Tuesday, March 4, 2014

back to the gloom... (am.04.mar.14)>

It's cloudy at sunrise on this Tuesday morning -- the third day of Tibetan New Year.  There are a few sprinkles and very light rain showers in the area, but it's not raining at my spot at the moment.  My rain gauge is showing 0.08" (2mm), thanks to a few generally brief periods of light showers which first developed around 9:30pm last night.  The overnight low has been 40.8F (4.9C), and that occurred during the past hour.  Humidity stands at 70%.

As advertised, our recent break in the wet and gloomy weather was indeed very short.  A persistent upper-level low pressure circulation is still located over northern Afghanistan, and will drift slowly toward the northwest corner of Kashmir by tomorrow evening, where it will dissipate.  As weak as this system is, it's still been able to draw some fresh moisture northeastward from the Arabian Sea, while keeping the atmosphere all across the western Himalayan region moderately unstable.  I really don't expect that we'll get a huge amount of rain between now and tomorrow (Wed) evening, but be prepared for occasional rainy periods nonetheless, along with the potential for some thunder at times.  Temperatures, needless to say, will continue in this much-below-normal vein that we've grown very accustomed to.

There seem to be some subtle signs of improvement by Thursday, but quite honestly, we're still going to have a marginally unstable air mass in place across northern India.  It should warm up quite significantly as the weekend progresses -- but that warmth may only serve to destabilize the atmosphere enough to generate some isolated thundershowers.  For that reason, we can't really bank on a totally dry and sunny forecast anytime soon.

CURRENT FORECAST information can be found on the tab above.