENT FORECAST details for the next 5 days -- on the tab above.