Thursday, May 18, 2017

comfortable, but unstable... (pm.18.may.17)>

Thursday's stats:

Low temp: 63.0F (17.2C)
High temp: 78.2F (25.7C)
Rainfall: trace

Our evening sky is partly cloudy, and it is pleasantly, comfortably mild as the day comes to an end.  Today featured pretty much equal parts clouds and sunshine, with mountain thundershowers lurking to our north and east from just before noon onwards.  Twice I heard thunder... once just shortly before noon, and the second time right around 2:00pm.  Then, at least at my location, there was a very brief smattering of light rain drops between 3:30 and 3:45pm.  And that was that.  Temperatures continue to run a bit below normal for mid-May, for the third day in a row.

Yes, you've heard it all before -- the upper-level flow remains very unsettled, with all kinds of weak circulations and random pools of cooler air aloft meandering across Himalayan north India.  This pattern/scenario will stay with us over the weekend, and the way it looks, into at least the first few days of next week as well.  That means we'll have to continue to be prepared for sudden shower/thunder development, at least on a random basis around our general area... with a better chance of some significant rainfall sometime during the period between late Saturday night and Monday evening.  I hate to try to nail that down, but at least according to the latest model data, our shower/thunder chances should peak during that time.

Extended range models have been hinting the last few days at a significant turn to more stable and warmer weather by the latter part of next week -- but that is still very far away, and we'll just have to wait and watch how things evolve.