Saturday Forecast

56 Comments

7:41AM

DAYS 1-5 (FEBRUARY 15-19)
High pressure brings fair weather today, though it will be one of the colder days of the winter thus far – not very hard to accomplish. Temperature moderation comes Sunday but a front brings a risk of a snow flurry, and then another high pressure area brings fair weather for Presidents Day Monday. A fast-moving low pressure area passing north of New England will drag a warm front / cold front combo through on Tuesday, the only unsettled day of the 5. Dry but breezy and colder weather follows it for Wednesday.
TODAY: Sunny. Highs 26-33. Wind NW up to 10 MPH becoming variable.
TONIGHT: Increasing clouds. Lows 15-22 evening, rising through the 20s overnight. Wind variable up to 10 MPH becoming SW.
SUNDAY: Mostly cloudy with a passing snow shower possible morning. Sun and passing clouds afternoon. Highs 37-44. Wind SW 5-15 MPH.
SUNDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy. Lows 20-27. Wind W 5-15 MPH.
MONDAY (PRESIDENTS DAY): Mostly sunny. Highs 35-42. Wind NW 5-15 MPH.
MONDAY NIGHT: Mostly clear. Lows 18-25. Wind W up to 10 MPH.
TUESDAY: Early sun the clouding over with a period of rain/sleet/snow possible midday then a chance of rain showers following that. Highs 42-49. Wind S to SW increasing to 10-20 MPH, higher gusts.
TUESDAY NIGHT: Cloudy with rain showers evening. Clearing overnight. Lows 32-39. Wind SW 5-15 MPH shifting to NW.
WEDNESDAY: Sun and passing clouds. Temperatures steady 32-39. Wind NW 10-20 MPH, higher gusts.

DAYS 6-10 (FEBRUARY 20-24)
High pressure brings fair and cold weather February 20-21. Moderating temperatures and mainly dry mid period, then increasing risk of unsettled weather at the end of the period with rain favored over mix/snow.

DAYS 11-15 (FEBRUARY 25-29)
Trending colder, additional storminess favoring mid period with mix/snow favored over rain.

56 thoughts on “Saturday Forecast”

    1. I was torn between shooting up to Hampton or into the city for sunrise and sea smoke, but I was up pretty last last night so I didn’t do either. I’m not too bummed about it because I did get some great sea smoke photo & video from Hampton back in December, but a more strategic plan is going to put me at the Harbor for sea smoke the next time we get it on a day I can get there. 🙂

    1. GFS would agree with you, but I am assuming even if something should happen
      towards the end of the month, it would NOT be as impactful as depicted by
      the GFS.

      1. Probably not but I can’t rule that out either. As a forecaster, you can’t let what has already happened impact your thinking going forward. Recent weather ties in, provided you relate it to the large scale pattern, but you also have to account for potential changes in that pattern.

    2. I think the GFS has been showing something in this time period the past couple runs. Something to keep a watchful eye on.

  5. Thank you, TK.

    Bottomed out at 10F in Back Bay. What was Logan’s low? It was almost like winter was saying, “you’re not going to get your single digits, pal.”

  6. Thank you, TK.

    Down to 1 in south Sutton this am. I say 18 now but sun is on the unit so will go with a close by wunder that reads 14

  7. President Trump, yesterday, and no, I’m not making this up: “[The Mexican border is] not known for cold weather. It’s known for quite hot weather. You don’t have too much snow in this area, right?… If you had any, that would be called climate change, I think, right? When they do that, I’m there, I’m a believer.”

  9. Not weather related, but I believe there are a number of folks here who enjoy Disneyland or world. I’m watching imagineering on Disney+. It tells the story of how The Disney’s came to be.

    1. I had disney+ for a month but they didnt yet have enough content for me to justify the extra money out of my pocket. Between netflix, spotify, cbs all access (which has a ton of content including old shows I love), youtube premium, etc. – all these streaming services have their hand firmly grasped on my wallet lol!

      1. I might not have bothered with it if I didn’t have grandkids. I can piggy back on their subscription. I’m glad I did. Some great shows and movies. But I tend to like shows that make me smile.

      2. That is understood. The only extras I pay are Netflix and Starz.
        The only reason we have Starz is Outlander.

        Not for nothing, but free television, as we know it, is fast on the way out. The future holds nothing but streaming services. There will be NO free TV.

        1. We have Netflix and Disney+. I got verizon down below what we’d have to pay for the streaming services plus fios internet and phone. Son refuses to have cable. But they seem to be figuring ways to steam from their phones to TV.

          1. There will always be “free” tv as I recall Congress mandated it following the conversion from analog to digital in 2009. If anything it will be interesting as to how long the public will continue to pay for these “streaming” services as well as cable, etc.

            Free tv isn’t going anywhere.

  10. Thanks TK.

    Down to +2F here in Coventry this morning.

    TK mentioned the MJO. This is the mornings Euro MJO forecast:

    https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/CLIVAR/ecmf.shtml

    And this is the GFS:

    https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/foregfs.shtml

    So while both models are still showing the MJO tickling or briefly entering Phase 8, it isn’t a very strong signal and seems to be a brief interlude. GFS quickly reverses its course back to 7 and the Euro takes it back neutral. So we may not have a very long window of opportunity there.

    The GFS does continue to show the other major teleconnections trending less hostile towards the end of the month (AO tanking towards neutral, PNA trending positive, and NAO trending neutral) however I’m a bit skeptical. Those long range projections, thus far, have not materialized.

  11. Some low temperatures this morning….

    -26 Bretton Woods, NH
    -34 Island Pond, VT
    -35 Escourt, ME
    -40 Causapscal Airport in the Gaspe (southern Quebec)

    1. A little chilly.

      The coldest weather I have actually been outside to experience
      was -25 at Mt. Snow Vermont in January of 1971.

      The coldest I ever experienced in Massachusetts was -17 at my House in Millis
      sometime in the mid to late 60s. I was driving from Millis to school at Northeastern in Boston and I remember having to place a dip stick heater in
      at night to make sure I could get my old clunker cranked up in the morning.
      I did and it did. 🙂

      The coldest temps I ever skied in was -14 at Ragged Moutain in NH, sometime
      in the early 70s.

      Generally speaking, the cold doesn’t bother me much. It’s the damn wind
      that does!!

      1. We have. Remember that January 4 bomb a couple winters back? 🙂 This winter’s pattern favors bombs occurring much further northeast.

      1. Our coastline and geography wouldn’t allow it anyway. 🙂

        I remember having to warn for waves like that near port approaches in my shipping forecasts I would do for the newswire back in the private weather company days. Fun times! The 1990s were gangbusters for big storms up there.

  15. Thanks, TK…

    My best and prayers to you and your Mom this coming week.

    There was 34.0″ of snow on the ground this date five years ago.

    The all-time Taunton record for snow depth is 45.0″ on February 12, 1948.

    1. In the past, this was talked about as a stormy pattern, which it is. These days, it has to be talked about like it’s the biggest and baddest. It will rival some of the strongest cyclones we have seen. Well, it depends on which parameters they are considering and the details of each when classifying how big your “some of the strongest” list is. As my colleague states, and I very much agree, it’s very easy to make something sound a lot worse than it is, headline-wise. It’s the business of getting clicks. That said, it will be an impressive synoptic scale cyclone, one of many we see crossing the North Atlantic during the year, especially the cold season. I have a friend in the UK that I warned about this a few days ago. I’ve got quite a bit of experience forecasting European weather … about 30 years worth in fact. 😉 … Trust me when I tell you I’ve tracked plenty of cyclones like this one across the N.A. and into NW Europe.

  17. I’ve been enjoying some of the best weather in terms of the usvi as highs been in the low 80s lower elevations but been in the 70s at my apartment with lows in the upper 60s. It has been a wet one but we will be heading into dry season..

    1. Nice….you picked a good winter to be down there as you certainly aren’t missing much here! When do you return?

      1. I am thinking May for a week or two and maybe again sometime in the Summer depending on field season. I also have emergency money in place for if a big hurricane takes aim at us. I am thinking of surprising my mom who has her birthday on May 11th

  18. Noticing a colder trend in the models for the Tuesday system. Euro and NAM have some good cold air damming which keeps the precip all snow in much of VT, NH and western MA despite the low track over the St Lawrence Valley. Rain/snow line is nearly down into northern MA. GFS seems to be a warm outlier with its flip to rain all the way up to Canada.

    This is not going to make a difference for much of SNE but it could drop a nice 3-6″ of powder across NNE. I have been watching this system intently as we are heading up to Sugarloaf ME on Thursday for a long ski weekend. It would be nice to have some fresh powder as opposed to a change to rain with freeze up afterwards.

    Sugarloaf is doing great right now by the way – 150 trails and nearly 100% open.

    1. NNE & ski areas are actually doing quite well this winter. They did better last winter, but no major issues this time around at least for most of the region.

      1. They are indeed. I am very much looking forward to getting up into some true winter conditions for a few days!

        Are you favoring a colder solution for the Tuesday system?

        1. Eh… I’m not sold, but I could see that thing having cold air a little further south than modeled. It won’t have any impact on the weather here as far as I can tell though.

          1. Yeah, I was more referring to up in ski country. GFS has a changeover to rain even up there. Hoping the colder NAM/Euro solution verifies and they stay all snow.

  19. Also….12z Euro has a coastal storm lurking on the southeast coast at Day 10. Looks like it may want to make a run up towards us. Marginal cold air in place for the coast if it did.

    Long ways off but there does seem to be a signal for some potential storminess on the models during the last several days of February.

    1. I’m very surprised you don’t remember that… This was the event that made “bomb cyclone” the most popular term of the winter.

      22 casualties, top wind gusts 126 MPH in Nova Scotia, and a lowest central pressure of 949 mb or 28.02 inches … one of the most rapidly deepening and most powerful storms we have seen in modern history in the North Atlantic.

      We had been in the midst of a significant stretch of anomalous cold.
      Had a lot of digging out to do in southern New England after that one…

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2018_North_American_blizzard

      Computer models did a very good job forecasting this one, especially the ECMWF.

  21. The North Atlantic monster storm named Dennis is wreaking havoc in Scotland, but its impact will be muted across the European continent as two areas of high pressure are forcing the storm to veer in a north-northeasterly direction towards northern Norway.

    Mark, thanks for sending the satellite imagery.

    These storms are VERY typical this time of year, and also in the autumn, across Ireland, Britain, the Netherlands, and western Scandinavia. I experienced them regularly, as I’ve mentioned many times on this blog. And, this was during the 1980s and 90s. So, no, this is not due to climate change. What IS different is the rising temperatures and prolonged and persistent lack of winter in the regions mentioned.

    TK, you mentioned shipping forecasts you did in the 1990s. In the early 1990s, I used to listen every day to BBC Radio 4 on the long wave (my car radio had long wave) on my long drive home from work in The Hague to my home in Amstelveen. I listened to a nightly news program that always ended with a shipping forecast, with names of points in the North Sea, Irish Sea, and North Atlantic. These were not names of towns for the most part. Rather, they were names of points that the merchant marine and shippers would be familiar with. TK, did you work on these forecasts? The forecasts always fascinated me. The destructive gales and hurricane force winds (usually measured in Beaufort) became part of my imagination as I was driving home.

  22. If you want a good read,,,one that made me smile but mostly had me teary with the damage on the south coast, go back to January 4, 2018. Took me quite a while to ready.

    A couple of posts caught my attention. Will paste below

    Some take away’s

    SSK…you are you. Gives me a whole different perspective….never change.

    Mama….I’d forgotten about Katy. I’m going to dig it out.

    But most importantly…..I now know what the problem is with this this winter. AROD, WHERE THE HECK ARE YOU?

    From Philip (might jog your memory) and from Matt below:

    Philip says:
    January 4, 2018 at 1:51 PM
    Flooding at the Aquarium T Stop and along Atlantic Ave. No idea what is going on

    matt says:
    January 4, 2018 at 3:11 PM
    Major flooding in Hampton NH
    Also pete bouchard. I just got so much more respect for him. He literally spelled it out for people on air, and I could tell he was not saying something from the proctor.
    He said we are comparing Apples to oranges with this storm , sandy and Blizzard of 78.
    He said what took the Blizzard of 78 ,5 tide cycles, this one did it in 1. He said this is due to a mix of factors and to expect more of this in the coming decade as the waters off the coast rise due to the warming climate/melting ice. He also said that its causing all this coastal erosion with all the new tech we have compared to then that needs to be considered.

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