Wednesday, January 21, 2015

it begins... (pm.21.jan.15)>

Wednesday's stats:

Low temp: 39.6F (4.2C)
High temp: 49.8F (9.9C)
Precipitation: 0.42" (1.1cm)  *updated @ 7:45pm

Steady rain is falling this evening, at the end of a day which has been going steadily downhill, weather wise.  Clouds have been thickening up since the early morning hours, and we had our first light sprinkles of rain (and even a few flakes of snow) by about 2:30pm.  Temperatures were a few degrees cooler than we've seen recently - but it seemed A LOT cooler, due to the lack of sunshine.

The biggest precipitation event of this winter season is just now getting underway, and if the computer model data has any handle at all on this situation, we could end up with at least 2" (5cm) of rain and melted snow by noon on Friday.  The upper-level circulation which is the dynamic machine of this weather system is just moving into west-central Pakistan this evening, and is expected to drift in our direction during the coming 36 hours.  Plenty of moisture is being drawn in already, and with southwesterly winds in the upper-levels driving it right up against the mountains, periods of moderate to heavy rain/snow will be likely in our general area.

Subtleties of temperature profiles in the mid-levels of the atmosphere are well out of the range of computer models' resolution... but the data is showing temperatures remaining a bit too warm for much snow accumulation in McLeod itself.  There have been plenty of times in the past when I've seen the ground truth contrast sharply with what that computer model data tells us, so we're going to have to be on guard and prepared for the potential of  rain mixing with and changing to snow somewhere very close to us before this is all over.  For elevations above, however, there is little doubt that a very heavy dumping of snow is on the way...