Sunday, March 8, 2015

a churning atmosphere... (am.08.mar.15)>

There are both patches of clouds and patches of blue sky out there at sunrise on this Sunday morning, after a bumpy and noisy night.  We had a few waves of thunderstorms move across the area, all of which were relatively brief, but which stirred up some strong wind gusts and dropped some small hail as well.  My rain gauge shows just 0.18" (5mm) of rain since about 8:45pm, giving a total of 0.32" (8mm) since the first showers materialized  earlier last evening.  My low temp here in the upper part of town has been 39.9F (4.4C), but it's now closer to 45F (7C) as I write.

A compact but intense upper-level circulation center is located right along the Afghanistan border with Pakistan early this morning, and will move slowly eastward during the next 24-36 hours.  This system probably won't be able to dump nearly as much precipitation as the storm system early last week, but computer models are still projecting that we could get another 3-4cm (1.2-1.6") of rain by tomorrow afternoon.  The rainfall should be more of an occasional/showery nature, as opposed to long-lasting and steady -- so there are likely to be some extended breaks between wet periods.  In fact, I don't know how long it will last, but it is really nice to see the sun trying to at least present itself in the midst of the clouds.  More thunderstorms with gusty winds and hail are also likely as this system makes its way across north India.

We should be pretty much done with this by Monday evening, with significant improvement expected -- in the form of dry and milder weather -- by Tuesday into Wednesday and possibly Thursday.  A bold warm-up is being hinted at by the models, but that will depend on cloud issues and scattered shower potential as we head into the latter part of the week.

Details on THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK tab above.