Tuesday September 6 2022 Forecast (7:14AM)

55 Comments

Classic “warm rain” event. (We’ll go into that more later.) I didn’t want to buy it. Drought. But here is my time being wrong to highly underestimate the event’s potential, now becoming reality. And despite areas of flooding, which have mostly impacted roads in southern areas, this is generally a beneficial event for the region, greatly relieving drought conditions. Since a good portion of the rain will have occurred before the 8 a.m. Tuesday cut-off for the US Drought Monitor, we won’t have to wait long to see the assessment of positive impact. So now, how long do we have left in this event? A little longer. The entire system is slow to exit, and will still have the ability to deliver us rainfall for at least several more hours today, and have its clouds hang on for a while after that, into Wednesday. Finally, high pressure does build in following this with fair weather for the remainder of mid week all the way to the start of the weekend.

TODAY: Overcast. Areas of fog. Widespread showers, some heavy at times. Areas of road flooding, especially south of I-90. Highs 63-70. Dew point 60+. Wind NE up to 10 MPH.

TONIGHT: Cloudy. Areas of fog. Showers diminish from north to south. Lows 55-62. Dew point lowering to under 60. Wind NE up to 10 MPH.

WEDNESDAY: Mostly cloudy. Chance of showers South Coast morning. Areas of fog morning. Highs 66-73. Wind NE 5-15 MPH.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Clearing. Areas of ground fog overnight. Lows 48-55. Dew point upper 40s. Wind NE to N up to 10 MPH.

THURSDAY: Sunny. Highs 73-80. Dew point lower 50s. Wind N to E up to 10 MPH, except 15 MPH at the coast.

THURSDAY NIGHT: Clear. Patchy ground fog forming. Lows 53-60. Dew point lower 50s. Wind diminishing to calm.

FRIDAY: Sunny. Highs 75-82. Dew point 50s. Wind variable up to 10 MPH with coastal sea breezes.

FRIDAY NIGHT: Clear. Patchy ground fog forming. Lows 53-60. Dew point lower 50s. Wind variable under 10 MPH.

SATURDAY: Mostly sunny. Highs 76-83. Dew point 50s. Wind variable up to 10 MPH with coastal sea breezes.

DAYS 6-10 (SEPTEMBER 11-15)

High pressure hangs on with dry weather to finish the weekend. Early next week a frontal boundary and trough approach from the west with a warm-up and eventual shower chance, then seasonable and dry weather after that passes the region.

DAYS 11-15 (SEPTEMBER 16-20)

Overall pattern looks dry with variable but near to above normal temperatures as high pressure is in control much of the time, probably just one frontal boundary to pass through with a brief chance of showers.

55 thoughts on “Tuesday September 6 2022 Forecast (7:14AM)”

  1. Thanks TK !

    0.34 in Marshfield so far.

    The more moderate/heavy rain has been so close. True dome around the immediate south shore. (Marshfield, Cohasset, Scituate area)

    At least there’s a gentle light rain falling that is good for absorption. Seem to be tallying a few hundredths per hour.

  2. Good morning and thank you TK.
    Boston just not getting that much rain.
    As of about an hour ago, Logan had a whopping 0.66 inch. Wish it were more, but it was a rain that did not run off.

  3. Thanks TK

    1.51 yesterday. A fair amount ran off. But then I like to think it prepared the ground for the 1.58 overnight. 3.09 total so far. I’ll be curious to see how much runoff the drought monitor takes into account. We dug down yesterday afternoon and the ground was not wet. We had 0.98 at that point. It could be our soil type. This neighborhood was once a sandpit.

      1. Your area and mine have seen some similar amounts or non amounts throughout.

        We are still adding. Up to 3.61 now.

  8. Thanks, TK

    2.53″ here in western Taunton for the event.

    No classes today for the Captain because of the state primaries. Middleborough uses MHS as it principal polling place.

  9. Thank you, TK.

    Back Bay has received a grand total of 0.73 inch over a 30 hour period. It’s still raining gently, but we won’t get to 1 inch. Still, it’s better than nothing.

  10. though tropical storm Earl was not suppose to hit me and it technically didn’t as it moved north of the USVI. Feeder bands and being right on the edge. We have gotten about 11 inches since Saturday night. I lost power Sunday, luckily got it back but the thunderstorms and showers had heavy rain and near tropical storm force winds at times. We are still getting heavy rain and thunderstorms and gusty winds. 2 nights ago. https://twitter.com/Souza101Matt/status/1566800884025131009

    1. A good example of not needed a “direct hit” of a system to see a significant impact. Stay safe.

    2. Be safe, Matt. That is a good reminder of exactly what TK said. I’ve seen events downplayed in the past unless they were a direct hit or didn’t have an official categorization.

  13. Its trying to rain a bit steadier.

    Whatever this setup was, the upper support for it just waned near the immediate eastern Mass coastline.

    I’m curious to see what immediate east Coastal Mass will look like on the next drought update.

    1. I can’t recall but I seem to remember hearing somewhere that there was a sliver of improvement in drought conditions down your way.

      Do we know if runoff is taken into account for the drought map? Many of the numbers Longshot shows in many places are at or below numbers we have seen in other events.

        1. I agree. I had checked reporting. I know some areas definitely have more than during last events. I’m in one of them. We now have 3.78”. We may squeak 4 out today.

          I’m am curious as to whether runoff is considered for drought monitors. I wrote to Dave E. My guess is he is too busy to respond but thought I’d give it a try

          1. Hi Vicki, I believe it is. They reference soil moisture content, when speaking about current drought (or lack thereof) conditions.

  14. The tiny (but beautiful) state of RI has some rather incredible differences in terms of amounts. From 0.02 inch on Block Island to over 10 inches in Cranston.

  19. Starting to look like the beginning of the end to my untrained eye. Blob on radar seems to be shrinking and breaking up a bit.

    1. Agreed. I think that drying from the north and east is beginning.

      We were borderline moderate rain from 9 to 11:30 am, but it has definitely eased off to almost sprinkles.

      1. Barely raining here.
        Although this really produced in some areas, it was almost non-existent in other areas. Although I am most grateful for the .8 inch or so received here, it is a far cry from what it could have been. I was hoping for the 2 inch mark at least. NOPE!

        1. Agreed ! Some improvement in the short term even in our areas. But, 2-4 dry days within a few miles of the east coast from Boston to all of Cape Cod and I’m thinking we’re back where we were before this event.

  20. Logan 24 hour precip total is 0.79 so that is about it so far. They may have picked up 0.01 allowing for the start time yesterday,

    There appears to be more rain on the way, so Logan will likely pass the 1 inch mark before it all ends.

  21. ALL of Logan’s hourly observations since onset of rain have
    show LIGHT RAIN! NEVER moderate or heavy.
    Great of absorption, but not good for qpf.

  22. Just saw a tweet for 120 in thr Bay Area…specifically Walnut Creek area. I spoke to my BiL. He said he hadn’t heard those temps. He is about 7 miles SSE and reached 111 yesterday. Walnut Creek was a bit higher. They have not had temps that high in his memory. They did head to the beach which was just shy of 40degrees cooler. Silly me posted yesterday that I thought all the very high temps were in southern CA

    https://twitter.com/us_stormwatch/status/1567161164316176384?s=21&t=qCgQOhZQuWDVRkxyFGGF2w

  23. Here in Back Bay it was light rain throughout. Often just very light rain, with pauses, too. There was a brief period last night during which I observed what I would call moderate rain. But that quickly tapered after around a 25 minute burst. I’m at 0.76 for the entire event. It’s raining very gently right now. Sort of like the snow you get at the end of a storm. Won’t amount to much.

    Important to note that throughout the event what we see on radar (the different colors and shades of a particular color, in particular) has NOT matched the actual rain intensity, at least not in Boston. It should have been light green the entire time, yet I’ve seen dark blobs since yesterday afternoon. I don’t know what’s up with that. I also don’t believe any of the notices posted for my zip code warranted including the phrase “locally heavy rain possible.” While I understood those messages yesterday, they should not be posted now, unless “locally” has a totally different meaning to them. To me, “locally” means in and around your locale; within a 5-10 mile radius, perhaps.

    1. I did my 6 mile run just now in light to occasionally moderate rain. There were two bursts that lasted about 5-10 minutes each. Raining steadily right now. Perhaps 1 inch is achievable after all. My gauge now says 0.81.

  24. About 2.50 here in Pepperell and still raining lightly. Grass has steadily been returning. A lot more greens now vs a week or 2 ago.

  25. SE Sutton just went over 4.00. Still light rain. I’m loving this. I figure we will be able to see what parts of the lawn we lost and hopefully will be able to water so we can seed

  27. CPC says not so fast in terms of continued drough relief. They do have it a tad to the wetter side in the 6-10 which reflects next week’s early to mid week window of opportunity, but after that it looks fairly dry again.

    The definite good news: We’re lowering the sun angle, lessening the heat potential, and shortening the daylight, so the impact cannot be as great as earlier in the summer.

    The possible good news: The guidance did not really peg this event until just a handful of days before so who knows…maybe something lurks that we just don’t “see” yet, to continue the benefit down the road? Either way, we’ll break out of it completely. It’s just a matter of time.

    1. Not so fast in this being drought relief or not so fast in anything continuing? Actually, I guess either way puts us back in drought

      1. My wording makes no sense. I meant did they say not so fast in thinking of this event as drought relief. Or did they mean even though we have some relief now, they don’t see any more relief going forward (which I think of as negating whatever relief we might have from this)

      2. Sorry for the confusion. I was just alluding to the fact their outlook 8 days and beyond is warm and dry, so the hint there is that we don’t really follow this event up with too much. However, we do have that potential early to mid next week, so we’ll see what that does for us and move forward from there. 🙂

  29. Yesterday I alluded to “warm rain” and said we’d get back to that. I had intended to write more about it, but this week is an insanely busy and crazy one for me, so I cheated and grabbed what I thought was a good quick explanation from a UM Wisconsin weather blog credited to “The Weather Guys” from 2019. This is their writing, not mine, and it references Madison specifically because of where it comes from, so you can ignore that part or just change that to most anywhere in the northern US. 🙂

    “Warm rain results from the joining together of a cloud’s liquid water droplets. For the rain to be warm, temperatures throughout the cloud must be above freezing, so ice particles are absent.

    Rainmaking is not easy. A single, small raindrop is a collection of about 1 million cloud droplets. A typical cloud droplet is usually 10 times smaller than the periods in this article.

    One process to produce a large drop quickly is to combine many smaller particles. To form rain, the cloud droplets have to bump into each other and merge together through a process called collision and coalescence.

    The process of combining cloud droplets through collision-coalescence is an important mechanism for forming precipitation in clouds composed solely of liquid water droplets.

    Here’s how the process works. Water droplets of different sizes move at different speeds as gravity and vertical motions within the cloud act on them. The difference in speed increases the chance of collisions, as does any turbulent motions in the cloud.

    Almost all precipitation particles that fall in Madison begin as ice particles, even in summer. The frozen particles completely melt, reaching the ground as raindrops, which means that rain is usually cold. In contrast, rain in Hawaii is typically warm rain, as the cloud top temperatures are typically below the freezing level.

    Lightning requires frozen ice particles along with liquid droplets. Because most rain in Hawaii is warm rain, you rarely hear thunder in that state.”

    There’s your basic idea. When the conditions are right, as they were this time, “warm rain” can produce quite a bit of rainfall accumulation when sustained.

    NOTE: This started as a borderline event when the front was still coming through, but soon evolved to a warm rain event. We were able to maximize this “warm rain” event by way of a warm cloud layer (above to well above freezing) about 10,000 feet thick or even more, a frontal boundary draped over our southern area just in the right place to maximize lift of air over it and wringing out the moisture, as well as additional moisture being delivered by a weak southern jet stream branch and energy (a short wave) coming along a weak northern jet stream branch. Having the two branches of the jet stream present in summertime is not particularly unusual, as they tend to “be there” at times but rather weak. This time, the moisture, energy, and other factors were all in the right places at the the time, and for a fairly lengthy duration of time.

    As a forecaster, and somebody who is always learning because I’m a scientist, I realize that I completely underestimated the power and potential of this set-up, and will be keeping a closer eye out for such events in the future. Part of the process. 🙂

    Bottom line: Great benefit for our drought relief, despite some of the flooding that came along with it. Sometimes the latter is inevitable. It could have been much worse – we all know that.

  31. Thank you for posting that interesting article on the warm rain process TK.
    I’m just about done with the rain here in Sturbridge and closing in on 5” (4.94”) to be exact. Even with all of that rain the wetland that abuts my property is only about 1/4 full, had this been in a wetter summer or in the spring this amount of rain in such a short period of time would bring it to the top of the road.

    1. Wow. You did well. I’ll check our wetlands tomorrow. We have a lot. But that doesn’t surprise me.

      We ended up with 4.25 even for both days.

      1. 4.33 here. I watched that line go through here yesterday of heavy rain and then it just stopped over Providence and kept regenerating. We were very lucky here.

        Vicki, how was your basement?

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