Monday, August 15, 2016

holiday swings and extremes... (pm.15.aug.16)>

Monday's stats:

Low temp: 64.0F (17.8C)
High temp: 72.5F (22.5C)
Rainfall: 1.27" (3.2cm) --updated @ 7:55pm

Light to moderate rain showers are in progress this evening, with clouds, fog, and a few attempts by the setting sun to peek through all the mess.  The last few days have featured a lot of variability, weatherwise, but today featured the most extreme fluctuations yet, with several quick and dramatic swings between bright sunshine and moderate to heavy rain showers.  In fact, I observed a couple of occasions of both sun and showers happening simultaneously.  Today's heaviest rain occurred between about 1:20 and 2:30pm, and again for a short period between 5:30 and 6:00pm.  Humidity was down to 75% during mid-morning, but has again jumped up above 90% late this afternoon and evening.

After just looking through all the data, models, charts, satellite pics, etc., i find myself with very little to say that hasn't been said recently.  The main issue is that we remain right on the northwestern fringes of the deepest and richest tropical moisture, with some pockets of drier air to the northwest still trying to gain some territory.  But as we've seen during the last 3-4 days, the greater frequency of sunny episodes has been equalled by the very strong convective development here along the mountain slopes by mid-day into the PM hours.  Unless the wind trajectories across the various layers of the atmosphere shift appreciably, this general pattern is not going to change much this week.

So we've had a little of everything for the throngs of people here in McLeod enjoying their Indian Independence Day extended holiday weekend -- and considering we're still in the middle of the monsoon season, it certainly could have been a lot worse...

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