Sunday, March 15, 2015

the rain arrives... (am.15.mar.15)>

It's totally cloudy at sunrise on this Sunday morning, and we have light rain in progress.  We had a couple of rounds of showers overnight, accompanied by quite a lot of thunder and lightning, and even a bit of brief hail here at my location in the upper part of town.  I think I heard the hail around 3:30am or so.  The rain gauge shows only 0.21" (5mm) so far -- but this is just the beginning.  I've recorded an overnight low of 46.0F (7.8C).

This latest storm system that we've been waiting for is now spinning over central Pakistan, just west of the central Rajasthan border.  It's finally looking like a more organized system, as it draws lots of moisture northward ahead of the main circulation center, and colder air starts to sink southward.  If you've been following along on the blog, you know what a slow mover this thing has been, and that means now that it is finally with us, it's going to be slow to depart.  We should be seeing waves of rain showers and a few thunderstorms all the way into Tuesday -- with the best potential for some heavier rainfall amounts still looking most likely between tonight and very late Monday night.  I'll be surprised if we don't end up with 1.5-2.0" (4-5cm) before it's all over.

Already we're in the process of saying goodbye to the milder temps we've enjoyed the last several days, and it's going to be much cooler than normal for mid-March until we can get this system to move off to our east.  That will happen gradually on Tuesday, with a much better pattern shaping up for the later half of the week.  In fact, I am loving the temperature profiles being hinted at by the models by Friday and Saturday.  March is always a major month of transition... and this is indeed what will be happening.

THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK on the tab above has details.