Sunday's stats:
Low temp: 43.5F (6.4C)
High temp: 58.8F (14.9C)
Rainfall since 7:00am: 0.15" (4mm)
24 hour rainfall: 0.92" (2.3cm)
Things are looking very nice here at the end of a day which has been full of wild swings between sunshine, clouds and showers/thunder. We've gone through the sun-cloud-rain-sun-cloud-rain cycle a couple of times, but we're back to mostly clear skies as the sun sets on this Easter Sunday. My high temp was the warmest since Wednesday -- but that's not saying much since we are still more than 12ºF/7ºC cooler than average for early April.
Well we have been seeing incremental improvement in our overall weather situation since Friday night when our last major upper-level disturbance pulled out. BUT -- the lingering instability we've been concerned about has indeed kept the sunshine from taking over. Today was a classic example of the effects of that instability, with our frequent and rapid changes between sunshine and clouds/showers. As long as there remains a bit of 'spin', and pools of relatively colder air in the upper-levels of the atmosphere, it's going to be hard for us to transition into a reliably dry and quiet pattern. That discrepancy between a slowly warming air mass at the surface and lingering unseasonably cold air aloft will continue to plague us into Wednesday. That means that in spite of nice periods of sun, we have to be on guard for isolated to widely scattered shower and thundershower development for two or three more days.
Even so, the temperature trend this week will be upward, and when we finally get the sunshine to dominate the majority of the daylight hours (by Thursday?), we should be pushing toward normal/average for the season. The forecast is still not a perfect one, by any means, but it is looking better and better. Details can be found on THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK tab at the top of the page.
Low temp: 43.5F (6.4C)
High temp: 58.8F (14.9C)
Rainfall since 7:00am: 0.15" (4mm)
24 hour rainfall: 0.92" (2.3cm)
Things are looking very nice here at the end of a day which has been full of wild swings between sunshine, clouds and showers/thunder. We've gone through the sun-cloud-rain-sun-cloud-rain cycle a couple of times, but we're back to mostly clear skies as the sun sets on this Easter Sunday. My high temp was the warmest since Wednesday -- but that's not saying much since we are still more than 12ºF/7ºC cooler than average for early April.
Well we have been seeing incremental improvement in our overall weather situation since Friday night when our last major upper-level disturbance pulled out. BUT -- the lingering instability we've been concerned about has indeed kept the sunshine from taking over. Today was a classic example of the effects of that instability, with our frequent and rapid changes between sunshine and clouds/showers. As long as there remains a bit of 'spin', and pools of relatively colder air in the upper-levels of the atmosphere, it's going to be hard for us to transition into a reliably dry and quiet pattern. That discrepancy between a slowly warming air mass at the surface and lingering unseasonably cold air aloft will continue to plague us into Wednesday. That means that in spite of nice periods of sun, we have to be on guard for isolated to widely scattered shower and thundershower development for two or three more days.
Even so, the temperature trend this week will be upward, and when we finally get the sunshine to dominate the majority of the daylight hours (by Thursday?), we should be pushing toward normal/average for the season. The forecast is still not a perfect one, by any means, but it is looking better and better. Details can be found on THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK tab at the top of the page.
