Thursday, January 22, 2015

winter wetness... (am.22.jan.15)>

*Update @ 7:35am... Just as I got this posted, there has been some sleet falling here at my house.  So... with some colder air moving in aloft, that rain/ice/snow situation is a bit precarious.

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It's raining early this morning, and the temperature at my location on Tushita Road just below the mountaineering center is 40.6F (4.8C).  I just checked the rain gauge, and there is 0.98" (2.5cm) in there since the precipitation began yesterday afternoon.  A little over half of that has occurred in the last 12 hours or so.  From what I could tell, periods of rain happened off and on all night long, with some thunder and lightning thrown into the mix as well.

The center of our upper-level storm system is located over northwest Pakistan this morning -- and the circulation itself is beginning to shear apart as it encounters the high Himalayan ranges.  That doesn't really make much difference anymore, though, since there has already been a massive amount of moisture drawn into the guts of this system, as a southwesterly mid-level flow keeps pushing it up against the mountains where it gets lifted and condensed into widespread precipitation.

Temperatures are even a bit warmer than expected, so at least in the near term, it's going to take a lot of cooling to get this rain to turn to snow here at our elevation.  That can't be ruled out later today and especially overnight into early Friday... so I guess we'll just have to keep an eye on the progress of that snow line during the coming 24 hours or so.

Improvement should occur gradually tomorrow, but most of the models keep a good chance of some pockets of rain/snow showers in the forecast for most of the day.  Right now the weekend is looking dry, but another chance of rain and/or snow enters the forecast on Monday (Republic Day).

Forecast specs can be found on THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK tab above.