Thursday Forecast

62 Comments

7:33AM

DAYS 1-5 (AUGUST 4-8)…
High pressure remains in control through Friday. A cold front crosses the region Saturday with only limited shower and thunderstorm activity. High pressure regains control after that.
TODAY: Mostly sunny. Highs 75-80 coast, 80-85 interior. Wind light variable to light SE.
TONIGHT: Mostly clear. Patchy ground fog. Lows 58-63 interior, 63-68 coast/urban areas. Wind light SE to S.
FRIDAY: Mostly sunny. More humid. Highs 78-83 South Coast, 84-89 elsewhere. Wind S up to 10 MPH.
SATURDAY: Partly sunny. Risk of isolated to scattered showers and thunderstorms. Lows 65-73. Highs 80-90, coolest South Coast.
SUNDAY: Partly sunny. Lows 62-70. Highs 80-90, coolest Cape Cod.
MONDAY: Mostly sunny. Lows 60-68. Highs 78-88, coolest Cape Cod.

DAYS 6-10 (AUGUST 9-13)…
A mainly dry pattern. Only a risk of a few showers/storms about the middle of the period with a passing front. Temperatures near to above normal.

DAYS 11-15 (AUGUST 14-18)…
No major changes in the pattern. Lack of rain. Temperatures near to above normal.

62 thoughts on “Thursday Forecast”

  6. Thanks TK!

    I have been noticing a lot of dead, dying or totally brown trees. These are mighty tall once proud trees that have been around for decades, if not for a century. One day Eric mentioned that the fall foliage will likely be early.

    Logan deficit = -7.05″

    2. Sadly they have had a triple whammy….drought, gypsy moths and winter moths. I sure agree with you that it is heartbreaking

      1. Our crab apple tree that was completely defoliated by the gypsy moths has recently sprung back to life and grew new foliage.

        1. Did you water it? OR was this in response to the rain
          the other day? Curious.

          I have been watering our Weeping Cherry Tree that
          was wiped out last year by the Winter Moth Caterpillars.
          This year, although, we weren’t attacked by the caterpillars (I think that really cold spell in March killed off the eggs) , it did not bloom, nor did all of the leaves come out. I kept watering it and it did come to life. New leaves and it looks healthy again.

          1. I didn’t water it. I think it’s just resilient. I hate the damn ugly thing though and was hoping this was an excuse to cut it down. With your weeping cherry, I observed many in and around the area had the same thing happen this year, didn’t flower and didn’t fully leaf. I have a feeling that was due to that unusually cold week during the spring that killed off early budding/flowering trees and shrubs. My forsythia were a casualty of that cold snap too. Never flowered.

  7. Looking at the 6z runs of the American models. The NAM brings greater than 1,000 instability for all of SNE along with some other severe parameters that are impressive. The GFS seems to be focusing on CT with the greater than 1,000 instability and has super cell values in the 1-2 range. Mid Level Lapses Rates on both models generally less than 6.0.

    1. Let’ see what the 12Z runs have to say.
      Although there may be “some” thunderstorms, I am not overly impressed or
      concerned about severe weather at this time. I suppose it could change, but
      not ringing my bell so far. 😀

  9. I wouldn’t rule out a locally strong storm in spots Saturday but something widespread don’t see it.

  10. RE: SPC

    Take a look at these 2 maps:

    1. Today’s outlook

    http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1otlk_1300.gif?1470318109402

    Notice the marginal and slight areas.

    2. Latest SREF chance Of Severe thunderstorms for today

    http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/sref/gifs/latest/SREF_24HR_SVR_PROBS__f024.gif

    Notice how the Marginal severe encompasses ALL of the 15% chance of severe and above from the outlook map While the Slight Severe has most, but not all, of the 25% severe and above.

    Interesting.

    1. As a comparison, SREF shows most of SNE in only a 10% chance of severe with a small area in 20% for Saturday.

  11. While not zero percentages not impressive.
    To me this year there has not been a setup that has been overly exciting. Back here on July 1st when we had the tornado watch in parts of CT there was a little excitement but when clouds increased later that morning and we couldn’t fully destabilize the potential wouldn’t be maximized. Had that sun stayed out longer and those storms arrived later I feel the outcome would have been different but thankfully that did not happen.

  12. It looks like the 12Z NAM wants to slow the front down a tad on Saturday, bringing the best instability to SNE between 21Z and 0Z, which is just about prime time. I’d prefer
    it to be between 18Z and 21Z. But what are we to do?

    Will post some parameters in a bit. Have to go take care of something.

  13. New US Drought Monitor was released this morning. A couple points of interest. Most notably, severe drought has expanded again in Massachusetts, and dramatically so, now covering well over half the state extending southward to and past the CT and RI borders.

    More subtlety, a bit more of central/eastern RI was removed from moderate drought and put back to “abnormally dry”. I was looking for this, as there had been talk in Taunton the past few days about a localized rain maximum for July in that area, with some places seeing near normal rainfall.

  15. Saturday…
    Limited moisture ahead of a pre-frontal trough that exits by midday leaving even less moisture for the actual front which carries almost no punch and all the while it will be rather warm aloft.

    1. Story of this warm weather season, isn’t it.

      I guess that is what is contributing to the drought.

  16. Vicki: Congratulations on the birth of your baby granddaughter!!!
    Blessings on you and your family! Are you “Nana”…”Grandma”???
    How is everyone doing?

    On the drought: We have had about 0.30″ in the last month here in the westside of Taunton. The NWS office in Taunton (about 2 miles north of here) must have had a thunderstorm with heavy rain in the middle of July that we didn’t get here. They recorded 1.2″ of rain on July 18 that I know that we didn’t get here.

    Philip, you reported earlier that the rainfall deficit for this year is -7.05″. But you have to add in the -8.97″ from 2015. That’s -16.02″ in 19+ months.

    Even the grass in the shade is turning brown. Someone told me last week that she saw ragweed shriveling and dying. There was a bad brush fire here in the city in the pre-dawn hours that needed a couple of towns to help put out.

    G’Day, everyone!
    So happy for you, Vicki!!!

    1. Thank you captain. I am nana. I get to spend tonight in hospital since baby’s dad is with their two boys. I am very excited !!

      And it makes sense for drought numbers to be cumulative as you and Philip believe. I don’t get why it resets.

  17. Looking at 12Z runs. Ho Hum

    NAM delivers .25 inch to Boston
    4KM Nam .23 inch
    GFS .28 inch
    Euro .01 – .04. Bug Whoop! This one is probably correct.

    Euro has virtually NO severe parameters, while the others look pretty juicy.

    1. Yes, we’ll see. We’ll take anything we can get at this point, but I’m not counting on any of the models to verify. We could very well wind up with zilch once again.

  18. Pretty Strong SE or ESE sea Breeze in place here at the office.
    Still, it’s in the 80s. Really really nice out there.

    1. It’s even 82 at the airport where the ESE wind has been steady at up to
      20 mph. Imagine that wind in April or May?

  19. The 12z GFS, which is probably overdone, has about 0.40 to 1.00 inch of total rainfall for the 15-day period. That is scary-dry. You can probably cut that in half other than isolated thunderstorms that may occur.

      1. We’ve had worse in the past, but this one is getting up there. It was only a matter of time. We were quite wet in the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s. The pendulum swings slowly, but it swings.

  20. 18Z regular NAM is full of crap.

    18Z 4KM NAM looks nice. Wants to give us a really solid line of Heavy Convection
    between 18Z and 21Z Saturday. Would be very very nice. We shall see.

  21. NWS has a good discussion out for Saturday. Still doesn’t really impress me, but can’t ignore it altogether. Beyond that, a bone dry stretch of weather. I still have hope for more rain beyond a week out. CPC continuing to hedge towards above normal precip days 8-14. But as we’ve seen this summer, that could go poof in a heartbeat, and the drier it gets the drier it wants to be.

    1. CPC doesn’t do the best job for this part of the country.
      SPC struggles as well.

  22. Will have thunderstorms Saturday. The PGA Tour is in CT and we always seem to have showers and storms when there here. As I said the other day on the blog we had back to back years in 2009 2010 during the tournament both years had EF 1 tornadoes. In 2009 Wethersfield and 2010 Bridgeport.

  23. Thank you Captain Fantastic for pointing out the 2015 deficit at Logan (-8.97″).

    Unfortunately, as soon as we turned the calendar to January 1, 2016, the drought mysteriously ended overnight New Year’s Eve while we were sleeping and/or partying. 😉 It seems that we were already behind the 8-ball long before this year even arrived. I forgot about that. 🙁

    Logan deficit as of 1/1/2016 = -0.10″ IIRC…very deceiving to say the least. 😉

  25. Broken line of storms with that 4KM NAM. As I said earlier I think a few locally strong storms possible.
    Quick peak at 18z GFS not as robust as 18z NAM and most of the CAPE focused on CT with the GFS.

  26. Vicki, Congratulations and my very best wishes to you and your family on the birth of your grand-daughter Rilyn Mac!!!

        1. Thank you, John. And I think I saw above that you will be hoping for snow this winter to help,the deficit 😉

  28. Morning…

    Re: tomorrow

    Ho-Hum

    Actually, now the GFS is most robust of all things.
    Euro, so-so, nothing earth shattering.
    Nam in between
    CMC so-so

    Eric last night seemed to think that there would be thunderstorms.

    We shall see. Not convinced yet.

    SPC still has us in A Marginal area of severe, which is about what it looks like with
    the parameters.

    Latest SREF has most of SNE in a 10% chance of severe with More Southern areas
    in a 15% chance with a tiny circle of 20%.

    http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/sref/gifs/latest/SREF_24HR_SVR_PROBS__f054.gif

    I guess we would need the area in a 25% chance before they would elevate the risk
    to Slight? I don’t know. Will be monitoring updates.

    1. From NWS

      The main concern will be the potential for scattered
      strong to severe thunderstorms late Saturday morning through early
      Saturday evening. This ahead of the approaching cold front.
      Guidance in fairly good agreement showing 0 to 6 km shear of 35 to
      45 knots with SPC SREF indicating decent probabilities of MLCapes
      exceeding 1000 j/kg. High resolution guidance showing a line of
      scattered showers and thunderstorms developing and moving across
      portions of the region from northwest to southeast during the late
      morning through early evening hours. The main threat with these
      storms will be locally strong to damaging straight line wind gusts,
      promoted by dry mid level air working into the region. Isolated hail
      reports are also a possibility. In addition, high Pwats will result
      in heavy rainfall with any thunderstorms and a very localized urban
      street flooding threat.

      Frankly, I rather think that they are a tad too bullish on this event.

      We shall see.

  29. Slight delay on the new post today. Will let you know when it’s done – hopefully by mid morning. Won’t be too long and update because there isn’t much to update. 😉

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