Thursday, March 12, 2015

mild, but not warm... (pm.12.mar.15)>

Thursday's stats:

Low temp: 52.3F (11.3C)
High temp: 61.8F (16.6C)
Precipitation: none

We've got another nice March evening in progress, with only some scattered high cloudiness across the area at sunset.  Those high clouds were more prevalent today than yesterday, but they were thin enough and scattered enough at times to allow a good amount of dim sunshine through -- boosting the high temp at my location in the upper part of town just slightly above yesterday's.  But we're still running a few degrees (F) below normal.

The upper-level flow which pretty much drives major weather systems is sluggish right now, and will remain so for the next several days.  That means that a storm system now organizing over eastern Iran into Afghanistan into southern Pakistan is going to be slow to get its act together, and also slow to move into northwest India.  We've already seen some extensive areas of mainly high clouds out ahead of this system, but we will have to wait another 24-36 hours before there is much of a chance of any precipitation breaking out.  There's a moderate degree of disagreement among the computer models, but an average of the various solutions would bring in a few light showers by tomorrow (Fri) night, and then off-and-on periods of rain and thunder between Saturday and Monday.  There could even be some scattered showers lingering into Tuesday, with rain chances dropping way down after that.

Cooler temperatures will return along with the rain... but it's still not looking as unseasonably cold as it was during the last storm system earlier this week.  Our February and March total rainfall is way above the norm, so it wouldn't be such a huge disappointment if we somehow missed out on this one.  But that looks doubtful.

THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK and other information can be found on tabs above.