Friday September 29 2023 Forecast (7:37AM)

148 Comments

DAYS 1-5 (SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 3)

And one more bout of unsettled weather will squeeze in just before the door closes on September. Once again low pressure to our south will be the culprit, and with the help of an upper trough swinging through the region, we’ll see an inverted trough extending northward from low pressure first bring a showery rain to the region today, focused on areas south and west of Boston. Heaviest rainfall with this portion of the event is likely to occur southwest of the WHW forecast area, focused on western CT to the NYC area. As low pressure starts to organize to our south and drift northeastward, the rain area will shift to a more general one focused from the I-90 belt southward, depositing the most significant amounts in the South Coast region tonight while some lighter amounts fall further north, ranging down to hardly any at all once you get to northeastern MA / southern NH. High pressure begins a push southward as the upper and surface lows begin their exit during Saturday midday on, so we’ll start to see improvement at that point, from north to south, with the rain last to end later in the day along the South Coast, especially Cape Cod. Sunshine will start to return from north to south, but may run out of time before reaching the South Coast. It will finish clearing out there during the night though, and this will set the region up for a very nice finish to the weekend on Sunday, with abundant sun, some fair weather clouds, and comfortable air. High pressure then has complete control with fair, milder weather early next week.

TODAY: Mostly cloudy. Rain showers move in from the south during the day, favoring southern and western areas. Highs 60-67. Wind E 5-15 MPH.

TONIGHT: Cloudy. Periods of rain evening, becoming steadier overnight, heaviest near and south of I-90. Patchy fog developing overnight. Lows 50-57. Wind E-NE up to 10 MPH.

SATURDAY: Cloudy start including a chance of additional rain especially from the I-90 belt southward, then rain exits and clouds break for sun north to south midday on, but clouds likely linger along the South Coast for longer. Highs 58-65. Wind NE-N 5-15 MPH.

SATURDAY NIGHT: Clear except foggy areas low elevations. Lows 45-52. Wind N under 10 MPH.

SUNDAY: Early fog patches dissipate otherwise sunny to partly cloudy. Highs 68-75. Wind variable up to 10 MPH.

SUNDAY NIGHT: Clear except ground fog patches forming. Lows 48-55. Wind variable under 10 MPH.

MONDAY: Sunny. Highs 69-76. Wind W up to 10 MPH.

MONDAY NIGHT: Clear. Lows 50-57. Wind NW under 10 MPH.

TUESDAY: Sunny. Highs 70-77. Wind NW up to 10 MPH.

DAYS 6-10 (OCTOBER 4-8)

Dry weather and above normal temperatures continue as high pressure maintains control of the weather through mid period, then looking ahead a frontal boundary and trough swing through with showers followed by a Canadian cool shot to end the period, based on current expected timing.

DAYS 11-15 (OCTOBER 9-13)

The trend is still there for stronger Canadian high pressure in control more often and less opportunity for low pressure to the south to impact the region. With slight hesitation I lean in this direction as a drier pattern with variable temperatures from a front or two passing by in a westerly flow aloft.

148 thoughts on “Friday September 29 2023 Forecast (7:37AM)”

  3. I couldn’t even follow the WBZ anchor on my way to work so I’ll try to summarize with a paraphrasing…

    “Well we have heavy rain falling across the region again today, like every Saturday in the month of September.” (Except today is Friday.)

    “And when we get to Sunday it will almost be like it’s a completely different day, and almost like a new month because that’s the first day of October, and it’s also when classic fall weather is going to arrive and it might even feel like summer.” Huh????

    Just stop talking about the weather… 😉

  4. Kennedy airport in NYC already has 3.75 inches of rain.

    Bridgeport, Ct. 1.24
    Waterbury, CT 1.74
    Hartford, CT 0.47
    Worcester, MA 0.12
    Boston, MA 0.00

    1. Thanks JpDave for this nice summation !!!!!

      I have been following that Kennedy Airport ob as it caught my attention with the hourly totals.

    1. Its hard to see, but it looks like there’s a narrow, enhanced line of red echoes right near NYC

      I am surprised by the northward extent in western New England, but I wonder if some slightly drier are to the north in the lower levels is eating away at some of the intensity in Mass and VT ????

  17. Senator Dianne Feinstein has died. She was 90.

    What’s disturbing to me is what I read on social media – and not just the trolls – from otherwise intelligent people who write the most vicious things about her. Some of these folks claims to be “Christian.” It’s in their bio, in fact. One said, “I hope she doesn’t RIP.” These folks are not Christian. If I learned anything from my conservative Christian mother it was that we NEVER speak badly of those who died.

    There may be a few exceptions, of course. Truly evil people like Hitler and Stalin. But surely Feinstein was not evil. She was a pathbreaker for women. She worked well with colleagues on both sides of the aisle on many different pieces of legislation.

    Humanity gets me down sometimes when I see just how diseased our nation has become in terms of polarization.

    1. So very sad…..both for the passing of senator Feinstein and for the horribly broken mess our society is.

      I think social media has some wonderful pluses. But while I don’t think it created the hate we are seeing, I sure think it went a long way bringing it to the forefront. That hate is a good part of why I am more than half serious when I say either we straighten out or we will soon need an ark.

    1. Agreed, it just keeps reforming south of them, paralleling the NJ coastline.

      If that convergence zone doesn’t translate east anytime soon ……

  32. While I worry about climate change and other big picture issues, I believe our immediate concern in this country should be on things we can tackle right away and aren’t. One of them is the dramatic rise in recent years in sexually transmitted diseases. From syphilis to gonorrhea to chlamydia to even HIV, we’re observing very significant increases. Public health isn’t doing enough about it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/09/23/as-sexually-transmitted-infection-incidence-rises-globally-public-health-now-emphasizes-treatment-as-prevention-over-condoms/?sh=39b79e6a23ae

    1. Inexcusable. And That is our problem. We cannot focus on more than one thing at a time. And honestly I am not sure we can focus on even one.

      Although we have far too little focus on climate and we are close or maybe past the breaking point. For one I don’t think we can take focus off of that.

    2. Thanks Joshua. There is also an increase in STDs among our seniors as well. It’s not just the typical younger generation.

  37. Tom I was wrong about where my cousins daughter and family live on Long Island. They are on north side of central LI. My cousin said If she floods then the island would be pretty much all under water

  38. I won’t mind NYC beating Boston in this situation. If this is a preview of our upcoming winter, NYC will clobber Boston in snowfall.

    Imagine if this event was a few months from now!

  39. Thanks TK.

    Pouring here in Coventry CT with 1.25″ so far. They just postponed the high school football game tonight.

    In NYC (JFK area), the current flood warning from the NWS indicates that 4-6″ of rain has fallen, expected rainfall rate is 1-2″ per hour in the next hour and an additional 2-4″ is expected.

    Unfortunately the double digit rain totals some of the models were spitting out in this exact same area may end up verifying.

  49. Mark wrote that Midtown had received a “half foot of rain.” We don’t often describe rain totals in this way.

  50. Continuing to pour here in Coventry. Has not let up since it started. We are at 1.92″ and steadily increasing. Looks like it is going to be an overachiever here.

  52. The reds east of NYC, on extreme western Long Island look the worst of the system. I’m concerned for what is happening there.

  53. From Ryan Hanrahan

    The NYC flood situation was very well modeled by our hires tools. Not sure what the messaging was the decision makers or how it was acted on but there certainly was a solid 24-hour heads up for a significant event in our guidance

    The 1-hour rainfall in Queens and Brooklyn this morning had a recurrence interval of between 50 and 100 years. A very rare event which is certainly enough to overwhelm infrastructure

    https://twitter.com/ryanhanrahan/status/1707842056490467488

  54. Since I’ve seen it mentioned a few times now, if this were winter, this situation would not be anywhere near as bad. Why? Air at 32 degrees can only hold 1/3 the amount of water vapor that air can at 60 degrees. So, you wouldn’t be getting these 1″ per hour rainfall numbers and you certainly wouldn’t be seeing liquid totals of 4-8 inches. Yes, it would still be an impressive event for the Tri-state area, but you’d probably be talking about 2-3″ of rain in the City, and heavy snow well inland.

    1. I recall a winter time inverted trough setup in January 2011 in a similar geographic area as this that kicked off an epic snow blitz for us that month. The trough was aligned in a SE to NW direction and resulted in a ribbon of very heavy snows in western LI and CT. Waterbury received over a foot of snow in a short period of time at the PM rush hour that caught a lot of people off guard. We ended up getting 4″ out of it in Coventry as the band weakened as it moved east.

      I believe that ridiculous fetch off the ocean from a large storm out towards Bermuda in March 2013 was an inverted trough setup as well? I got 20″ out of that one.

      To your point the liquid equivalents of those events was more like 1-2″ but the heavy snows training over a localized packed a punch. Different kind of impact.

    1. Was just watching the radar. Just west of me. I’m going to stop saying comparatively we have not had as much rain as other locations this summer …before I jinx us.

  56. HRRR did a great job modeling the NYC area deluge.

    We’ve come a long way with that tech. I think a lot of times people are looking for the definitive answers too soon. Yes, there are limits and there is some patience required, but you can tell, as a meteorologist, when the guidance is pretty much locked into the most likely solution.

    HRRR did that yesterday on its 18z run for today’s event.
    RRSF is doing quite well in general.

    1. Many of the models did a great job not only with the amounts, but the area to expect those amounts. The Euro was not among that group.

        1. Bad “upgrades”. Saw it with GFS too.

          Sometimes what is designed to improve the performance backfires and it does just the opposite. But that’s part of science.

          I think what’s more disappointing to me is when this happens they seem to just “go with it”. Why not revert back to the previous version and work on fixing the upgrade? It’s ok to screw something up. It’s what you do about it that counts most.

          1. Yes, that is my problem as well. When they see that, they should revert to the former version and plug away at a fix and NOT continue to run with a piece of shit garbage!!!

      1. 🙂 🙂 🙂
        Was raining pretty hard here for a while this afternoon.
        I’ll bet we got more than Logan, but my Rain Gauge has been shot for a long time now.

  59. Continuing to pour and up to 2.51″ here in Coventry. It has been a constant moderate to at times heavy rain all day and has not let up. Still a long ways to go to. I am thinking 4″ is now achievable here.

  60. Without tornadoes, weather.us radar focused on Long Island shows cells that look like the ones that dumped 4-7 inches in N Andover and look like mini supercells.

    At least there is a slight translation of the line eastward.

    Smith town on Long Island is under the worst of the echoes.

    2. It’s just a point of convergence and the rapid upward motion visible on the satellite gives it that appearance – sustained updraft, but there are big differences between what we see today and the true super cell, of course. Nevertheless, it’s impressive to look at on the satellite loop.

      Watching these is a good reminder of how are atmosphere is a fluid, and rather complex. And it’s still amazing to me how well we can forecast the motion in it.

    2. This is a spot that takes it on the chin during king tides. They are on the coast just east of Charleston. The “highest point” in Isle of Palms is 11 feet above sea level. This area is very vulnerable to storm surge as well and also very densely populated for its size.

      1. Now. Not as much decades ago. The area I mentioned is several blocks inland and on the Intracoastal waterway. And I understand that high tide affects that also. Ironically, tonight is a meeting to further discuss how climate change is impacting Charleston and its barrier islands. The person who posted on Instagram has mentioned more than once how they are seeing more erosion. And as a result flooding.

        This is an excellent graph showing the increase risk caused by climate change.

        https://imgur.com/a/FIxfJfN

    1. That particular video is from 2021. There will be a bunch of older ones circulating as “new” as happens with all the larger events. These people have already posted 2 of them that are not from today.

  65. We’re at 2″ in Lunenburg. I know this is nothing compared to some other places, which in and itself is amazing, but I certainly didn’t expect so much this far north in MA.

      1. 1.55 and 2 inches are very robust rain amounts. I think anything over 1 inch is a good-sized rainstorm.

        What they’re experiencing in NYC and vicinity is not good. My brother lives in New York and says it’s something he has never seen before. Nor was it good what Montpelier VT experienced in July (my sister’s friend lost pretty much everything in her shop) or what happened in Leominster, Attleboro, and many other towns this summer and now early fall. It’s been bad. I really am hoping for a return to somewhat normal pattern, though I’m skeptical this will happen. We’ve frequently seen 10-day forecasts with almost no rain in them change in a flash to include major rain events. I suspect this will continue for a while.

        1. These events have happened before. It may be in one particular location that some people have not experienced them because they are not typical or frequent for any one location.

          This is why the impacts are so significant.

          And yes this pattern will definitely be a thing of the past. As I previously stated I strongly believe that a lot of this has to do with the HT effect and I really want a lot of study done and I hope the scientific community does just that because I think we are seeing a very unique situation that we have never been able to witness before, and events like this are only one part of it.

          Yes these events have always been around but the frequency of them is noticeably higher since that volcanic event. There is a definite spike and those types of spikes are not generally noted in more gradual climate shifts. In my scientific opinion this is largely the result of that event in the South Pacific.

          Here’s another way to look at it…

          The general belief with a gradual warming of the global climate is that larger events are more common but the increase in such events is pretty slow and is a longer-term trend.

          The volcanic eruption was sudden and a tremendous impact and a very short period of time. Followed by an immediate temperature rise. Followed by an immediate spike in these types of events.

          That in itself is more than enough to form the theory. This is the scientific method in action which is why I hope that a lot more study is done on this.

  66. Thank you TK!
    Getting in on the action here in Sturbridge today 3.41” and more to come.
    Truly been amazing the amount of excessive rain events this year. If this pattern holds our snow chances this winter season will be above average , maybe make up for the last couple of years. I always find it funny when talking weather with people and it’s so often said that if all of this rain we received this summer was snow we would be buried. I try to explain to people that if it was that simple yes we would, however you can’t use that analogy simply because cold air can’t hold as much moisture as warm air , thus all of those days this summer with pwats of 2” plus would not happen in winter. The 5” in one hour that some saw this summer would never translate into 50” of snow in the same amount of time. Although that would be a sight to see!!

    1. That is impressive….definitely wasn’t expecting that for your area!

      We are up to 3.12″ here with plenty more to come. Definitely going over 4″ and are going to approach a monthly rain total of 15″ for the SECOND time in the last three months. This is unreal!

  67. R A W S A L E R T S
    @rawsalerts
    #BREAKING: Sea lions have escaped the Central Park zoo due severe flooding

    Due to the extreme flooding that is occurring across New York City, the water level in the Sea Lion area rose significantly. As a result, the Sea Lions were able to swim over the glass enclosure and escaped their exhibit at the Central Park Zoo, according to zoo officials. The zoo staff also monitored the sea lion as she explored the area before returning to the familiar surroundings of the pool. Importantly, the sea lion never breached the zoo’s secondary perimeter. The Central Park zoo is closed due to the severe weather

    https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1707876892873769206?s=20

  69. Thank you, TK, for your explanation of our current pattern. I’m NOT the expert. You are. So I do defer to you in these matters.

    Nevertheless, I’m struck by the magnitude of change in numbers of `historic’ weather events, temperature rise, Arctic ice decline, and major shifts in animal (birds and insects, especially) migration and places of habitat in the past 30 to 40 years.

    I certainly don’t look at a single event and say, ah that’s climate change in action. But I do look at the long-term trends and wonder what’s happening.

    If I were to wager a guess as to the human element I’d say there’s a correlation between the meteoric rise of China, India, Korea, and several other Asian nations as industrial powerhouses since around 1990 and what we’re observing. This is correlation and not causation. So I am not necessarily drawing the conclusion that humans are to blame. But it’s an increasingly strong hypothesis over time, in my humble opinion.

    1. And of course climate change over the millennia has been a phenomenon, so we can’t discount a natural cycle, if you will. What’s striking, in my view, is the relatively speed with which changes have occurred in recent decades.

    2. Your comment makes sense and tends to follow what the folks I’ve written to have said. Two of the three events in Central Park were in 2021. And I shared a graphic above re the steady increase in erosion on isle of palms (not related to todays rain but to the king tides or pretty much all tides).

      I know enough from testing Mac did on water and and earth for 40 years how serious the human effect is and it’s increase

    3. I believe those nations you mentioned are far more a problem now than we are here. We used to be, but we’ve already taken steps to reduce what we do. Enough? Probably not, but at least we’re not going in the wrong direction. But if not everybody is on board …

  72. If this was January or February (or early March for that matter) and much of NNE temps were in the single digits and SNE (including NYC) temps were stuck in the teens along with the EXACT same “convergence” wouldn’t snowfall amounts be in excess of around 35-45+ citywide? Wouldn’t ratios easily be 15-1, maybe even 20-1 with fluff factor?

    The “perfect” snowstorm?

    1. The ratio would depend on the temp, but the air would have only held approximately 1/3 the amount of moisture, so 3.00 inches of precipitation in today’s conditions would be about 1.00 inch in a typical snow environment.

      It just doesn’t work as a direct translation because of simple physics.

      1. Ok, if I understand you correctly, cold air holds less moisture?

        As an example, during the Blizzard of ‘78 Boston received 27.1” of snow. If it had been all rain, would it actually have been considerably higher than 2.71”?

        I took an “Into to Meteorology” course in college thinking it would be an easy “A”, but I ended up barely getting a “B”. As for Physics, I took it in high school and college and struggled to get a decent “C”.

        Looking back if it wasn’t for my love for weather I probably wouldn’t have done THAT well. 🙂

        1. It’s very hypothetical of course, but yes the 1978 storm could have produced more overall precipitation had the exact storm existed in a much warmer environment.

          The 27.1 snow in Boston in the 1978 storm was 2.85 inch melted, but a similar storm in a warmer season could have easily produced 4, 5, 6 inches of precipitation.

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