Thursday, May 19, 2016

going above 90ºF... (pm.19.may.16)>

*Update @ 8:17pm... Our brief shower this evening between 7:00 and 7:30pm didn't give us very much rain, but it did cool things off.  The new low temp (see below) during that shower erased the previous low for the day, which had been the warmest low/min temp since June 2014.  Showers have ended... temps rising again, even at this late hour.
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Thursday's stats:

Low temp: 65.8F (18.8C) -- updated @ 8:15pm
High temp: 90.4F (32.4C)
Rainfall: 0.10" (3mm) --updated at 8:15pm

According to my records, today has been the warmest day at my location in the upper part of McLeod Ganj since June of 2014... both the high and low temp were warmer than I recorded during the entire summer season last year (2015).  Surprisingly, I don't think it's felt all that uncomfortable though, due to the fact that our humidity levels remain quite low.  We have gone up to around 25-28% late this afternoon, but that's still not bad at all.  Although there has been more cloud development along the mountains today, and also more haze in the air, we've still managed to come up with a lot of sunshine.  We'll call it partly cloudy and hazy this evening as dusk starts to set in.

It's been apparent that our air mass is becoming a bit more unstable this afternoon and evening, with slightly cooler air arriving in the higher levels of the atmosphere, and a slight increase in moisture here at the surface.  That has led to more convective development over the mountains, including some isolated very weak thundershower action from Jammu & Kashmir through Himachal into Uttarakhand and Nepal.  This marginal instability will remain with us into Friday, but then it looks like things will stabilize again over the weekend, with only a small chance of some isolated or random shower/thunder development, mainly in the vicinity of the mountains.  A more impressive upper-level system is projected to swing into northern India late Monday through Tuesday, bringing us a better chance of some significant shower and thunderstorm activity.

Temperatures are obviously in full-swing summer mode... and unless we end up getting some significant cloud development, they should stay there through Sunday or Monday.  Overall, we should see a general cooling trend by the middle of next week, with that better chance of some showers.

Lots of other info can be found on tabs across the top of the page, including MAY DAILY STATS and THE 7-DAY OUTLOOK...