Thursday, April 14, 2016

summer preview... (pm.14.apr.16)>

Thursday's stats:

Low temp: 59.5F (15.3C)
High temp: 78.8F (26.0C)
Rainfall: none

A few streaks of high thin cirrus clouds are evident this evening, mainly in the western sky, but it would be hard not to say that it's very nice and pleasant at the moment.  We're putting a close on the warmest day of the season and the year, with the high temp running a few degrees (ºF) above normal for the middle of April.  No complaints.  The sunshine was in our favor again today, with only some random patches of high clouds and really not much cumulus development over the mountains, at least compared to what we saw yesterday.

The anticipated ridge of high pressure has indeed been building across most of the Indian sub-continent during the past 12 hours or so, and will continue to do so during the coming 48 hours.  That means the main branch of the upper-level jet stream flow is shifting further northward, allowing the most pronounced bubble of summertime air of this new season to strengthen and expand into our area.  As I mentioned yesterday, there are concerns about high cloud development, though, with some of that already evident on satellite pics not far to our west.  Yes, this is an unseasonably warm air mass, but if the sun gets dimmed by extensive high clouds tomorrow into Saturday, temps will be hard pressed to rise much further.  If there IS a good amount of sun, we could easily be talking about 80ºF/27ºC (or higher) as the weekend rolls in.  It's a couple of weeks early for that kind of warmth, but at least we're not going to be dealing with 110ºF (43ºC) temps that are expected in Delhi.

Looking down the road, the risk of an isolated shower and/or thunderstorm will come back into the forecast by Saturday afternoon, with rain chances increasing significantly by Sunday evening into Monday morning.  This will be the start of yet another period of instability that could hang with us for much of next week.

THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK (above) has all the forecast details.