Wednesday Forecast

134 Comments

6:51AM

DAYS 1-5 (SEPTEMBER 4-8)
The feel of summer will be with us today, warmth and humidity dominating, but it will all be shut off quickly when a cold front slices through the region from northwest to southeast later in the afternoon and early evening, timed with max heating so that we should see a fairly solid line of showers and embedded thunderstorms, with any of the thunderstorms potentially being strong. Behind this, cooler/drier weather will flow into the region as the front pushes off to the southeast. High pressure building north of the region will create a northwest to north wind Thursday and a north to northeast wind Friday. All the while, Hurricane Dorian, in a weakened but still significant form, will be tracking parallel to southeastern US coast from just off northern Florida to near the Outer Banks of NC, before it starts to accelerate northeastward, eventually passing about 200 to 250 miles southeast of Cape Cod Friday night and early Saturday. Saturday’s weather here will improve rapidly as any wet weather that got into southeastern areas departs quickly and clearing takes place. A cold front will drop out of Canada and across the region Saturday night and early Sunday and deliver a fresh cooler air mass for Sunday.
Forecast details…
TODAY: Areas of low clouds and patchy fog early morning. Sunshine mid morning into mid afternoon. A deck of clouds arrives west to east mid to late afternoon with a band of showers and embedded thunderstorms, with any storms potentially strong. Humid. Highs 83-90 except cooler South Coast / Cape Cod. Wind SW 10-20 MPH.
TONIGHT: Clearing. Patchy fog until late evening. Less humid. Lows 58-65. Wind NW 5-15 MPH.
THURSDAY: Partly sunny morning. Mostly cloudy afternoon. Less humid. Highs 70-77. Wind N 5-15 MPH.
THURSDAY NIGHT: Mostly cloudy. Lows 56-63. Wind NE 5-15 MPH.
FRIDAY: Cloudy. Chance of rain by late-day, favoring southeastern parts of the region. Highs 66-73. Wind NE 10-20 MPH except 15-25 MPH with higher gusts toward Cape Cod.
FRIDAY NIGHT: Cloudy. Chance of rain, favoring southeastern MA. Lows 55-62. Wind NE to N 10-20 MPH except 20-30 MPH with higher gusts Cape Cod & Islands.
SATURDAY: Sun and passing clouds. Highs 68-75. Wind N 10-20 MPH with higher gusts early, shifting to W and diminishing late.
SATURDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy. Risk of a brief passing shower. Lows 55-62. Wind W 5-15 MPH.
SUNDAY: Mostly sunny. Highs 65-72. Wind NW 10-20 MPH, diminishing.

DAYS 6-10 (SEPTEMBER 9-13)
High pressure dominates September 9-11 with a slow warm-up. Warm/humid but with late showers/storms possible September 12 as a front arrives. Front may stall with a chance of rain end of period as it turns cooler.

DAYS 11-15 (SEPTEMBER 14-18)
Dry weather returns early to mid period, cooler then warming up. Risk of more unsettled weather later in the period in a west to east jet stream flow.

134 thoughts on “Wednesday Forecast”

  1. Person (to me): Why are the tropics so active? This is nuts!
    Me (to person): It’s the peak of hurricane season. Are you new to earth?
    I can dish out the ‘tude when it’s warranted, and sometimes it is. 😉

    Why is it that so many people think everything is crazy, or happening as it shouldn’t? Wait don’t answer that! The answer is “sensationalism”. It’s old “news”. 😛

    Tropical cyclones may be destructive (because they move what we put in front of them) or reconstructive (because transform land according to the laws of physics), but 1) they are nothing new and 2) they play a role in keeping the atmosphere from being dangerously out of balance to the point we couldn’t live in it.

    Anyway I am done editorializing for today. It’s a busy day for me with and not with weather…

    Today’s focus is going to be 2-fold, watching Dorian for impact on the SE US Coast, and watching our sky for a t-storm threat later. I’ll be checking in!

    Mom has an important appointment today that may be coinciding with the approach of any storms, so if they are locally chase-worthy, mom’s coming along for the ride after her appt! 😉

    1. Thanks TK !

      Hope your mom’s appointment goes well !

      I have written on my whiteboard 100 times …. “thou shall not use the NAM to forecast tropical cyclones”

      My students probably won’t know what is going on. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

  4. With the 13z update, SPC has actually added a 5% tornado area to portions of SNE. We’ve only seen that a couple times this year so far if I’m remembering right, maybe just once or twice.

    The 12z HRRR does look quite impressive. However, there is a lot of cloud cover over SNE this morning, and dry air aloft is going to come rushing in this afternoon. So I remain unconvinced on anything too widespread, but given the wind fields, if updrafts are able to get organized there could be some damaging winds or maybe a tornado especially in western portions of SNE before the dry air arrives.

  5. Thanks TK
    The 5% tornado chance the SPC shows for my area caught my eye. The thinking has been there are some ingredients there and if a thunderstorm could get going it could be strong.

  6. Thanks, TK… Best wishes to Mom!

    Hope everyone is well. My first chance to catch my breath since school started.
    Yesterday was my 54th CONSECUTIVE first day of school, 17 as a student, 37 as a teacher. There were two years in the middle in the 1980s that I was both.

    Tom, I had my students write the same commandment, but ¡en español! 🙂

    Some of my students have already told me “No School” for Friday because of the hurricane!!!! It’s almost a losing battle!!!

    How is the start of the school year for you???

    There was a brief discussion here about severe weather outside of the summer months. There was a Tornado Warning for Bristol County for a storm that did damage in Norton last October 23.

    Quiet foggy in the Boro right now. I wonder if that will diminish any severe storms here later today.

    I know there is a lot of tropical activity in the Atlantic Basin right now, but does anyone know the “record” for the most named storms AT ONE TIME in the Atlantic?

    Best to all…

    1. LOL …..

      Hectic always on the first day.

      The kids do not know which way they are going, some get nervous over their lockers, some lockers do not work, students struggle to read our rotating schedules ….. 6th grade fun in a brand new school.

    1. Hi Philip…

      Yup, Day 2 of 180 with students today for Middleborough. We had three professional days the middle of last week.

      The problem with the First Day of School is there is a second day of school. The novelty wears off real fast!!!! 🙂

      Gosh, I was tired last night!

      Thanks for asking!

  10. This is something I am keeping an eye on for later.
    Tweet from Meteorologist Ryan Hanrahan
    Elevated Mixed Layer on the morning Pittsburgh wx balloon launch should advect toward southern New England later today. Steep lapse rates (8.5C/km 750-575 hpa) should promote vigorous updrafts and even the potential for large hail. The EML is present on many of our big events.

  11. A couple severe weather events that come to mind with and EML present are June 1, 2011 with the Springfield tornado, the overnight severe weather outbreak in February 2016, May 15, 2018 when we had the tornadoes in CT, and July 10, 1989 the Northeastern Tornado Outbreak. I AM NOT SAYING this will happen today but with the EML in place I do feel parts of SNE could get a nasty thunderstorm later today.

    1. Please keep us up-to-date. All of our high school sports teams start today and have games in the area. I want to keep the AD and principal advised.

  12. too much cloud cover could hinder today’s threat. Did anyone else see the 00z gfs last night? it had another hurricane stalling over the same island in the Bahamas that got hit. Of course it’s gone by 6z but still that’s a sick joke from mother nature lol

  13. Kane I have sunshine out now for the past half hour. Before it was a mix of clouds and hazy sunshine. The question how much do we destabilize as there are some ingredients there for a locally strong to severe storm.
    Captain it looks like eastern areas of SNE the threat is much lower for severe weather than in western areas. The timing looks to be between 3pm -8pm.

  16. Thanks Kane for letting me know. I was just got through reading it. If I were to predict what the SPC is going to issue it would be a severe thunderstorm watch but with the wording a tornado or two possible.

    1. I just got an alert. Sun has been in and out of clouds and sky is filtered but there’s been a fair amount of sun

            1. Ah ha. You like? Btw, nice video of your daughter and the horse. She was very gentle with the horse. Not surprised. 🙂

              There are so many wonderful horse
              scenes/situations, it is amazing and not to mention the beautiful Canadian Rockies scenery. Enjoy.

              1. I am truly enjoying. It is very like the actual horse world….good and very not good

                Thanks for your kind words re my daughter. Thank you for recommending heartland.

    2. As JJ suspected from SPC in the watch discussion:

      A tornado or two cannot be ruled out mainly across
      southeast New York into southern New England.

      1. With that 5% chance over a wide area, I am somewhat surprised
        they just didn’t issue a tornado watch?
        If conditions warrant it later, I am wondering if they would upgrade it?
        I have certainly seen a tornado watch when the outlook was 5%.
        I guess it is not a robust 5%. I dunno.

  22. Interesting that all of the models show Dorian as rejuvenized as it makes its pass
    by SNE. Some get Eastern MA pretty good while others not so much. Waiting
    on Euro. Lsst night’s run had 3 inches of rain for Boston with 50 mph gusts.
    Last night Harvey was almost sure Eastern MA would get into it.

  24. JpDave I remember back in August in the early 2010s the SPC did issue a severe thunderstorm watch initially and then the storms that formed were discrete over western CT and MA which prompted tornado warnings and the SPC decided to upgrade the severe thunderstorm watch to a tornado watch.

  25. This dry air may help us out
    Tweet from Meteorologist Ryan Hanrahan
    Storms to the northwest of us have struggled. Very dry air in the mid levels of the atmosphere may be stunting updraft development some.

  26. Dry air aloft is killing these storms. The clearing vs. no-clearing issue really doesn’t even matter here. This isn’t a problem you can fix by adding instability. So far it’s exactly what I was expecting: broken line of showers and storms with a couple stronger cores. There may be some window for intensification in the next 2-3 hours, but it will be a struggle because of the dry air aloft.

  28. re: storms today
    From the Albany Radar

    https://radblast.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/radar/WUNIDS_map?station=ENX&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=26126998&lat=0&lon=0&label=you

    It is now pretty much 2PM. These are a long ways away. It will pretty much past
    peak heating when they traverse Eastward. They are just too far away. I would have
    expected them in the Springfield to Worcester area by now.
    NOT impressed at the moment. Could change. We shall see.

  32. I can’t go without mentioning the fact that the President, in a White House briefing *today*, presented a photoshopped days old NHC forecast in which portions of the Gulf Coast including Alabama have been Sharpie’d into the cone. As Dennis Mersereau (@wxdam) pointed out on Twitter, this is a violation of federal law, not that I assume anyone will care.

    By the way, if you look at the actual forecast (minus the”edits”), you’ll see what I mean when I say the NHC track forecasts for Dorian have been superb.

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDo3fsfWwAACiZ8?format=jpg&name=medium

    2. Who used the sharpie on the map? Was it from someone from the NHC that was in the room. I watched the video but didn’t see him drawing anything. I will continue to dig.

      1. It was on the map when the president picked it up…he clearly made reference to Alabama again while looking at it. Crazy…who knows who drew it of he was aware of it.

      2. I’m not sure who actually made the edit. It’s just a very strange battle to keep fighting as it was clearly in relation to the Alabama comments from days ago. Given this is now going rather viral (“Sharpie” is currently trending number 9 nationally on Twitter), it would seem to have been much less hassle to just say he misspoke or just leave the old comments to die.

    4. Even when he was corrected by experts, he continued to insist it was true that Alabama; so sadly, this should not surprise anyone. It was a horribly dangerous claim to make let alone double down on it. As far as holding true to federal law, that ship sailed January 20, 2017.

      1. Vicki just broke a very important rule and should be held accountable. A suspension is in order.

        Am I allowed to respond to the political commentary on here?

        1. Well….hmmmmm. I responded to a lie that directly relates to weather and was not only spread by the leader of the free world but that he doubled down on once informed by various weather services that he was incorrect. Then again today he showed a map with a sharpie including Alabama. What he did was markedly irresponsible as it relates to weather. As far as my last sentence….I will sing my apologies from the rooftops if he is held responsible for the violation.

          All of that said….after he used a sharpie to perpetuate a blatant lie …..you think I should be suspended?

          1. Yes, you made it political and should be suspended. That is a big rule on here because of the past arguments that it created. Rules are the rules and must be followed to maintain peace and harmony on the blog. Vicki the rules apply to you and to all, you should not get a free pass.

            I assume TK’s rules about politics apply to you and he will do the right thing and issue a suspension.

  33. Looking at my Euro Services surface/precipitation maps, it has Dorian precipitation
    shield greatly expanding and reaching far out in front of the center. It has the rain
    shield all the way inland to Albany, NY.

    Most interesting

    https://imgur.com/a/7BVugzY

  37. Reconnaissance data indicates the Dorian is very gradually beginning to re-intensify (pressure down a couple millibars), which makes sense given some improvement in the satellite presentation today. It remains over warm waters and in a fairly light shear environment. However, it now has a very broad wind field as its once compact inner core was decimated by land interaction, dry air intrusion, and land interaction over the Bahamas. Because of the broadness of the wind field it will be difficult for the maximum winds to increase much if at all while conditions remain favorable for the next 36-48 hours. However, its large size will make it more dangerous for the Carolinas. I think there’s a lot of “Dorian fatigue” out there when in reality the worst US impacts are yet to come.

    3. Land interaction: so important I wrote it twice lol. One of those should have said cold water upwelling. A coworker of mine is temporarily deployed to NWS Charleston for this event. They’re in for a wild next 24 hours.

  39. There was very weak rotation in the GB cell.
    As of 4:30 there are 3 warnings out that highlight the strongest storms. These will pulse as they move east, but I think inside 495 we will start to see them fall apart. We did not heat sufficiently enough in eastern and southeastern areas to maintain them.

    2. I’ve been monitoring that cell for a couple hours. It had rotation for a while, but very weak, then it started to tighten up as it crossed the border.

    2. was on ch 5 news. Got a photo as it blocked the whole street and got a car, not mine, luckily as we live around the corner.

  46. You might remember that I posted this during past Hurricane events but on Shortwave (or HF as some call it) there is a Hurricane Watch net in effect on 14325 khz and 7628 khz. It’s run in conjunction with the NHC taking storm reports from affected areas as well as handling relay of emergency comms from those areas as needed. During the past few days it was active but with very little reporting being done due to the complete devastation on Abaco and Grand Bahama. I’m betting that there aren’t many of you on the list that have a shortwave radio but you can still listen to the net online at

    https://www.hwn.org/tools/streaming-audio.html

  49. Storm was collapsing as it went over us. Lots of lightning to our west and as it went overhead hardly any. Rained heavy briefly. .16” no hail or wind.
    Marks storm may be a different story.

  51. Home in Coventry now. Torrential rain and wind. Close shave indeed. Worst of this passed maybe a half mile north of me. I am hearing lots of branches down in the road just north of me and into Tolland. Just had a very close lightning strike and crack of thunder as well.

  55. Sharpie Gate was ……. and is over.

    https://twitter.com/RyanMaue

    Insane people: Extrapolating the NHC 5-day cone of Hurricane #Dorian is most definitely an impeachable offense.

    Normal people: yeah that’s probably a reasonable extrapolation into Day 7.

  58. Storm surge increasing near the FL/GA border and into Savananah.

    +4.1 ft surge at FL/GA border and +3.2 ft surge at Savannah.

    Saving grace, its low tide at those locations currently.

    This surge is likely moving up the coastline with the eye. So, somewhere up around northern GA, SC area may not be as fortunate, in that as the surge moves northward, those further north locations will experience this surge coninciding with high tide overnight.

    1. The eye of Dorian looking much better defined on radar and satellite this evening. Charleston already starting to get battered with the outer wall of heavy rain and strong east winds. I agree, it’s not going to be pretty for them later when the surge and tide increases.

  59. 0.55” in the rain gauge today
    1.69” in the first 4 days of September.
    6.88” on the month of August
    4.24” in July
    42.18” on the year….already pretty much to the annual average and only 2/3 through the year.

    Another wet summer and year overall as this long term wet regime continues. I guess it beats the alternative!

  60. https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/storminfo/05L_tracks_12z.png

    https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/storminfo/05L_tracks_00z.png

    I continue to feel uneasy about Dorian and southeastern New England.

    The top link is the 12z hurricane models from 12 hrs ago.

    The 2nd link is the new 00z hurricane models this evening.

    Focus on 40N latitude, 70W longitude, aka the benchmark.

    It is clear that there is perhaps a 25 to 40 mile northwest shift this evening.

    Tonight’s concencus is the benchmark.

    With Dorian transitioning to extra-tropical and receiving energy from a northern disturbance, I don’t think much further north and west to New England will be needed to start seeing some significant weather in SE Mass, not including just the Cape.

    Another 20 miles northwest every 12 hrs til Friday morning and that won’t be good at all.

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