DAYS 1-5 (MAY 24-28)
High pressure will be in control of our weather today through Wednesday, first centered to our north then slipping down over and eventually southeast of our area, so today will be the cooler and breezier of the two days with a northeasterly wind. We’ll also see periodic higher level cloudiness from abundant moisture to our south. With a low pressure trough approaching from the west and high pressure offshore of the Atlantic Coast we get into a more southerly air flow Thursday and Friday, with a warming trend, but also a fair amount of cloudiness at times too. We may not end up seeing much rainfall around here though as it looks like a lot of that will remain to our west. This is a slower evolution than some guidance had yesterday and this lends a little more credibility to the more unsettled weather scenario as we head into the Memorial Day Weekend – a forecast that still needs a lot of work. For now though, I’m leaning toward an unsettled Saturday to start it off, with lots of clouds and some wet weather, but probably not a widespread rainfall either, though we finally get the trough of low pressure and frontal boundary right into our region.
TODAY: Cloud/sun mix. Highs 58-65 immediate coast, 65-72 inland. wind NE 5-15 MPH, gusts around 20 MPH.
TONIGHT: Mostly clear. Lows 38-45 interior valleys, 45-52 elsewhere. Wind NE under 10 MPH to calm.
WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny. Highs 65-72, coolest coast. Wind variable to SE up to 10 MPH.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Variably cloudy. Lows 50-57. Wind SE under 10 MPH.
THURSDAY: Partly sunny. Highs 65-72. Wind SE-S 5-15 MPH.
THURSDAY NIGHT: Mostly cloudy. Lows 58-65. Wind S 5-15 MPH.
FRIDAY: Mostly cloudy. Chance of showers. More humid. Highs 66-73 coast, 73-80 inland. Wind S 10-20 MPH.
FRIDAY NIGHT: Mostly cloudy. Chance of showers, possibly a thunderstorm. Patchy fog. Humid. Lows 58-65. Wind S to variable up to 10 MPH.
SATURDAY: Mostly cloudy. Chance of showers. Areas of fog and drizzle. Humid. Highs 65-72, cooler coast. Wind variable up to 10 MPH.
DAYS 6-10 (MAY 29 – JUNE 2)
The forecast for the remainder of the Memorial Day Weekend (May 29-30) is low confidence but for now leaning toward just a chance of a few showers around on Sunday and improving but cooler weather Monday with more of an onshore air flow as high pressure to the north pushes low pressure away to the south. End May / early June should feature fair and seasonably mild weather with weak high pressure in control.
DAYS 11-15 (JUNE 3-7)
Early June pattern continues to look like it will be somewhere between weak zonal flow and weak omega blocking with us on the drier side of the pattern overall, along with mostly seasonable temperatures.
Thanks TK.
Thanks TK.
Thank you!!
Good morning and thank you TK.
So what you are saying is to expect typical SPRING weather. 🙂
Yes. 🙂
Thanks you, TK!
Thanks TK.
Thanks TK !
The GFS, based on its 12z run for Memorial Day weekend, is re-hired. 🙂 🙂 🙂
I fired it yesterday.
Now that looks a little better, doesn’t it????
I am liking it as well. No stinken 90s, but not stinken 50s either!
much better 🙂 🙂 🙂
Hahahahahaha.
The GFS is at it again. It develops a weak tropical system near the Bahamas, sends it up into the Carolinas, while developing another one in the Caribbean which crosses Cuba and the Bahamas, and then heads right up the East Coast the first weekend in June.
Sure, I believe it. I also believe that the Patriots are going to go 17-0 this season and win the Super Bowl.
My daughter is graduating June 4th, so that could have some credibility, LOL !!
HAHAHA!
Pats have a better shot at going 17-0 than that run has of verifying. 🙂
I asked about it the other day. This is the part I don’t understand. Aren’t models simply guidance to use for Mets who then use their training to evaluate and then forecast as time gets closer.
Patriots did go 18-0 before they “succumbed” to the Giants in the SB not all that long ago. 😉
Yes, which is why we know (or try to find out) when they are not going to give us a good picture.
My old quote I’ve used since the day my mentor (vice president of the first private weather company in the USA) said: “Guidance is as much about knowing what not to believe as it is what to believe.” 🙂 That’s exactly what we are doing.
And that makes perfect sense. I have never thought Mets looked to models for answers. It is why criticism of them has me asking questions. Heck….We all know….even my grandkids know….models are just guidance.
It’s not criticism in the same way you’d criticize a living person. It’s pointing out which one(s) are doing well and which ones we believe, as scientists, are not. Sometimes we use a little humor to do this.
Since the subject of the blog is weather, my experience as a meteorologist is used to try to point out where things are working well and where they are not, so folks that may not have that background and experience but yet look at the models (since they are available) can have an idea of what we are looking at. 🙂
It’s like any science. You use your tools, and as you use them you observe (and often report) what is working and what isn’t. This is how we learn, which is the main point of any science to begin with. This is just one aspect of one of them. 🙂
That is where my disconnect is. We know more than three days out they are lacking. It’s my understanding that the models are doing their job…guidance. You said that. Another commenter here said the same a few days ago.
Even with the warm spells mentioned here days ahead, the models saw higher temps. And the Mets did an exceptional job interpreting just how high the temps would go.
How do we fault them for doing the job they are intended to do…guide meteorologists but not forecast for them.
I guess I’m just tired of negatives.
I (and others), using our meteorological experience, try to point out when we think the guidance is doing well (at any time frame, before or after 3 days). It’s just part of the process.
A good example I can give you is today’s 12z GFS displayed an intense cyclone on its run coming right up the East Coast around the first weekend after having no such feature even hinted at previously. That is one of the red flags we look for. And then we look to see if it goes on with future runs of the model, and during that process try to determine if it’s catching something that is distinctly possible or displaying one of its shortcomings. My initial assessment today was that the 12z run was displaying a feature that won’t really be there, due to some kind of error in the process of the run (could either be a programming issue that misfires given certain conditions, or a piece of bad data going into the run). On the next run from 18z I’ve noticed that feature has vanished. While this does not prove without doubt that the previous run is bad, it gives a piece of evidence toward that conclusion. If you see enough of these, you start to get a better idea of where each model displays its biases to the point of a “bad” forecast, meaning a model run that I (or any met) may feel is not useful. We always keep in mind the normal forecast error that takes place the further out you get from the intial time, but there are going to be instances when the model(s) perform better than that, and the error is smaller, and other instances where they perform more poorly and the error is greater than the average, sometimes considerably so.
This is the ongoing process we go through daily with the guidance, or as you said, one of our tools in forecasting. We know that the accuracy drops off with time, but that level of inaccuracy can vary greatly and one of our jobs is to try to determine where, in relation to “normal”, the error is. 🙂
“How do we fault them for doing the job they are intended to do…guide meteorologists but not forecast for them.”
This is the problem. For nearly all of the weather apps out there, and for a lot of meteorologists too, they take the models as gospel and that is what they use as their forecast. I’ve see in first hand with some of the younger meteorologists we’ve brought in here to intern or even hired full-time. None of them lasted too long.
My boss has another saying “If the models were as good as some people think they are, they’d be no need for meteorologists”
Thanks SAK. TK and I took the discussion off of here.
I’m glad you also confirmed that the models are doing their job of offering guidance so Mets can use that guidance in order to do theirs.
Fire on the deck time. Enjoy your evening
Shock of shocks, NOAA is expecting another above average hurricane season.
https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-predicts-above-normal-2022-atlantic-hurricane-season
Maybe if they didn’t name every rotating thunderstorm over water, the numbers wouldn’t be so high.
Thank you, TK.
Another school shooting. TX. My God. When does it end.
14 children 1 teacher killed in that school shooting in an elementary school near San Antonio.
No words other than what the heck is wrong with this country
Whatever it is needs fixing, and has for a long time. 🙁
Sure does. And yet We do nothing
Hearing that story brings back memories of what happened here in CT at the Sandy Hook Elementary School where 20 children were killed along with 6 teachers.
Me as well, JJ. Beyond anything I will ever understand
I’m very comfortable having played the middle ground between the two extremes that we were seeing on yesterday’s runs because the guidance is already starting to converge toward that…
When you see two extremes like that odds are against either one of them verifying and usually the eventual truth lies somewhere between…
I know it is still only Tuesday but I think the Memorial Day Weekend is still not going to be all that bad…
I fielded a lot of questions on social media today about the “rainy weekend we’re going to have”. I suspect the vast majority if not all of those people came to that conclusion not because they heard it from local media but because they interpreted it that way incorrectly from either TV radio or weather app. We still need work on interpretation The forecasts that I have heard have been carefully worded. But I did set those queries straight today. On we go!
Good comment. We will never get rid of the naysayers. It takes an inordinate amount of willpower to ignore them….I know that first hand. Best scenario may be to play to the positives. Feeding the negatives only gives them what they want.
I will now go repeat that to myself 100 times
🙂
FWIW, the 12z GFS seemed to be a one-time odd run. 18z is back to more normal looking for that time frame.
Now it’s time to focus on some evening chores, mostly outside, and it’s a very nice evening for those. 🙂
Not forgetting the people senselessly lost today – with heavy yet hopeful heart, I hope all of this can be gotten under control in the time before us.
Have a good evening everyone!
P.S. Tomorrow is Harvey’s last regular evening on Ch 5 WCVB. Glad he’ll still be “around”.
P.P.S. … As an addition to the earlier discussion about models, I saw a great example of the use of meteorology informing the public on TV this evening by Pete Bouchard, on his 7PM weathercast.
He showed what I am pretty sure was a futurecast version of GFS (maybe their in-house model, he did not specify), and it had widespread green (rain) over us on the weekend, but he wisely noted to his viewers: “I know it looks like we’re getting inundated with rain on the map, but this is really just a few showers. This model can’t distinguish between the two.” This is the type of thing I LOVE to see used on air and in any media by a meteorologist. If you’re going to show the models and/or if the non-met public is going to have access to them, make the effort to inform them what they are looking at, including the limitations. Well-done, Mr. Bouchard.
I’m not at all surprised Pete focuses on Positive education.
New weather post…