Thursday Forecast

106 Comments

3:47PM

DAYS 1-5 (SEPTEMBER 21-25)
The script has been changed many times on the tropical stage of late, but it seems to be pretty much finalized, for the time-being anyway. Jose will continue to weaken and drift around southeast to south of New England, eventually dissipating and being absorbed by Hurricane Maria which will be moving northwest to north through the waters north of the Caribbean, east of the Bahamas, and offshore of the US East Coast. Meanwhile high pressure will assert more control, although Jose will still try to battle it, this will lead to more dominant cloudiness at times, especially Friday, when there may be some wet weather as well, and into Saturday.

REMAINDER OF TODAY: Heaviest overcast southeastern MA with some rain at times outer Cape Cod and the islands. Thinner overcast including some sun to the northwest. Temperatures ranging from the middle 60s to middle 70s, warmest well inland. Wind NE to N 10-20 MPH except 20-30 MPH southeastern areas, with higher gusts.
TONIGHT: Mostly cloudy. Lows 56-63. Wind N 10-20 MPH except 15-25 MPH coast, higher gusts.
FRIDAY: Mostly cloudy. A few periods of rain or showers favoring eastern NH, eastern MA, and RI. Highs 61-67. Wind NE to N 10-20 MPH except 15-25 MPH coast, higher gusts.
FRIDAY NIGHT: Mostly cloudy. Lingering showers southeastern MA early. Lows 53-59. Wind N 10-20 MPH.
SATURDAY: Party sunny. Highs 65-70 coast, 70-75 interior. Wind N 10-20 MPH.
SUNDAY: Mostly sunny. Lows from the upper 50s to middle 60s. Highs from the middle 70s to middle 80s, coolest coastal areas.
MONDAY: Mostly sunny. Lows in the 60s. Highs from the upper 70s to lower 80s coast, middle 80s to near 90 interior.

DAYS 6-10 (SEPTEMBER 26-30)
A front from the west may interact with moisture that was once Jose and produce showers and thunderstorms during the September 26-28 period while at the same time Maria makes a northward run off the East Coast, with odds favoring a turn out to sea. Will continue to watch it. Fair, cooler, drier weather should arrive to end the month.

DAYS 11-15 (OCTOBER 1-5)
A cooler period and a possible rain event very early in October then fair with a warming trend following. Low confidence on this at this time.

106 thoughts on “Thursday Forecast”

        1. I love it. You discovered one of the reasons I enjoy power outages :). Also vacuuming, dishes, wash, etc are out of the question. Just sit back and enjoy!!

  4. Well, I’ve changed that “rain even” to a “rain event” in early October. In other words, typo fixed.

    I’m not confident on the long range but I have a suspicion we’ll see this in the first half of October:
    *One bout of very late “heat”.
    *At least one shot of very cool air.
    *One or 2 significant rain events.
    *One more significant tropical cyclone emerging from the southwestern Caribbean and drenching a lot of the Southeast and possibly the Northeast. (I’ll explain more about this later…)

        1. If you mean that inverted trough near the East Coast, yes. The depicted tropical there – not sure.

    1. Interesting, looks like the eye was getting very ragged even before it made landfall. It was going through an eye wall replacement cycle.

  9. Thanks TK! I generally agree with all your main points in the forecast. Outside of any lingering showers from Jose, the next 7-10 days look very dry to me. Near record heat possible early next week, especially Monday but continued warmth from Sunday through much of next week. Give us this pattern two months ago, we’d head for triple digits several times. Maria likely well offshore by mid-late next week. No factor outside of continued enhanced surf.

    Longer range… Like TK I’m also keeping an eye on very early October for a possible rain event. We could see a fairly robust trough swinging through the Great Lakes which may even provide a setup for an early season coastal storm with rain, but that’s a ways off. Also watching the potential Caribbean tropical system. It would not be the weak storm the GFS had at the end of its 12z run. This would be a monsoonal type development coming out of the deep Caribbean, and I think it’s a real possibility by days 10-15. Stay tuned on that one.

  10. Several posts on the previous blog about this, but as we know, today’s the anniversary of the landfall of the 1938 “Long Island Express” hurricane. To this day, it stands tall and alone as the benchmark against which all New England hurricanes are measured. There were a couple in the ~200 years prior to it which likely came close to matching its intensity, but in less populated times. And since 1938, few have really come close. Carol in 1954 the only real challenger. One of my professors here at Plymouth State, Dr. Lourdes Aviles, wrote a book on the storm (“Taken by Storm”) a few years ago. Definitely worth a read if you want to learn more about the storm.

    We will face another such storm some day. A matter of when, not if, as we always say. As of now, I do not think we are ready. We haven’t been tested by even a moderate impact hurricane since Bob. A couple brief scares like Earl and Irene, but no hits. I do genuinely worry about what will happen when the next 1938 caliber storm hits.

      1. As an afterthought, it dawns on me that in both cases folks knew they were coming but had no idea of how soon so went about their daily business only to be caught very much off guard

  11. In talking historical hurricanes, this is an interesting tweet with stats on the prevalence of CAT 5 hurricanes over the past 150+ years.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/910016642104664064?t=1&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email&iid=70beceecf1fe4a26b924a0ffc433472a&uid=419578880&nid=244+289476625

    Begs the question…is the dramatic increase in recent times the result of climate change, natural cycles, or was our ability to record and identify such strong storms limited prior to the mid 1900’s?

    1. Our ability was limited drastically before the 1960s, and even in some ways until the 1990s when the modern dropsondes began.

      We know somewhat about natural cycles, but that is limited as well due to the amount of time we’ve been able to note such things versus the amount of time weather has actually been occurring on the planet.

      My take on how much we influence it is well-known on the page as I often repeat that.

  15. For those of you that can’t get Rhode Island TV (and I suspect that may be most of you in the WHW viewing area)…

    I found the Channel 36 PBS special “Wake of ’38” on YouTube.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmo0Ur7q0Ew

    It’s on now on Channel 36. Time to get the popcorn.
    It beats Thursday Night Football.

    By the way, the soccer team won, 10-0. Although the ball didn’t blow into the net, there were some interesting corner kicks and goal kicks with the wind. The goal on the practice field did blow over. Good thing there were no kids playing at the time.
    ‘Night, all…

    1. I think you have become my favorite person in the world. I could not find this on tv and was about to look online. Can’t thank you enough

    5. Lol. My sixteen year old daughter brought his up yesterday too. How funny.

      lol how young Phillip bailey looks in that video

          1. I just got a chill. I don’t even like cereal in the morning. Darn….I was keeping my fingers crossed. But you got practice in so that is GREAT news!

    1. That’s it…I want my money back for my subscription. 🙂 Oh wait, we get all of this for the very low cost of NOTHING!!!

      Take your time my friend, we all appreciate all you do for this blog.

      1. hahahahahaha

        And TK – definitely take your time!

        Go out and enjoy the weather. I love the feel of this morning.

    1. Not up to the city. We have wind swept nothing. Oh wait, it’s not even all that windy. Change that. We have NOTHING.

        1. Should reach its westward moving limit by 3PM then begin to retreat to the south in what will be the start of a long distance fujiwara that leads to the demise of Jose and his absorption by Maria – a kind of meteorological merger if you will.

  21. Quite a morning here in Middleboro. A tropical storm-feel to the day. Power was out at the school when we arrived. Crews quickly restored power by 7:30 much to the delight of our student body.

  23. Our plans take us north to central NH this weekend and I keep telling my wife to pack for warm weather sat and sun and with the weather right now, 60F rain and wind, I don’t think she believes me, lol ……

  25. Oh wow ….

    If the first trof missed Maria …..

    I think there’s a cutoff low that’s supposed to drop into the Ohio valley not too long after.

    1. On another site, I saw mention of this cutoff system coming into the picture and potentially drawing Maria west. This is also assuming Jose is very weak at the time.

  27. Regardless of the track, the GFS intensity forecast for Maria is way, way wrong. This storm will be weakening as it moves north, not strengthening. Over-deepening of hurricanes seems to be a systemic problem in the current GFS version. Same thing happened with Irma. Strong as that storm was, it never got close to the absurdly low pressure projections by the GFS.

    1. usually south of a strong upper level ridge, which there will be in the great lakes and into the northeast, you’ll find some kind of upper level low.

  30. Last night was rough, probably one of the hardest decisions a pet owner has to make, My lion, my study buddy since last year of high school Simba, was put to rest late last night. He lost a bit of weight, he was not his strong buff self and started to have trouble breathing, he had cancer and was struggling to breath, I can say that he did what he loved to do on his last full night, he brought me up to my room, we cuddled, he purred, next day he woke me up, bumping my head and leading me down the stairs to the porch to watch his birds, His last day was routine until I saw him struggling in my bed last night as I submitted my abstract for my research project. Dedicating this semester to Simba. He was surrounded by the people who loved him and he loved back when he passed. He is now up in Kitty heaven chasing that darn Blue Jay which taunted him all those years.

    1. Yup, every stinken day and some days are worse than others.
      good luck. On your way up north, eh? SE Distressway? Then rt. 93 North?
      OR God help you, Rt 1. North to rt 95 to pick up rt 16 in NH? Even more luck to you. Rt 1 just North of the city is PATHETIC!! Stop and go for 20 miles.

      1. Yes, heading to central NH. 93N to concord, then over by Loudon that has nascar this weekend to get to the camp my wife volunteers at for a 5K fundraiser. We’ll be there by 10pm if we are lucky. About to enter tip O’Neil tunnel.

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