Thursday Forecast

71 Comments

7:14AM

DAYS 1-5 (OCTOBER 10-14)
Our cut off storm will be fighting a large high pressure area to its north and my suspicion about it not being quite as impactful will indeed be the case, not to dismiss the fact there will still be some heavy rain in southeastern areas, where it was most likely, and wind that will be strong enough to take down tree limbs and in some cases some weaker older trees which still carry leaves, and a few coastal flooding issues, though relatively minor. The rainfall comes in waves and is lighter as you go northwest. You can see visual evidence of the dry air fighting this storm if you are in Boston’s NW suburbs looking west and northwest at a strip of clear sky at dawn this morning. Nothing more to add that wasn’t here on the last update other than enough dry air may be involved to save at least part of the Patriots home game tonight from a driving rain, with just a bit of drizzle and passing areas of much lighter rain. It will be breezy and quite cool though, so if you are going to that game, dress accordingly for a gusty breeze and temperatures around 50, definitely not nearly as bad as it can be in the stadium later in the season or during the playoffs! Still looking for a slow pull-away of the storm later Friday after some additional rain, and Saturday, which will still feature a lot of clouds and a threat of a few showers along with continued breezy conditions. But the middle and end of the Columbus Day Weekend will be quite nice with a westerly air flow bringing mostly fair and milder weather but we will have to watch for a disturbance moving through around Sunday night or early Monday with a brief rain shower risk.
Forecast details…
TODAY THROUGH FRIDAY NIGHT: Overcast. Periods of rain, heaviest southeastern MA/RI. Highs 52-59. Lows 45-52. Wind NE 15-35 MPH, stronger gusts especially coastal areas.
SATURDAY: Mostly cloudy to partly sunny. Passing rain showers possible. Highs 56-63. Wind N 10-20 MPH, higher gusts.
SATURDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy. Lows 40-47. Wind NW 5-15 MPH.
SUNDAY: Partly sunny. Highs 57-64. Wind W 5-15 MPH.
SUNDAY NIGHT: Mostly cloudy. Risk of passing rain showers. Lows 50-57. Wind SW 5-15 MPH.
MONDAY: Mostly cloudy with a rain shower risk early, then partly cloudy. Highs 60-67. Wind W 5-15 MPH.

DAYS 6-10 (OCTOBER 15-19)
Generally westerly flow, overall pattern is dry, but trough crossing eastern Canada will parent a low pressure area which will drag a warm front / cold front combo across the region with a wet weather threat about mid period.

DAYS 11-15 (OCTOBER 19-23)
Still a little uncertainty as to the overall pattern heading from mid toward late October. Taking medium range model bias into account going to hold onto the mostly west to east flow with a warm-up peaking at mid period, and mostly dry weather.

71 thoughts on “Thursday Forecast”

    1. You’re welcome and enjoy the rest of your stay in NE before you have to “go west”! Go Bruins!

  7. Thanks I’m glad I can get all of my Debris jobs in Saturday as I have a 20 yd dumpster being dropped off .

  8. Good morning and thank you TK.

    So far on this MEGA storm, at home in JP,m 0.06 inch yesterday and 0.09 so far today (as of 8AM). Big woof.

    Yes, I know there is a band of rain off shore heading in. We’ll see how productive that is.

    https://radblast.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/radar/WUNIDS_map?station=BOX&brand=wui&num=10&delay=15&type=N0R&frame=0&scale=1.000&noclutter=0&showstorms=0&mapx=400&mapy=240&centerx=400&centery=240&transx=0&transy=0&showlabels=1&severe=0&rainsnow=0&lightning=0&smooth=0&rand=26178521&lat=0&lon=0&label=you

    TK had this system’s number all along.

    BTW, I am really pissed at the promos NBC 10 had going last night. BRUTAL
    And Mike Wankum on ch 5 wasn’t a whole lot better on the 11PM broadcast.

  11. I heard on a local FM radio station this morning “several inches of rain expected for Eastern Massachusetts.”

  13. Thank you, TK.

    Aidan puts it well – it’s a run-of-the-mill nor’easter that is mostly focused on the South Coast, CC and the islands.

    I am so glad the Dodgers are eliminated. A `fraudulent’ team, in my view, in the sense that they’re not as good as their record indicated this year, or in recent years, for that matter. A nice man but sub-par manager in Dave Roberts (Roberts can’t think outside the box, and you need to do that to win). Kershaw was a great pitcher. His era of being great ended several years ago. He is now a mediocre hurler against teams with good hitting. In the American League East Kershaw would be lucky to be a number 4 pitcher. His signing may be worse than Sale. I think Sale has more left in the tank than Kershaw. Not much, but still. Then there’s Joe Kelly whose career yo-yo’s constantly. Goes on epic runs and then loses it for lengthy stretches of time. Weird, especially with his 100mph arm. Go Rays this evening! Kevin Cash is the polar opposite of Dave Roberts. He always thinks outside the box, in part because he has to. He’s the ultimate motivator of young talent. A great manager. I so hope they knock off the Astros. And then, it would be the David and Goliath show – Rays v. Yankees. I would love to see the Yankees go down, but the rational side of me knows they won’t.

    1. As a Yankees fan, I am very much routing for the Rays tonight. With the Astros and Dodgers eliminated, it would certainly make the Yankees road to the championship a bit easier.

      I do think Houston will probably get their act together though and they have Cole pitching tonight who has been lights out most of the season, as well as in Game 1.

    1. Thanks for sharing. By my naked eye, technically the center may actually be well outside the 40/70 benchmark. I may very well be wrong though.

  16. Still partly to mostly sunny here in Manchester, CT as of 11AM. It has actually turned out to be a very nice morning here….a bit of a surprise to me. Clouds and showers will be back shortly though by the looks of the radar.

    Despite raining pretty much all day yesterday here, only 0.29″ in the rain gauge at my house so far. I would have imagined more watching the radar all day, but clearly the dry air influence from the NW is having an impact.

  19. This system continues to underwhelm me! Pathetic, actually.

    Oh well….

    Onto Cleveland! err I mean Winter.

  23. Whatever rain there was “appears” to being suppressed to the South.
    Now, there’s a surprise. Anyone paying attention should not be surprised.

  24. With the rex block holding the low slightly further south than modeled even just 24 hrs ago, it is also serving to push low level dry air further south.

    I believe Boston’s dewpoint depression is close to 10F, (difference btwn temp and dewpoint). So, the northern edge of the rain shield, which isn’t heavy to begin with, is also experiencing evaporation in the boundary layer.

  25. Cape Cod is verifying as the location for the strongest wind gusts with several locations peaking over 50 MPH.

  26. If there’s any adjustment to be made perhaps it’s to tweak the rain amounts down ever so slightly.

    Storm forecast remains general right on track.

  27. Mark, I agree with you on Cole and the Astros. But, there’s something about those Rays. By the way, while I root against the Yankees I love baseball and so enjoy watching a great team and organization like the Yankees play.

    1. That’s OK, you don’t have to defend not liking the Yankees. I don’t like the Red Sox very much either 🙂

      I agree on the Rays, if they find a way to win tonight, they will be no pushover for the Yankees.

  28. TK, I hold you in high esteem. Sure, you’ve missed a few forecasts over the past decade, but not many. You stood your ground on this one and gave us all an excellent explanation 4 days ago (!) on how you thought this would unfold. It’s pretty much doing what you said it would 4 days ago. I appreciate your no nonsense approach, and also your humility when you get things wrong.

  29. 1:15 PM and still mostly sunny here in Manchester, CT…….

    Quite the forecast bust in the Hartford area today. The rain appears to be trying to push further west, but it is having a very difficult time.

    1. I should add that the leading edge of the rain has made it to Coventry and it’s been raining at home for 2 hours now. My office is only 9 miles west of there and we are still bone dry. The precip is basically hitting a brick wall.

  30. Vicki…

    How are things with your family and the scheduled brownouts in California?

    Just letting you know that I have been thinking about you and them… 🙂

  31. An unexpected nice fall day where I am with plenty of sunshine.
    As far as baseball if the Rays beat the Astros the Yankees will win their 28th World Series title. The Astros are the only team a little nervous about that could stop a Yankees championship.

    1. Probably true. 28 championships. Wow! That translates to about 25% of seasons since the beginning of professional baseball ending in a Yankee championship (an even higher percentage if one starts the clock in the 1920s). No sports team will ever – in my lifetime – achieve that kind of dominance for so long. Sure, there have been down periods for the Yankees. But, few and far between.

      1. The team in baseball with the second most World Series titles the Cardinals with 11 World Series titles.

        1. And yet, the Patriots with 6 SB titles are hated nationwide. At least the Yankees, Canadiens etc. are highly respected.

  32. “All systems fail in a drought.” -Barry Burbank quote from way back.

    Now this is definitely not entirely true, and even Barry himself knows it. And in this case it’s only partially the case. The dry air eating away the NW side of the storm is certainly no surprise. We knew it’d be there. It is doing even a greater number on that part of the storm than I thought it would. But it will actually partially lose the battle – eventually. Meanwhile, the event is about as expected to the southeast, with most rain/wind over the Cape. Despite some decent rainfall totals, this is not a gentle rain and will have difficulty sinking into fairly dry soil, running off more than helping out. So, even though this will kind of delay the inevitable, if future projections break the way I think, most of if not all of SNE will be in at least minor drought in the next 6 to 10 weeks. That line of thinking has not changed, and should not be changed because of a system like this. This is something I had to study very closely during my agricultural forecasting days. It made a difference.

    I’m thinking of removing the shower threat from Saturday’s forecast. But holding steady for now. I want to see how much moisture can wheel back in from the east. I think Friday will definitely be the wettest day, in terms of coverage of precipitation, but not intensity. The heaviest is likely occurring today in a confined area (as we see).

    By the way, today we see a vivid example of one limitation of a tool. That is, the NWS composite radar. If you look at it, it’s raining across all of eastern and central MA, until you switch to just one radar site at Norton, and suddenly a whole lot of that rainfall is not seen. Why? Oh it’s there, about 10 or 12 thousand feet up, but it’s only falling a thousand feet or so before being obliterated by dry air. I have a photograph of this process that I just took a short while ago, and will post a link to it here in a bit…

    1. The Accuweather.com radar does show rain all over as well. I was wondering what going on when looking outside streets are completely dry.

      Thanks for the explanation TK! 🙂

  33. All the folks who sold tickets for tonight’s Game . Some sun peeking out in Roxbury. What a joke

    1. That’s on them, and just plain silly to sell them. Who buys football tickets thinking that the weather is not going to be very adverse once in a while. My brother is a season ticket holder. He’ll be there tonight. If someone chooses to sell based on a weather forecast, that’s a chance they take. Even very well thought-out forecasts that are not just relying on model output can badly bust.

      1. To the way most had it they were calling for a flood lol. People got scared saying I’m not sitting in that and now it’s bone dry . I saw a ton up for sale and I was asked by a co worker

    2. Rain events that BUST rarely occur. I am enjoying it after seeing so many snow events fail over the years. I hope I can remember this one over the upcoming winter to put in perspective.

      1. They do bust more than you think, but I think the reason that you notice winter ones doing something like that is mainly because they are more scrutinized, and also tend to occur with a more vulnerable set up with a nearby very dry air mass, of course depending on the pattern.

        Most of our snow events are going to be from something that is with a low south of us, and very cold/dry air nearby, while rain events can occur with a modified set-up like that or us going into warm sectors, so there are more variations on rain events just based on our location and regional climate.

  34. One thing I did notice, the RGEM was horrendous on this forecast. A couple of yesterday’s runs had Boston at 1.50 inch of rain by this time. Nope! It’s finally catching on now. The WRF’s were bad as well.

  35. Mike Waunkum showed the moisture well offshore that did NOT get involved. We dodged a bullet for sure. It could have easily been 1996 all over again.

  36. As promised, here is a big ugly link to the photo I took a little while ago of the result of lower level dry air chomping up snow/rain as it falls out of mid level clouds. Photo was taken right here at Woods Hill in Woburn.

    https://scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/72842290_10157684483897265_4501320202327162880_o.jpg?_nc_cat=103&_nc_oc=AQkOigzMKwCuUvWcsBiI-6hxj65Aw2DjxNHMF8-kumretp6be2x2TuwXWYQtHL8_0qQ&_nc_ht=scontent.fbed1-2.fna&oh=de19e01b53d59f98495e6d4fb979512a&oe=5E255432

  37. Philip, I agree with your comment on the Patriots. I will never understand the hatred towards the Patriots. It’s obviously a very well-run organization for the last 25 years, with the best head coach in the history of the game. That should command respect. Yet, knuckleheads like Shannon Sharpe and so many others continue with their irrational hatred.

    I do believe there’s some `hatred’ towards the Yankees, but not nearly as much as towards the Patriots.

    1. The hatred is nothing more than jealousy, and each person knows it. They just won’t admit it. That’s ok. 😉

  38. So TK, this is a `chomp, chomp’ scenario, with cookie monster eating away at the northwestern edge of the system. Does some of this have to do with the strong high pressure to our north. Last I checked my barometers – I have 2 of them – they showed relatively high pressure. In fact, much higher than you would think given the cloudiness. But, as I said yesterday, the air itself feels relatively dry for an overcast day. Usually, when rain or snow is going to be heavy the air feels moist just prior to the precipitation.

    1. Yes. This is largely the result of a very large high pressure area providing very dry air from the polar regions. This has been the basis all along for my forecast of a more confined impact. It’s even drier than I had the last 2 days when I “gave in” a bit.

      We will, I believe, get more widespread rain, just not that heavy, during tomorrow, into many of the areas in eastern MA that missed out today.

      1. Could the amounts have matched 1996 had the storm was allowed to move northward into our area? I shudder to think.

        1. No. They wouldn’t have been like that. That was a very different set-up. This storm would not have been around long enough and if it was far enough north we’d still have dry interludes.

          The rainfall forecasts were vastly overdone for a huge portion of the region. And I still think even a further north loop would not have produced those amounts either.

  39. NWS trimmed the flood potential, both coastal and rain-related removing it north, leaving it south. They also backed off the wind. No surprise on any of those.

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