Tuesday, January 20, 2015

system on approach... (pm.20.jan.15)>

Tuesday's stats:

Low temp: 43.5F (6.4C)
High temp: 53.0F (11.7C)
Precipitation: none

The crystal clear air that we've been enjoying the last few days is obviously on its way out.  We've seen the expected increase in high clouds throughout the day today, with some lower clouds developing along the mountains as well.  There was enough sun, however, to give us another very comfortable high temperature for the latter half of January.

The arrival of those clouds today is the very first hint of the storm system which continues to approach northern India from the west.  The center of circulation has now shifted into extreme southern Afghanistan, and will lift east-northeastward during the next couple of days.  The anticipated surge of moisture from the Arabian Sea is already beginning to occur, which will provide fuel for rather widespread precipitation development across Himachal Pradesh, starting tomorrow (Wed).

There's still a degree of disagreement among the computer model data as to the onset of rain and snow in our immediate area -- but it looks like it could occur sometime between about mid-day tomorrow and 8-9pm tomorrow evening.  The best chances of a few periods of moderate to heavy precipitation will continue through Thursday, then start to diminish on Friday morning.  It's interesting that here in McLeod we always seem to be in a precarious position with regard to the rain/snow line... and we're going to have to wait until the action gets going to be able to have a clue which side of it we end up on.