Tuesday, March 18, 2014

not totally stable... (pm.18.mar.14)>

*MARCH RAINFALL is now 5.34" (13.6cm).  The average for all of March is 3.9" (9.9cm).  Total rainfall since the 3rd of February is 14.8" (37.6cm)!  Yes, it has been wet the last 6+ weeks.!

*Update @ 9:04pm... There are some very light rain showers at my house, with partly cloudy skies.  Evidence that this air mass is not really very stable.  Still expecting clearing to occur later tonight.

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Tuesday's stats:

Low temp: 42.4F (5.8C)
High temp: 58.8F (14.9C)
Rainfall since 7am: 0.41" (1.0cm)
Storm total rainfall: 1.01" (2.6cm)

There has been an ominous build-up of clouds over the mountains this evening which has looked like it might develop into more thundershowers -- but now as sunset approaches, it seems to be fizzling out.  The nastiest weather of the day was confined to the early morning hours, with another secondary period of rain showers, thunder and hail around the noon hour.  Otherwise, we managed to come up with much more sunshine than expected, with other scattered thundershowers remaining mainly in the mountains to our north and east.  Temperatures varied widely -- depending on the presence of rain or sun.

What's left of our latest upper-level disturbance is over Ladakh this evening, weakening as it pushes through the high Himalayas into western Tibet.  Unlike the system which moved through this time last week, there is no strong ridge of high pressure building in in its wake -- and that means we're going to have to deal with some lingering instability during the coming several days at least.  The term 'instability' basically means that there will be disparity between warming at the surface versus lingering much colder air in the upper-levels.  This leads to the potential for shower and or thundershower development during the afternoon over the mountains, which could possibly sneak down into McLeod at some point.  There should still be a good amount of sun during the remainder of this week -- just keep in mind the potential for an afternoon/evening episode of thunder.

Although temperatures are expected to be much milder than they were just a week to ten days ago, it's still going to be a few degrees cooler than normal for the latter half of March.  In fact, it probably won't get as warm as it was on Sunday and Monday during at least the next week or so.  AND -- the chance of rain will be on the increase again over the weekend, I'm sorry to report.

CURRENT FORECAST details can be found on the tab above.