Monday, March 9, 2015

feels like early feb... (am.09.mar.15)>

Partial clearing has occurred during the past hour or two, leaving us with partly cloudy skies at sunrise this Monday morning.  It was indeed a stormy night, with lots of thunder and lightning, small hail and sleet, and temperatures feeling more like early February than early March.  I recorded a low temp of 35.2F (1.8C) -- and you can see this morning that the snow line is not very far above McLeod proper.  In fact, there are traces of leftover sleet and hail on the ground and the rooftops here in the upper part of town.  My rain gauge shows an additional 0.66" (1.7cm) of precipitation since 9:50pm, giving a total of 1.48" (3.8cm) from this storm system which first began arriving on Saturday evening.

This morning's satellite pics show a compact center of upper-level circulation just barely to the west of Jammu, with a large shield of cloudiness to the north and east of it.  We will remain in a precarious position today -- with the risk remaining of some re-development of scattered showers and thundershowers.  Very cold air in the mid- and upper-levels of the atmosphere will mean a continuing potential for small hail and sleet, if indeed we see any more thundershower development today.  On the other hand, this system will be weakening and lifting northeast more rapidly by this afternoon and evening, and that should end our precipitation chances by dark, if not earlier.

It's not a super-great scenario we're looking at for the rest of this week -- but should at least be an improvement over what we've had to endure recently.  A ridge of high pressure will build across northwest India starting tomorrow, kicking off a nice warming trend, and keeping rain chances rather small... at least through Thursday.  There looks to be a disorganized pattern trying to evolve toward the weekend, which means we have to be aware of another chance of at least scattered showers and thundershowers by Friday.

Check THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK for details.