Monday, January 27, 2014

tranquility... (pm.27.jan.14)>

Monday's stats:

Low temp: 44.2F (6.8C)
High temp: 55.0F (12.8C)
Precipitation: none

There are a few traces of leftover cumulus clouds along the Dhauladhars as sunset approaches this evening, otherwise we have mostly clear skies.  It has been a stellar late January day, with lots of sunshine -- apart from that modest build-up of mountain cumulus during the afternoon hours.  The high temp was right on target, and it certainly felt nice, I'm sure we'd all agree.

The upper-air pattern remains basically benign, with a weak ridge of high pressure in control, and only a couple of very weak disturbances wiggling and rippling along between the Middle East and the western Himalayan region.  The average moisture content of this atmosphere is way below what would be necessary to fuel any significant precipitation, even if there was a chance that one of these disturbances might strengthen a bit.  Basically, that means we can expect several more days of this very pleasant, dry and quiet weather as we finish out the month.  It looks like there will be very little chance to come up with any accumulating snow before January bows out -- making it the least snowy since 2010 or before.  I need to do some digging through my records to verify.

Temperatures will be the most interesting thing to keep an eye on during the rest of this week, as we remain above normal and perhaps even push that magical 60F (15.6C) mark, though I think that might be stretching it a bit.

This evening's computer model data continues to look promising for some kind of storm system developing in our neighborhood as early as Sunday, and lasting into the middle of next week.  A seriously cold air mass is being forecast to approach from the northwest in conjunction with increasing moisture from the south.  It's a long long long way off -- but fun to watch nonetheless.

The CURRENT FORECAST specs can be found on the tab above.