Wednesday, July 30, 2014

rain tally ticking... (pm.30.jul.14)>

Wednesday's stats:

Low temp: 64.2F (17.9C)
High temp: 70.0F (21.1C)
Rainfall since midnight: 1.02" (2.6cm) -- as of 4:00pm

Our sky has been extremely changeable today, but at this stage of the evening it's mostly cloudy, with some breaks here and there allowing some patches of blue and glimmers of sun at times.  We did have some healthy rain showers today... most of it concentrated between about noon and 4:00pm, but the very heaviest occurred during the 2 to 3 o'clock hour this afternoon.  However, there were also some nice, though relatively brief periods of sunshine from the morning into the early afternoon.

July will be gone soon, but as August arrives, we'll find ourselves in the same situation we've been in for a few weeks now.  We're just now moving into the heart of the monsoon season, so we really can't expect anything more than very brief and temporary relief from the entrenched moisture that is the main characteristic of this time of year.  I'm hopeful about at least some peeks of sunshine as we head through the coming five to seven days, but there shouldn't be a really significant intrusion of drier air that would allow us to enjoy long-lasting lower humidity levels.  In fact, those periods of sun only serve to heat up the lower layers of the atmosphere and destabilize the air mass enough to stir up more rain/thunder showers.

I'm not seeing a pattern favorable for long-lasting rains, but it's likely that we'll receive a period or two of healthy downpours almost every day as we press through the first week of August.

More specific weather info, including average and actual rainfall amounts for our area, can be found on tabs above.