COMMENTARY

Nobody needs to be reminded what the last 10 months have been like. Regardless of your point of view and set of beliefs on the many issues that impact us daily, we all have one paramount commonality. We are all human beings, capable of understanding and compassion, and we should exercise that to the best of our ability every day, for every day is a gift and an opportunity for you to make what you can out of. I realize for some, for many in fact, there are things out of our control – health and other issues, life circumstances, etc. This is where I sincerely hope we have at least a friend and/or loved one we can count on, who will be there for us, knowing we’d be there for them if and when needed. Nobody is going to magically fix a health issue, something going wrong in somebody’s life, or make disease disappear. If only we could… What we can do is only the best we can do: support one another, make choices, some of which will be mistakes. Learn from the mistakes, grow with the successes, share what is good with those around you, and if we all do the same, we’d be spreading something that everybody would benefit from. It’s time to put aside differences, turn our backs on hatred, and try to be thankful for what we have. It’s not always an easy thing to do, but we have to try. Wherever you find yourselves today, I hope you have the happiest Thanksgiving that you can possibly have. And I thank all of you for supporting this blog, which is nearing its tenth anniversary. Where does the time go? Take care, friends. Be safe. Peace.

DAYS 1-5 (NOVEMBER 26-30)

Discussion…

Shifting gears now, onto the weather, and an active pattern sends yet another storm system into our region for the holiday. The down-side is that it makes local travel and “outdoor dining” for the holiday much less pleasant, and the up-side is that we get another good dose of rain to contribute to reducing our long-term precipitation deficit. There’s enough instability in the atmosphere that as an occluding frontal system passes through, we’ll have rounds of showers, some heavy, that may include thunder. In 2017 we had thundersnow on Christmas and we may have thunder for Thanksgiving today. All that’s left is a good old fashioned Halloween thunderstorm, right? Maybe next year… 😉 Today, our greatest chance of thunder will be south of Boston as that area is in the warmest and most unstable air. As was suspected, the warm air has had trouble pushing too far to the north, with the boundary having even slipped back to the south again late yesterday. This “cold air damming” set-up is rather common around here, especially in the colder season from later autumn through mid spring, and is something that a lot of computer guidance will have trouble with, often under-predicting its influence. Thankfully, the surface temperatures on the cold side of the boundary over interior northern MA and southern NH sit above freezing, so we’re not seeing any icing issues, just cold, raw, wet weather. Closer to the coast of MA down through RI we’ve seen the milder air move in with a little more ease, and temperatures as of 8 a.m. range from the upper 40s to middle 50s. We won’t see too much more rise in these areas, perhaps a few upper 50s to near 60 degree readings over parts of southeastern MA and RI to go along with the showers and downpours. The main front pushes through the region this evening and the wet weather will move out, but initially, winds will be fairly light and there may be some areas of fog to contend with, so keep that in mind if you have evening or nighttime travel plans, as visibility may be reduced. Some improvement takes place tomorrow, but it may be very tough to break up all the cloudiness that remains, as we don’t have a really strong push of westerly wind to help. While an upper disturbance coming by may trigger a quick passing shower, most areas will remain dry during the day, despite the cloudiness, and the air will be fairly mild, so while the ground may remain damp, otherwise it won’t be too bad out there is you plan to get outside to walk or put up Christmas lights / decorations. If you wait for Saturday and Sunday to do these things, you’ll be in luck too. Other than a weak cold front moving through from west to east with some clouds and a very remote chance of a quick shower Saturday, it won’t be a bad day. Sunday ends up a bit cooler but will feature more sunshine. Don’t get used to that though. Things change quickly on Monday as the next storm system takes shape and heads this way. The low track on this one will be west of New England, and by later Monday we’ll find ourselves in a pretty significant southerly air flow and staring at a band of moderate to heavy rainfall. While it’s still a handful of days away, the initial thought on this is that it will be a late day and nighttime “main event” of rain, wind, and possible thunder – something to monitor and tweak as we get closer to it. But it looks like November may borrow the March lion for its exit.

Details…

TODAY (THANKSGIVING): Cloudy. Numerous to widespread rain showers, including the chance of thunderstorms favoring the South Coast region. Highs 45-52 interior northern MA and southern NH, 53-60 elsewhere. Wind E under 10 MPH interior northern MA and southern NH, SE to S 5-15 MPH elsewhere.

TONIGHT: Cloudy. Scattered showers and a chance of a thunderstorm in the evening. Spotty drizzle and areas of fog. Lows 41-48. Wind variable under 10 MPH.

FRIDAY: Mostly cloudy to partly sunny. Chance of a passing rain shower. Highs 50-57. Wind variable under 10 MPH becoming W up to 10 MPH.

FRIDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy. Lows 37-44. Wind W up to 10 MPH.

SATURDAY: Partly cloudy morning and midday with a slight chance of a brief rain shower, then mostly sunny. Highs 48-55. Wind W around 10 MPH shifting to NW.

SATURDAY NIGHT: Clear. Lows 31-38. Wind NW up to 10 MPH.

SUNDAY: Mostly sunny. Highs 45-52. Wind W 5-15 MPH.

SUNDAY NIGHT: Increasing high clouds. Lows 40-47. Wind variable up to 10 MPH.

MONDAY: Thickening clouds. Numerous rain showers arrive west to east by late-day or night. Highs 53-60. Wind SE to S increasing to 10-20 MPH.

DAYS 6-10 (DECEMBER 1-5)

As December gets underway, we’ll be dealing with a more amplified pattern that has a trough in the interior eastern US initially, putting our area in a southwesterly air flow aloft. The storm that approaches us on Monday will likely have a broad center across the Great Lakes region with us in mild air with a rain shower threat on December 1, although much of that day may end up rain-free. Some cooler air will get in here in modified form behind this system as it lifts away into eastern Canada and shifts the wind to more westerly December 2-3. We’ll have to watch for another storm threat December 4 and/or 5, with timing uncertain. Odds would favor our area being on the milder side of that system as well, as the pattern would probably still favor a low track over the interior eastern US, but given model divergence and inconsistency, we’ll be having to do a lot of defining of possibility and detail with this system as that time draws closer.

DAYS 11-15 (DECEMBER 6-10)

Continued hints of an evolving blocking pattern with additional chances of unsettled weather here, but with a trend toward a little colder weather as well, we’ll have to start thinking about the possibility of some wintry weather. Keep in mind, this is just a rough outlook on a pattern that may evolve more slowly, and that the forecast itself as low confidence based on the reasons previously discussed. So think of this as a “very rough draft outlook” if you will. 🙂