Updated 845am CDT Thursday / 13 June 2013
A Mostly Dry and Stable Weather Pattern for the Next Seven Days ….
On this Thursday morning…. surface high pressure is over the southwest North Atlantic Ocean with low pressure over southeastern Colorado southwestward into New Mexico. A weakening southward moving cold front extends from southern Illinois to northwestern Arkansas and northern Oklahoma into the low over southeastern Colorado. Given this surface pressure pattern, surface winds are southerly across our area.
In the upper levels of the atmosphere… an upper level low pressure trough.. or line of low pressure.. is located over the northeastern USA with another upper level low pressure area along the west coast. Between the two.. an upper level ridge.. or line.. of upper level high pressure is over northern Mexico and central and northern Texas and, in general, over the southern plains. As a result of this upper air pattern, winds over south central Texas and the Austin metro area about 18,000 feet above the ground are southeasterly 20 to 30 mph.
A weak upper level low pressure area.. moving westward through northeastern Mexico and the Rio Grande.. may, once again today, result today in isolated few rain showers and thunderstorms.
Overall, though, it looks dry and summer like through the remainder of the week and next weekend as the atmosphere continues quite stable with the upper level high pressure area over the southern plains acting like a “lid” on the atmosphere. Even so, especially with what we’ve seen the last few days, we could see very isolated afternoon rain showers and thunderstorms, as mentioned above, in areas to our south and southwest. Temperatures will be at or above seasonal levels over the next seven days with no rain mentioned in the forecast after the very slim chances today.
The tropics also remain fairly quiet for now with no development expected over the Atlantic Ocean basin.. including the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.. over the next few days.
Have a good Thursday night and Friday…
Meteorologist Troy Kimmel
Contact me:
tkimmel@austin.utexas.edu
http://www.facebook.com/troykimmel