Monday, March 20, 2017

temps approaching normal... (pm.20.mar.17)>

Monday's stats:

Low temp: 49.8F (9.9C)
High temp: 64.4F (18.0C)
Precipitation: none

The vernal equinox occurred at 3:58pm IST today, and that's the moment when the direct rays of the sun crossed the equator, heading into the northern hemisphere for the next six months of the year.  We call it the official first day of spring, meteorologically, and the weather here in our little corner of the world cooperated nicely.  It was about 24ºF/13ºC WARMER today than it was just nine days ago, on the 11th of March, when we had snow showers on and off all day.  Quite a dramatic and welcome change.  Apart from occasional thin, high clouds, and just some feeble cumulus development over the mountains this afternoon, it's been a mostly sunny Monday.

But a view to the west and a check of satellite pics shows a lot of high cloudiness heading in our direction, which we are going to have to contend with as the rest of this week unfolds.  The mildest/warmest air mass of the season is still on its way in, but as we've been discussing, the cloudiness will likely prevent us from maximizing the ground-truth warming potential during the next two or three days.  Still, it will be much milder than it was just last week, and closer to normal for the latter part of March.

A few weak disturbances smashing into this new ridge of high pressure will also introduce the next risk of some isolated to scattered shower/thunder development... as early as Wednesday evening, but a bit more likely on Thursday into Thursday night.  After that, things should stabilize again, with further warming on the way over the weekend into early next week.