8:25PM
A stormy night is underway, but the rain part of it will not last long. The heaviest is moving into the Boston area from the southwest as of 8PM and will be gone in about 4 hours. The positives about this are that it is quick-moving, the unfrozen ground allows absorption of the rain, and the lack of a frozen snowpack means less threat of flooding.
The main story with this system will be the wind. Strong south to southwest winds may occur with the heaviest rain especially south of the Mass Pike. As the storm passes north of the area and moves away Wednesday, strong northwest winds are expected on the back side. Some minor wind damage may occur, and power outages, though not widespread, are not out of the question. Dry weather will be back for Wednesday, with any snow showers hanging out in the Mountains far west and north of Boston as colder air moves in. Temperatures will fall during the day.
Expected a cold and dry Thursday as high pressure dominates.
By Friday, warmer air will try to move back in, and riding up over the cold air it will generate some snow and rain showers in the region. By late in the day and at night, a stronger impulse is expected to cross the region and may produce a general period of mixed precipitation to snow, with just enough cold air in place. By later Saturday, New Year’s Eve, mostly dry weather is expected but a gusty breeze and chilly air is likely. It will not be frigid, however, as some New Year’s Eves have been around these parts.
A milder day is expected for the first day of 2012.
Longer range models are divergent in their forecasts for what goes on during the first week of 2012, with one showing weak weather systems and no major storms, while the other shows a major storm threat for the East Coast. In the interest of the New Year’s weekend upcoming, and many other things going on during the next few days for holiday week traveling, I’m going to just leave next week alone for now and look at it later.
On to the details…
TONIGHT: Rain, moderate to heavy at times, with a chance of thunder, ending from southwest to northeast by 2AM, with partial clearing following. Temperature rising to around 50. Wind S shifting to SW 15-25 MPH with higher gusts, especially south of Boston.
WEDNESDAY: Partly cloudy to mostly sunny. Temperature falling through the 40s into the 30s. Wind W 15-25 MPH gusting over 30 MPH, shifting to NW by late in the day.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Mostly clear. Low 15-20. Wind NW 15-25 MPH and gusty. Wind chill falling below 10 at times.
THURSDAY: Sunny. High 30-35. Wind NW 10-20 MPH.
FRIDAY: Cloudy. Chance of rain or snow showers. Steadier mix or snow at night. Low 18. High 38.
SATURDAY – NEW YEAR’S EVE: Snow/mix early. PM snow showers. Low 29. High 37.
SUNDAY – NEW YEAR’S DAY: Partly sunny. PM rain showers. Low 29. High 44.
MONDAY – NEW YEAR’S HOLIDAY OBSERVED: Partly sunny. PM snow showers. Low 25. High 40.
TUESDAY: Mostly sunny. Low 15. High 31.
Thanks TK. What do you think of WeatherWizard’s thoughts and can you explain the MJO levels he is talking about???
MJO is hard to explain. Think of it as a wave propagating slowly around the globe, and where it is sits enhanced convection, impacting weather around the world in various ways, depending on where the enhancement is. Breaking it down from there is very complex.
JimmyJames –
WOW! Some post!
No idea, but it was impressive, guess time will tell!
TJ
That was WeatherWizard post from the BZ blog. I copied and pasted it here.
Hey TJ… Your right time will tell and as I said yesterday way too early to call this winter a dud.
Is the snow accumulating fri nite into sat morning? We are supposed to drive to Scituate around 8:00 am sat thank you!!
I believe we will see accumulating snow, but don’t look for a major storm.
Wind really picked up here.
Hi All,
I am down in a hotel in Newport, RI and have not seen any updates. I would say the winds are gusting right on the coast to about 60 MPH, that is an approximation. Does that make sense? Has anyone heard any reports.
It makes sense. New Haven has gusted to 63 MPH.
Thanks for the update. That is not surprising at all. It is really roaring out here. Finally a little excitement this winter. I hope there is not a lot of damage but I won’t be surprised if there is some.
Newton = moderate rain, 50 degrees, and winds increasing.
Up here in Maine and about 4 inches of snow on the ground but rain is coming in tonight so probably will wash away most of it before it freezes.
TK…what does “SOI” stand for?? WW’s post was even further over my head than usual. From what I can tell from his post, SOI is important to blocking.
Southern Oscillation Index
(I know I’m not TK)
To add to Scott’s reply… (i.e., El Nino, La Nina, or ‘La Nada’).
Thanks Scott and TK! 🙂
what was WW saying i kind of got it but i want to know if i actually no what it means
I understand it to mean don’t give up on this winter and things might be changing.
I wish that WW would start posting over here and stop wasting his posts over on WBZ. Very few really respond and those that do are usually trolls. Over here we could have some really good dialogue back-and-forth even though most of his posts are over our heads to some extent.
Has WW been formerly invited over here??
I thought he was going to be invited over here but I am not sure. I sort of understand some of the things he says but the more technical stuff like MJO is way over my head.
Jimmy, you are certainly way ahead of me…I didn’t even know what “SOI” stood for until Scott and TK expained it, Lol. 🙂
I googled it after I read it on WW’s post, and that’s as far as my knowledge goes for that term.
Henry Margusity was talking about SOI values last month so I googled it.
GFS picking up some precip over the weekend. Nothing major but as TK eluded some snow.
It’s also trended toward the EURO for next week.
Something to keep an eye on. Hopefully the result will be different and we could get some snowfall around these parts.
Both BaileyMan and WeatherWizard have been officially invited to the blog.
I hope to see them commenting here. They would be great additons to the blog.