Wednesday Forecast

162 Comments

9:01AM

DAYS 1-5 (AUGUST 10-14)…
A disturbance passing through the region this morning and early afternoon is the gateway to higher humidity, which will last for several days, through and probably beyond this 5-day period, and some heat as well, especially Thursday through Saturday. Rain chances will be limited, with today being the greatest chance overall in terms of coverage, as the disturbance moves through. But even as it does so, on the larger scale it will be weakening. As humidity comes up, during and after the passage of the disturbance, isolated heavier showers and thunderstorms may pop up, but expect coverage of heavier rain to be fairly isolated. A few of these may linger into this evening but again in very isolated areas. As the heat takes over tomorrow, it will likely be stable enough, despite the humidity, to limit or eliminate storm chances, but the risk should return Friday in a limited fashion, and perhaps a little more on Saturday as a front from the north gets closer. The position of this front is uncertain a few days out, but it looks like it should slip southward by early Sunday and knock the heat down several notches but allowing the humidity to remain fairly high. I’m not nearly sold on a widespread rain for Sunday, but other than today, that day carries the highest rain risk.
TODAY: Mostly cloudy through midday with a couple areas of rain and showers. Embedded thunder possible in isolated heavier rain areas. Partly sunny mid afternoon on with isolated showers and thunderstorms. Any storms could be briefly strong but in localized areas. later Increasingly humid. Highs 78-86. Wind S to SW 5-15 MPH.
TONIGHT: Partly cloudy with a slight risk of an isolated shower or thunderstorm early, then mostly clear. Humid. Lows 62-67 except 67-72 urban areas. Wind SW under 10 MPH.
THURSDAY: Mostly sunny. Humid. Highs 82-88 Cape Cod and immediate South Coast, 89-97 elsewhere. Wind SW 5-15 MPH.
THURSDAY NIGHT: Mostly clear. Humid. Lows 66-77, warmest in urban areas. Wind light SW.
FRIDAY: Partly cloudy. Isolated showers and thunderstorms. Humid. Highs 82-88 South Coast, 88-96 elsewhere.
SATURDAY: Partly cloudy. Isolated showers and thunderstorms. Humid. Lows 66-77, warmest urban areas. Highs 80-94, coolest Cape Cod.
SUNDAY: Variably cloudy. Isolated to scattered showers and thunderstorms. Humid. Lows 66-77, warmest urban areas. Highs 80-92, coolest Cape Cod.

DAYS 6-10 (AUGUST 15-19)…
Rain risk early August 15 then drying trend with fair weather returning through August 17 before humidity returns later in the period with a risk of isolated thunderstorms.

DAYS 11-15 (AUGUST 20-24)…
Fair, cooler, less humid early in the period. Heat and humidity likely return again later in the period.

162 thoughts on “Wednesday Forecast”

  2. Thank you for the update. Hoping for some rain.
    We shall see. The model runs seem to be on again, off again bullcrap.

    So far, the rain approaching from the West appears to be holding together.
    I hope it doesn’t fall apart when it gets to the coast.

    There are new cells popping up as well in between the Northern and Southern
    areas of rain. Almost like they want to join forces. Will continue to monitor.

  5. TK,

    Can you comment on the Pivotal Weather Soundings showing a tornado threat.
    I have a feeling that those are too mechanical and fail to take everything into account.

    But it does show low LCL, reasonable high Cape and LI and plenty of helicity.

    Should we get a strong enough storm, there is plenty of change in wind with
    height to cause rotation.

    So, I think the key is strong enough storm and the trigger to ignite such a storm.

    Many thanks

    1. Some of the ingredients are “there” but we’d really need a good isolated storm to make it a reality. Very low percentage we get an isolated storm strong enough to do that.

    2. To add to this, I keep seeing this tornado threat on the Pivotal weather site soundings and ALSO on the College of DuPage site.

      However, the SREF significant tornado ingredients chart NEVER agrees.

      It has been my experience that for the most part, the SREF significant tornado
      ingredients chart is MUCH more ACCURATE and generally does NOT
      blow smoke out its ass like these sounding threats do.

      IMHO, take those sounding threats with a dump truck load of salt.

      TK, do you concur? tx

  6. Thanks TK.
    I see heat advisory up for Boston area tomorrow from noon to 7pm. SPC has the most of MA with the exception of south shore Cape and Islands in marginal risk for Friday.
    In the will see category this from NWS in Taunton.
    CIP analogs do show this type of pattern has the history of severe weather reports something to watch over the next few days.

  7. Thanks TK. Driving back from Toronto today. They were forecasting a heat index here on Friday of 107. What a beautiful comfortable two days we had here with low humidity. First a stop at the Big Apple Farm before the border to get an apple pie and some apple bread. 🙂

    1. Enjoy. Apple pie sounds yummy, especially heated with a gigantic scoop
      of vanilla ice cream on top.

    2. I hope your trip is perfect, North. Enjoy that appli pie and bread…..remember, if there are leftovers, I can find my way to N. Attleboro 😉

    3. We bought apple cake on the way to Toronto and it was so good, we had to stop on the way back. You can get slices and eat right there Dave! I had to hold myself back. I did get one apple pie with a crumble topping and maybe 2 apple cakes too, so there is enough for both of you to come get some 😉

    1. We’re trying very hard. I just don’t want to be bitterly disappointed to
      see the echos dry up as they approach the Boston area.

      Plus, I want to see HOW my new rain gauge performs. So far NOTHING
      in my rain gauge. 😀

  9. Current DP is 67 at my house and also 67 at the airport. I am very pleased with
    the accuracy of my new dew point sensor.

    1. Let me know how it goes with the rain measurement. My neighbor is looking at getting one and has been researching.

  10. Sure will be interesting to see how this winter plays out after a hot summer and projected warm fall. Does the precipitation still come in at well below , does the furnace stay going and give us an unusually warm winter with just very minor cold shots I guess we wait and see.

  11. 72 with 69 DP and light SSW wind here. We now have a lovely, soft rain……feels as if we struck the pot of gold. Yes, I know it will not be a big help; but it sure is welcome.

    1. Please send this way. Do you have a rain gauge? if so, please report amounts.
      We’re (well I am anyway) interested in seeing that. I always am.

  12. JP Dave you’re not the only one with a new gauge. A friend just set one up in Fitchburg and this morning had 0.45 inch in 1 hour. Jackpot!

  14. It’s been pouring here in Hudson, NH for about 40 minutes!!!! Everyone rushed to the windows to watch 😀

  15. 12Z HRRR gives boston only .35 inch today.

    Let’s see
    9Z = 1.41
    10Z=.81
    11Z=.41
    12Z=.35

    IS this a trend? If so, a disturbing one !(@*(#!@*#&*!@^&*(#^!&*@#%^&^

  18. Sky looking very threatening now. Some rain is imminent.

    And that thin part is getting thicker by the second. 😀

      1. Notice I said “some”.
        Some rain drops have splattered on my office window.

        There we go. REAL RAIN now. I can see it.
        big drops and a good moderate shower.

  20. Has NOT tripped the rain gauge at home. Hope it is working properly.
    HOWEVER, on wundermap, it went from reporting…

    .

    to reporting

    0.00

    Not sure what that means? perhaps it means it recorded a few drops?????

    1. It’ll have to hurry. It’s still the thinnest part of the area and it’s hauling. And the second area to the west is diving more south, weakening, and being eaten on its northern side by dry air at mid levels that’s coming down from the north (which was expected).

  22. Wundermap rain gauges in the area NOT being tripped either.
    There is one and only one not too far away that is reporting 0.01 inch.

  23. How we looking in Woburn TK? I had a loose window well cover…afraid a hard rain might collapse it. Might zoom home at lunch to see.

    1. One quick heavier burst coming through now, then a break, then a light to moderate rain area during the 11AM hour, winding down at noon. After that it’s just low risk from isolated storms.

      1. Yeah it just poured for a minute or two in Waltham bad…looked like a hurricane…then it got light. Thanks for the info.

  29. According to Weatherbug, the middle school down the street from my house got 0.63″ so far! YAY!

  33. 12z NAM…
    The 12 km seems to have handled the disturbance better than the 4 km and this probably has an impact on the accuracy of the run going forward. Leaning toward 12 km.

    3. Well that’s like the bottle of champagne being dropped, exploding on the ground, and one drop landing on the ship. But I guess it’s SOMETHING! 😛

  36. Area #2 is heading in and good for some light to moderate rain across northern MA. The main thrust of this area is its southern part heading ESE into CT via southwestern MA. That will miss the Boston area.

    After this, isolated, and I lean toward less versus more.

    Remote risk of isolated storms Thursday, slightly better risk of isolated storms Friday and isolated to scattered storms Saturday though I’m starting to have my doubts on that.

    The Sunday/Monday threat is looking less impressive to me with time…

  37. I quote from TK: “The main thrust of this area is its southern part heading ESE into CT via southwestern MA. That will miss the Boston area. After this, isolated, and I lean toward less versus more.”

    Rain is for all intents and purposes banned in Boston.

  38. And then there’s this quote from TK which will really thrill Boston’s trees, bushes, grass, and other vegetation starving for H2O: “Remote risk of isolated storms Thursday, slightly better risk of isolated storms Friday and isolated to scattered storms Saturday though I’m starting to have my doubts on that. The Sunday/Monday threat is looking less impressive to me with time…”

  42. I’ve never been so excited for Rain. The Northeast part of MA, finally got into the jackpot zone this Summer!

  43. That HRR model would be good for my area over 1.5 inches.
    Some good parameters for thunderstorms on Saturday with latest 12z NAM. The Cape and the lift index values are good and even some EHI values showing up. The bulk shear not impressive around 20 knots and the mid level rates only around 5.0 which is not that impressive.
    As I said yesterday if its going to be this warm and humid give me some good thunderstorms.

  44. I can confirm that there’s been a little rain in downtown Boston, and enough to wet the pavement. However, it’s slim pickings. A tease.

  46. Burlington really getting a healthy dose of rain for past hour or hour 1/2. I don’t have a gauge but been mostly light to moderate and occasionally heavy rain. Much needed in this area.

  47. Just reading the NWS Boston twitter page and on this date back in 2012 there was an EF 0 tornado on Block Island. This was this first ever recorded tornado on the island.

  50. Pretty steady rain here. I see PUDDLES out there!

    My weather station does not instantly update with the server, so when I check
    my station remotely, it can have information that is a few minutes old. It seems
    to update every few minutes or so.

    Wundermap can take 10-20 minutes between updates.

  51. This rain is really ripping through the area. It won’t be too much longer and it
    is out of here. An hour or so? Perhaps a bit less.

  52. I hear rain against my office window. Always a pleasant sound. May it continue. May the ducks frolic in the rain. And may the rain mitigate the nauseating stench that emanates from back alleys near my office this summer.

  56. Quote from a Boston TV met: “The temperature is 72 degrees, but it feels much stickier than that.” Since when is air temperature a measure of humidity?

  58. Each GFS run reduces the amount of general rainfall in the period Friday-Tuesday and focuses more on convective “hot spots”. Not the trend you want to see if you want it to rain.

  59. Up to 0.19 inch at my house. I’ll take it. Not as much as I would like, but better
    than being skunked. 😀

  60. Rain continues in Boston. Some puddles are forming on the streets and I could see rivulets of rain water headed for the drains.

  61. I’m glad I was wrong in my prediction of no rain in Boston today. The limb I went out on has come crashing to the ground. Thankfully, I only have a few scrapes and bruises.

  62. We don’t have a weather station but we now have a rain gauge and we checked and we got .45 of rain in Sudbury. We left for Natick around 9 this morning and it had started to rain. It rained moderately to occasionally heavy in Natick and when we got home around 11:30 it was pouring. It’s just raining lightly now. I loved the sound of the rain and watching the rain on the car windows ( my husband drove). The trees and plants seem a little happier but I think I hear them saying – more, more please! 🙂

  63. Agree with your comment, North. They’re going for clicks, not accuracy.

    While I am in no way opposed to capitalism and understand that businesses make money through advertising it’s insidiously impacting us in some not so positive ways. Weather headlines – forecasts and even descriptions of ongoing events – are often completely inaccurate. Same applies to news headlines. Shamefully inaccurate in some cases.

    Then there’s the barrage of ads that invade almost every space of a sports broadcast. It’s impossible to get away from commercials during a football game. They come at you both at predictable and unpredictable moments – timeouts, injuries, booth reviews. Baseball’s not much better, as lineups are now “brought to you by,” as are “call to the bullpens,” and entire parts of the batting order have a commercial descriptor attached to them (“Safelite batters 3 through 6”). For some reason I thought managers drew up lineup cards and made calls to the bullpen.

    1. Exactly.

      Weather.com should also not be jumping on the model train early and talking flooding. They have been talking to NWS Taunton too much :). Ratings and $ as far as weather.com is concerned.

  65. Action going in Long Island Sound south of CT shoreline with possible water spout. Special Marine Warning up.
    Tweet from Ryan Hanrahan. Looking at radar image from the tweet there appears to be some rotation. Hopefully it stays over water.
    Waterspout possible south of Guilford near Falkner’s Island moving east – not a threat to CT shore.

    1. There were 2 very distinctive mesocyclones, one over water and one over land. The southern one over water was larger and more organized.

      1. TK that second one was around the New Haven area that prompted a severe thunderstorm warning. Hopefully the one of the water stays over the water.
        My question to you is were there ingredients in place for a weak tornado to form today and could this happen again with high dew points and tropical air mass in place over the next couple days.

        1. Today there were some parameters, just enough, to get some rotation. I don’t think we’ll see this again through the weekend, at least Saturday.

  69. SAK, thank you for sharing the map with heat and humidity indices for Saturday. Wow, the difference between, say northeast Massachusetts and Boston is huge. And it’s really interesting to see indices in the 50s in Maine and Quebec while 100s are the norm in parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

    1. That’s because the NAM (the map I chose) has the front creeping down as a backdoor front late Saturday afternoon. The GFS timing is a little later and the the ECMWF holds the front off until Sunday afternoon.

            1. Aside from the high indices, it is reminiscent of a Spring time surface temperature map with the back door
              cold front dropping down.

              Let’s see what happens with that. 😀

  71. 18Z HRRR wants to deliver a round of convection to the Boston Area between 4 and 6PM or thereabout. Let’s see if that sucker verifies. Based on cells popping, perhaps
    it will. 😀

  72. I have a DP of 74 at my house. That is simply BRUTAL!! GO AWAY!!!!

    I suppose we could get something to pop in that soup.

    1. Things are popping in the soup. Just isolated. Atmosphere is far more stable thanks to the overcast from the larger disturbance.

  73. Brutal heat index coming tomorrow. If the DP wasn’t so high, somebody could see 100.
    Im a sicko for the heat, so I’m looking forward to it.

    1. You can have it and I hope you enjoy it. IF my wife can make it, we’ll
      be on the Lake tomorrow. Or perhaps I should say IN THE LAKE.

      1. I was just told I have to go to our company’s other location tomorrow and be prepared to be in the cleanroom environment. That means no shorts, no dresses, no skirts. Just LONG pants, socks, and closed shoes. GRRRRRRRRR. I’m wearing shorts but bringing a change of clothes in case I absolutely have to go into the cleanroom. I’m with Mrs. JPD, arm in arm about this weather. NOT HAPPY.

  76. We are at the cloverleaf (Rte 128/93). Looks extremely threatening ahead.

    JpDave, the breeze was quite cool down to the Hampton tolls, then all of a sudden, it got a lot less comfortable.

    Ok, torrent at exit 35 on 128S ….. Blinding !

    1. We are on the Mass Pike east by exit 3 and looks threatening to the east and on radar. Drive safe Tom, sounds like you had a great vacation from your posts.

      1. Thanks North and Vicki. My wife is driving, she has a ton more experience pulling the camper. 🙂 🙂

        Now in Newton, road is dry.

          1. Mac and I were perfectly suited. He liked driving and I can follow a map well. If you reversed, I hate being in an area where I do not know where to go so got snappy. And Mac would make me laugh …when I wasn’t snapping….by sitting quietly and turning the map sideways, upside down and then asking where we were.

            1. Lol. You must have had some great trips and special ones too. For the first time we had GPS and no triptik. I still had to tell her where to go but did squeeze in a few naps on the ride home today after a late night playing card games with my family in Canada.

              1. I did love those trip tiks. I had so many notes on the one to charleston, we knew how long it took to get from points to points

                GPS would have been amazing

  79. Just went out to do an errand. If I didn’t know better, I’d think we were still at Humarock. Air is thick enough to cut. 75 DP. 81.3 temp. Had 0.54″ rain this morning. Nothing this afternoon.

  81. Tornado touchdown in New Haven today. Taunton NWS mentioned the potential days ago- not quite the right forecast area but damn close. Whether it should’ve been mentioned so far out can be debated, but the setup was always there for a spin up.

    Had .36″ rain in Wrentham by 3PM; traveled down to the Cape for a couple days to beat the heat. Good to see the rain but more needed for sure.

  82. I am not criticizing because you all know I don’t like to. I am asking 🙂

    JR said these are the kind of days we need to break a drought and not huge downpours or a tropical system. I know downpours are not really beneficial but I always thought a tropical system with excessive rain amounts was beneficial. I believe TK said that recently also. He also said that a day like today, then a few withiut rain and then another day like today was best. I tend to agree with that IF that were a current pattern

  83. EF 0 tornado with winds 70mph in North Haven, CT today. First tornado touch down here in CT since 2013.

  84. There are still cells out there. Coverage is not widespread, but they are out there.

    picked up another 0.03 late this afternoon for a total so far today of: 0.22 inch

    Could have been worse. Will I get under another one? Probably not, but here’s hoping.

  85. I have a utility pole in the corner of my backyard that is nice and flat on the top and it
    is pretty high. I am wondering if I would be allowed to place my sensors on the top of it?
    I’d get MUCH better wind information there as it would give a pretty clear shot with
    no close obstructions. The temperature may be a bit off being 25 feet up and not 6 feet off the ground, but life is full of compromises.

    Any thoughts?

    Of course even IF they would let me, how do I get it up there? I’d have to hire a bucket truck.

    1. Yeah I doubt they’d allow that, but who knows. That is my dilemma. I want one, but not sure where I’d put it for best accuracy.

  87. TK thanks for posting that video of that EF 0 tornado in North Haven today. Its not often we see tornadoes here since most are rain wrapped. This was the first tornado to touch down in CT since 2014 not 2013 as I said earlier.
    This storm that produced the tornado had a severe thunderstorm warning with it. Thankfully no injuries or deaths with this.

        1. Tomorrow and Saturday present similar conditions that
          need to be monitored. Question is, will there be any storms strong enough?

Comments are closed.