Saturday, May 17, 2014

starting with clouds... (am.17.may.14)>

Clouds have thickened up just in the past hour or so around sunrise -- mainly the mid- and high level variety.  My current temp of 61.0F (16.1C) is also the overnight low, and there has been no rainfall since last report.  The humidity reading is 45%.

The counter-clockwise circulation around a weakening upper-level disturbance over extreme southwestern Afghanistan has forced a batch of cloudiness northeastward into our area, and that's going to rob of us some of our sunshine potential today, at least for a few hours.  Otherwise, it still looks like a building ridge of high pressure across northwest India will prevent that disturbance from ever making much progress in our direction, causing it to weaken further as it lifts off to the northeast.  All week we've been concerned about some widely scattered shower or thundershower action popping up this weekend, but it still appears that we won't see very much of that -- with only relatively brief and light rainfall if it happens at all.  Of course be prepared for a sudden thundershower if you'll be in the mountains away from shelter.

This air mass is a warm one, and will be warming further as we move into the first half of next week.  Any periods of clouds will keep temperatures below their potential, but as soon as the sun breaks out, it won't be long until we see temps climbing fairly close to normal for the season.

CURRENT FORECAST specifics are available on the tab above.