Storm Comin’

36 Comments

5:32PM

The overall outlook has not changed too much since my last post. The only tweaks are to delay the arrival of rain slightly on Wednesday, and possibly add more cloudiness to the Saturday forecast.

The makings of the storm for Wednesday and Wednesday night are a combo of energy from the Midwest moving east and low pressure and tropical moisture moving north from near Florida. All of this rides up the East Coast during the next couple days. The eventual main low center will pass west of the Boston area, allowing a dry slot to move in on Thursday, putting an end to the rain and possibly resulting in some clearing. I’ll lean optimistic for Thursday afternoon at this time.

I still expect the end of the week to be generally fair and cooler but some upper level troughing may allow for more cloudiness than might have been expected. I’m still working on those details and we’ll fine-tune the late week forecast as we go through the week. In the mean time you’ll find a fairly generic and safe forecast for the late week period.

Boston Area Forecast…

TONIGHT: Mostly clear to start then clouds return later. Low 45-50. Wind light variable.

WEDNESDAY: Cloudy. Rain developing from south to north during the afternoon hours. Heavy rain may move in from the south in time for the late afternoon rush hour, the greatest chance of this being south of Boston. High 55-60. Wind NE 5-15 MPH increasing to 15-25 MPH.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Cloudy. Rain, heavy at times, tapering to showers from south to north. Slight chance of thunderstorms early. Areas of fog. Low 50-55. Wind E 15-30 MPH shifting to SE.

THURSDAY: Cloudy with patchy fog and a chance of showers during the morning. Becoming partly sunny in the afternoon. High 65-70. Wind SE  10-20 MPH shifting to SW.

FRIDAY: Mostly sunny. Low 44. High 60.

SATURDAY: Variably cloudy. Low 44. High 58.

SUNDAY: Partly cloudy. Low 40. High 59.

MONDAY: Partly cloudy. Low 44. High 64.

TUESDAY: Mostly sunny. Low 46. High 62.

36 thoughts on “Storm Comin’”

  1. Thanks TK!
    Can you look into your magic ball and predict the conditions in Keene/Swanzey, NH? The timing of my trip is early Saturday Morning to Mid Day Sunday.

    Thanks again!

  2. Interesting…the very latest 14-day CPC outlook now has gradual cooling for the rest of the month. Above normal rainfall however, is still very much on the table. It will be interesting as to exactly how warm October 2011 will officially end up in the ranking.

    TK, is the gradual cooling (assuming this CPC prediction holds) the beginning of the new regime?…or will there be one final warm-up (Indian Summer) during November?

    1. It may be more like a tease or preview. I think we’re going to get beyond the 1st week of November before we really see the new one setting up. And we will have a shot of 70+ in early November.

  3. The foliage in Boston and its immediate suburbs look more like mid-September than mid-October. My bet is that we will still be raking well after Thanksgiving into early December at this rate. The tv mets keep saying we are about a week or two behind schedule but IMO it seems more like 3 weeks to even a full month behind.

    In my neighborhood, there are very few leaves actually on the ground, and most of those are a fairly green/very dull brown mix. The recent strong winds just simply blew them down more than anything else.

  4. Hi Vicki,

    Sometime this week at your convenience, can you post our snowfall numbers you received so far? I am just curious more than anything else….Thanks in advance. 🙂

  5. It’s quite amazing to see how the GFS is giving most folks .5-1″” of rain tomorrow, while the NAM is giving most folks 2-4″ of rain.

    1. The NAM looks to have the right idea on this storm. The storm is a quick mover so it should be all done by tomorrow morning.

  6. Off -topic post: The Bruins have lost once again…this time 4-1 to Carolina Hurricanes.

    Even in their 39 years w/o winning the cup, they almost always got off to great starts at least. I hope this isn’t going to be a “Red Sox 2011”-type year.

    I am not familiar with the B’s schedule, but I thought I heard that they are currently starting on a long homestand to boot?

    1. They’ll be ok. An early-season slump for a cup defending team is not all that uncommon. They’ll have a winning record and make the playoffs. And like last year, they’ll be a better road team than home team…

  7. I wonder what the record highs are for Thursday…….if they are in the 70s or 80s and how warm it could get tomorrow if the sun comes out for any appreciable amount of time…….GFS sure maintains a signal for something to happen around the Halloween timetable. Halloween weather, for the most part, the last several years has been fair and rather mild, as I have taken my kids trick or treating in a lot of comfortable, pleasant weather.

    1. My husband and I were trying to remember how many halloweens it had rained when our kids were growing up. I can remember one in particular and maybe one other. It seemed as if it were a whole lot colder when they were little than it has been in the past five years we’ve been going with the grandkids which as you said have been quite nice.

  8. It just began raining in Framingham. I have what may seem a silly question but I don’t remember seeing this before. The radar has the cells moving in from southwest to northeast (at least that’s what I see) My window is facing north/northwest and the clouds appear to be moving from east to west which seems opposite of what radar is telling me. Is this the circular motion at the top of the area moving in and I’m just not seeing those clouds on radar I’m looking at?

    Sorry if this is confusing

    1. Hi Vicki.

      The precip producing clouds way up high are moving southwest to northeast and thus, so is the precip shield.

      Down in altitude, lower clouds (maybe a couple thousand ft up) are being driven more by the surface winds and thus, those are moving East to West.

  9. Hi Tom…the record high for Thursday is 79 set in 1969. I kinda doubt we will tie or break but we could come fairly close. My personal prediction is 75F. 🙂

    I also agree with Vicki…Halloween’s past were more on the chilly side. I usually had to wear a jacket under my costume. 🙂

  11. I was a bit off on the timing of the rain’s arrival today. I’d say it was about 3 hours early based on what I forecast. Mother Nature must throw curve balls to keep us on our toes in the forecasting department though. 🙂

    1. TK, you have absolutely nothing to apologize for…AFAIC the sooner the rain arrives, the sooner it gets outta here! 🙂

      1. Well, I will say this: I was already calling for a dry slot tomorrow while NWS still had “showers likely” so I beat them to that one. And I think it’s a lock we clear out and hit 70 tomorrow.

  12. It is raining heavily south of Boston and the wind is pretty gusty. Its that kind of thick rain that if you spend 10 seconds out in it, your drenched.

  13. Hi Philip – I hadn’t seen your request to post these – sorry. Please don’t ever hesitate to ask again since I’ll always reply if I see it. It’s a good idea to post so anyone I missed can let me know too.

    Philip 53
    JimmyJames 43
    Vicki 38
    Rainshine 30
    Tom 27
    Coastal 79
    John 48
    Old Salty 60
    Charlie 23
    Scott 84
    Merlin 67

    1. Thanks again Vicki…I can hardly wait to see TK’s number, which I suspect will be very much on the “higher” end assuming the new regime begins on schedule.

  14. Its interesting…..Even though all areas are relatively mild, it is still evident in the surface observations to see a temp contrast that is so critical in winter storms. From about the south shore, down to the Cape and including Rhode Island, its in the low 60s, while Boston, west and north are in the mid 50s.

    1. and, had this been snow, the south shore would have received somewhere between 1-3 inches in the last hour alone. The rain has been soaking.

  15. I said the other day too bad this was not December, January, or February because this could have been a good dumping of snow.
    I have to give credit to the Farmers’ Almanac since they got lucky on this one and predicted stormy conditons between the 16-19 of this month.

  18. Hey Philip…. Will see how much of a workout it gets this winter. Last year there were a couple level 3 storms and one level 4 which was the post Christmas blizzard.

Comments are closed.