Saturday, April 9, 2016

still unstable and unsettled... (pm.09.apr.16)>

Saturday's stats:

Low temp: 52.7F (11.5C)
High temp: 66.0F (18.9C)
Rainfall: 0.08" (2mm)

It's partly cloudy this evening... a relatively bright finish to a generally dismal day.  There were some attempts at a few sunny breaks this morning, but the clouds were definitely in control for the vast majority of the day, preventing our temperatures from making much progress at all.  There have also been a couple of periods of light rain showers -- the first of which occurred during the 4 o'clock hour of the pre-dawn, and the second of which occurred briefly right around 3:30pm.  Today has been the fifth day this month of April with measurable rainfall in my gauge.  The total has been only 0.86" (2.2cm), but that's an above normal amount for the first nine days of April.

This current weather pattern is an extremely variable one, an unsettled one, and an unstable one... obviously.  Very warm summertime air is lurking on the plains just to our south, while weak upper-level disturbances containing little pools of much colder air aloft continue to ripple their way across the western Himalayas.  This has provided us with numerous fluctuations between nice sunshine and extensive cloudiness during the past several days, along with quite a few brief periods of mainly light showers and occasional thunder.  It's hard to know what to expect from one hour to the next.  This pattern will remain with us through Monday, with more of the same fluctuations -- but there are some subtle signs of increasing stability starting on Tuesday.

Temperatures are obviously very dependent on sunshine.  As we've seen this last week, 70-72ºF (21-22ºC) is quite gettable when the sun holds on for at least half the day, but if we get unlucky to be blanketed by clouds for many hours in a row, the chill returns.  I'm kinda bored saying that, and you might be bored reading it as well.