Monday Forecast

128 Comments

2:25AM

DAYS 1-5 (FEBRUARY 19-23)
A warm front approaches today and passes tonight, opening the door to very mild weather Tuesday through the daylight hours of Wednesday. A cold front will push through the region from northwest to southeast Wednesday night and a cooler high pressure area will push toward the region from the north Thursday, although the front may hang up just south of the region with a wave of low pressure moving along it, possibly close enough to delay clearing. This frontal boundary will start moving back to the north a little bit on Friday and a wave of low pressure will approach from the west with a return to unsettled weather possible by late in the day or at night. Forecast details…
TODAY: Increasing clouds. Risk of light rain mainly west and north of Boston late day. Highs 43-50. Wind light SE.
TONIGHT: Mostly cloudy. A few periods of rain evening. Temperatures steady 43-50 then rising slightly overnight. Wind light S to SW.
TUESDAY: Partly sunny. Highs 47-55 South Coast, 56-64 elsewhere. Wind SW 5-15 MPH.
TUESDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy. Lows 45-53. Wind SW 5-15 MPH.
WEDNESDAY: Partly sunny. Chance of rain showers evening or night. Highs 47-56 South Coast, 57-70 elsewhere, warmest valley areas northwest of Boston. Much cooler at night. Wind SW 10-20 MPH, shifting to NW at night.
THURSDAY: Mostly cloudy with a possible period of rain/mix then clearing late. Temperatures fall through 40s.
FRIDAY: Sunshine followed by clouds. Chance of rain which may start as snow/ice at night. Lows from the upper 20s to lower 30s. Highs from the upper 30s to lower 40s.

DAYS 6-10 (FEBRUARY 24-28)
Unsettled weather possible during the February 24-25 weekend with a nearby boundary and areas of low pressure moving along it. Colder air from the north will probably win out with some threat of snow/ice/rain during this time. Another system may bring some light precipitation about February 27 but uncertain as this system may get pulled apart and end up much weaker or south of the region.

DAYS 11-15 (MARCH 1-5)
The early March pattern should be unsettled and cooler than normal as a blocking pattern sets up. Will eye the possibility of a couple storm systems, especially one later in the period.

128 thoughts on “Monday Forecast”

    1. I have never observed dull weather around here, and after 50 years, it’s fair to say I will not. 😉

  3. Thanks TK! It’s going to be an interesting battle setting up between airmasses the next two weeks or so through mid-March.

  4. Check out SAK’s blog which includes a map of all the record highs for February 21 that we have a shot to see fall on Wednesday.

    Here’s a smaller list of some records for 4 major locations from NWS for Tuesday & Wednesday. I don’t think anything is going to be broken on Tuesday…

    Record Highest Observed Temperature for February…
    (since records began)
    Boston………73 (2/24/2017)
    Hartford…….73 (2/24/1985)
    Providence…..72 (2/24/1985)
    Worcester……69 (2/24/2017)

    Record High Temperatures…
    February…….2/20……2/21
    Boston………68 (1930) 63 (1906)
    Hartford…….69 (1930) 63 (1930)
    Providence…..69 (1930) 63 (1930)
    Worcester……65 (1930) 59 (1930)

    Record Warmest Min Temperature…
    February…….2/20……2/21
    Boston………46 (1930) 45 (1994)
    Hartford…….50 (1981) 49 (1981)
    Providence…..48 (1981) 50 (1981)
    Worcester……47 (1981) 43 (2002)

      1. It may seem springish, but it is, in fact, late winter, almost. 🙂 It technically becomes late winter tomorrow.

        1. Indeed, and your point is? Picky picky.
          Technically it is a Winter or late winter day. I get that.

          However, to my body, it feels like a Spring morning. 😀

          1. To prevent you from being unimpressed, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t ever get out of the 50s tomorrow. 🙂

            2. I am NOT easily impressed by weather events. But I guess you have figured that out by now. 😀

              I was always skeptical of the 70s. We shall see.

  6. I see the 00z GFS continues to advertise long term blocking and has the talked about mid-Atlantic storm at the very end of this particular run.

      1. Indeed ….. see a weaker version of the system at hr 312. It will be interesting to see if it’s holding the same blocking idea about 8 to 10 days from now.

        1. Will be watching the evolution of systems in that
          time frame. Who know, perhaps we get a biggie out of it all before the pattern changes again.

  7. Looking at the Wednesday record high temp map from SAK’s blog, I guess it’s been the luck of the draw not to ever have a super warm surge take place on a February 21st since records have been kept.

    1. If we block things up that would be the case.

      The CFS model has been interesting to watch. Some runs it completely forgets the pattern. Others it seems to have it nailed. Today’s 00z CFS run shows nicely the pattern I expect from now through March 20.

    2. That’s alright though, I get the idea the dew points may be in the upper 40s to low 50s to complement those temps, so, it should still feel decidedly springish, especially away from the New England south coast.

    3. It illustrates the concerns I have for both days. I stayed “optimistic” on my current forecast but… We’ll see.

  10. Has anyone heard of any type of explosion(s) in the City of Boston during
    the wee hours of this morning. I can’t find anything and we were awakened twice,
    once at 5AM and again at 5:15 AM. Louder that the loudest fireworks. Very reminiscent of the sound when a Man Hole explodes. It was loud, very loud.

    1. Is it possible you heard the demolition of that building that partially collapsed one yesterday. I don’t know when they demolished it though and would it be that loud to carry the sound that distance ?

      1. Nope. see below. If the building collapsed, it would not have
        been the noise I heard. If the exploded it, highly highly unlikely they would do it at 5AM.

    2. think I’m seeing the 540 line south of CT. (My eyes aren’t working well this AM. Does this have anything to do with getting older?)

    3. Nice loop, love seeing those darker blues build in over the east as we get into next week. It certainly looks interesting beginning this weekend and beyond through mid March.

      Strongly negative AO, negative NAO, and blocking setting up. Something we haven’t seen in awhile. I’m not so concerned about the -PNA – we have still had some interesting patterns here with those indices in place. Feb 2013 blizzard had -NAO and -PNA I believe.

    1. That’s why I had my ranges down to 18-23 for the interior overnight. Clear enough, light enough wind, snowcover.

  14. Ended up going to Jiminy Peak yesterday PM for some twilight skiing. Had a similar experience to what Matt was talking about. The 6″ of fresh powder was scraped off and you were basically left with shear ice interspersed with powder mounds. It was crowded with crazy people everywhere and people falling and strewn all over the trails. Challenging skiing to say the least.

    We cannot get out of this rain/thaw/freeze/repeat pattern soon enough for the ski areas. Fortunately the long range is looking promising for a better March.

    1. disgusting. We should not be talking about all these warm temperatures, i understand its one time but these one times are adding up.

      1. ps, my grandpa says before the 2000’s snow would cover his field from January through Febuary at the least. Now he is lucky to maintain the snow up there for more than a few weeks. He also said this wide swings of temperatures during Febuary use to be extremely rare.

        1. There were several years in the 1970s and 1980s when that probably didn’t happen. Especially the very lean snow years in the 1980s.

  17. The obvious caveat on the CFS model I posted: That model can be inconsistent and I’ve locked in on the solutions that I think depict the best representation of the pattern going forward. The runs should not be scrutinized for detail too much, just the general pattern. This model will shift a little run to run, sometimes more than a little.

  19. The trusty CMC/ICON model blend has a nice swath of accumulating snow as early as Thursday across Upstate NY, VT, and NH just north of the MA border.

    1. A wave on the front Thursday might produce a bit of frozen stuff somewhere before the dry air arrives.

      In reference to my statement just above, we have to watch for the system that arrives Friday night starting as snow and/or ice in parts of the region.

      There are also some indications that Sunday’s event may not be straight rain everywhere.

  22. Anthony Masiello‏ @antmasiello · 24h24 hours ago
    My final thought is: my gut says this pattern will deliver a nor’easter to the East Coast in first week of Mar. The buckling jet throughout the NH and retrogression as a result of this -NAM flip will eventually align the trough here.

    1. This is kind of a reply to your last 3 statements…

      My thoughts are we may go so negative with the NAO so that storminess is too far south initially. If this pattern culminates in a more significant winter storm, I’d say odds favor the 2nd week of March over the 1st.

        1. Mark – I would caution you that you are looking at guys who have confirmation bias. They have a hypothesis going in and a particular kind of weather event they want, so they are looking for data to support it and tend to lead themselves to a conclusion they want to find. The guy’s Twitter handle is snow…

          We all have confirmation bias. Nothing wrong with it, but you should take it into account just as much as one would would normally discount a 15 day forecast.

          1. Yes, I do understand that. I am guilty as charged often looking for data to support potential cold/snow. But I do understand that there are almost always factors that can go wrong and result in us not being able to cash in on what is otherwise a favorable pattern (i.e. in this case suppression, -PNA).

      2. Yes, suppression is definitely my concern. I recall that 2010 winter where we had the very strong -NAO and everything went south to the mid Atlantic.

  23. What a contrast between the Winter Olympics 30 years ago in 1988 in Calgary when it was so warm and dry it was almost like summer games, and they had to keep trucking snow in just to hold events, and the Winter Olympics in 2018 when it’s been all about arctic cold, winds, and an abundance of snow. The alpine events have been pushed back another day due to … winter weather. 😉 Oh, the irony!

        1. Age comes at you fast!

          As to my point above, yes there are some strong signals for -NAO but other teleconnections are not so favorable. Particularly PNA.

          Also the GEFS he references shows 3 of 20 members on board for significant snow through 3/7. The mean is only 5″ which is quite a low snow signal for the period.

          This is not mentioned, because “gut” is want.

          I am sure I will be looking for reasons to support by 3/12-3/15 theory and my post 3/15 change.

          1. As somebody who has done weather forecasting for this region for decades, I assure you Japan and Korea get plenty of snow. 😉

  27. TK/JMA – you both seem to be concerned about the -PNA throwing a wrench into what is otherwise a favorable -AO/-NAO pattern. One of the mets on American Weather posted the following…..

    “Wavelengths make the PNA less important later in the season. So as long as we don’t have a total firehose into Canada (which we don’t), the PNA being negative shouldn’t be a huge deal…particularly with the NAO/AO projected to be what it is.”

    And….

    “some of our best patterns in NE have occurred during -PNA/-NAO regimes. The positive PNA can be more favorable for coastal bombs and KU type events, but a -PNA can produce a lot of moderate to heavy sub-KU events. But in March or even late February, the wavelengths start to shorten enough that sometimes you’ll have a -PNA and west cost trough and then a central US ridge and then a deep bowling ball or deep trough over the east.”

    Any validity to this?

    1. Even not a huge deal is still a deal. We have to take it into account in combination with all of the other factors. I do think we flip to an interesting pattern but it may take its time getting there.

      1. Mark,
        You know those guys could gin up a snow storm in Saudi Arabia in July 🙂
        They make the snow hounds in here look like pikers.
        🙂 🙂

        1. True for a lot of them but I’m talking about the met from Worcester (Will) who seems to know his stuff and is pretty unbiased. Ryan Hanrahan posts frequently on that blog as well. There are some good posters in there amongst the rest of the “snow weenies”.

          You know you still look there!

          1. Well, Tippy’s the smartest one on there. You just have to decipher his posts. 🙂

            I’ve just never seen people as obsessed with snow. This blog is a pre-k student compared to some of them.

  28. 12z Euro continues trending colder/south for the Sunday/Monday system. It’s got a good 6-12″ for much of VT/NH/ME now, with accumulating snow as far south as portions of northern MA.

    1. That colder solution is going to end up putting some freezing/frozen precipitation into parts of SNE on Sunday as well.

      1. TK, do I need to worry about flying back into Logan Friday night at 10:30 with the snow and ice you mentioned.

        1. Still 4 days away but I don’t have an alarming feeling about things along the coast. Inland may be interesting. Will have to re-evaluate this going forward of course.

  29. So I am going to lean slightly conservative on the high temps both Tuesday & Wednesday.

    Tuesday I think the majority of folks stay under 60. The most likely areas to go over 60 will be north of the Mass Pike and west of I-95, centered on the interior Merrimack Valley and southern NH away from the NH Seacoast.

    Wednesday, the most likely areas to approach or exceed 70 will again be north of the Mass Pike and west of I-95, like the day before centered on the interior Merrimack Valley and southern NH away from the coast.

  30. Good to be back home from Florida. I feel bad I missed the snow event over the weekend but it was nice to get a way. Hopefully there will be at least one more snow event before winter is out so I could be here to enjoy.

  31. Latest MJO outlook takes it across phase 8 into phase 1 which are snow phases, however it looks very weak and may drop into neutral essentially removing its influence on the pattern.

  32. Last semester I did a statistical analysis of the NAO, AO, and PNA as they relate to major winter storms (>6″) in SNE. Looked at about 90 storms from the past 25 years and used teleconnection data from the CPC. The results were actually pretty interesting. For instance, the AO is usually negative, especially a couple days leading into the storm. Not always of course, but 3-4 days before the storm the average AO is statistically significantly lower than the average for random days.

    Unsurprisingly, the PNA is usually positive, but in March it was actually slightly negative on average for the 18 March storms I looked at. Dec-Feb it averages positive, especially Jan-Feb. But not March. So there is at least some validity to that point presented by Mark above for SNE, though not sure what their specific forecast area was.

    And then there’s the NAO… believe it or not, it averages very close to zero for our snowstorms. The idea that a -NAO is needed for snow in SNE is a myth, though a strong +NAO does make getting snow very difficult. Of the 90 storms I looked at, only about 5 had an NAO at or below -1.5 at or a couple days on either side of when the snowstorm occurred (only 2 at or above +1.5). Current indications are we’ll approach that -1.5 level around 3/1. In other words, with the NAO, usually a low amplitude value, on either side of zero, is what you’re looking for. So TK’s suppression concern is very much a valid one. I would certainly bet in the mid-Atlantic, that the NAO averages more negative for their biggest snowstorms.

    There are many, many more factors involved, but I have been getting more use out of the teleconnections this season since doing that project.

    1. There is a bit of a misconception for New England that we need -NAO to snow. Not always as you point out.

      By the way, in the shorter term, what is your feeling about a sneaky minor snow/mix event on Thursday? This would be separate of the possible snow/ice start of the following system on Friday night, coming as an area of moisture and disturbance post-front on Thursday.

        1. That is the guy. NAM’s happy with it. But we know NAM that far out. Just shows what one of the possibilities is.

      2. I think there’s something there. One thing I see between the NAM and GFS is a big difference in surface high placement. If the high is centered more over the top of us, maybe a sneaky mix or couple inches of snow? If the high is more west, probably more rain SNE, snow/mix farther north. Just depends on how fast the cold air works in. Worth watching for the Thursday PM commute. Probably an uphill climb to get much if any accumulating snow for SNE. Maybe towards the NH border. Something to keep an eye on though.

    2. Thanks WxWatcher, that’s very interesting. That would tend to support the argument that -PNA is not as much a factor this time of year due to the shorter wavelengths. Also surprised how statistically insignificant the -NAO was. Did you look at magnitude of storms correlation to -NAO at all or just 6″+? I wouldn’t be surprised if -NAO was more of a player when looking back at our most major storms (i.e. the 1-2 foot plus storms)

      1. Hi Mark, I did do an additional breakdown of storms producing 10″ or more of snow (observing station was Blue Hill Obs.), and there was a small decrease in the average NAO values. It’s not much though. That was 45 storms, so right about half of the whole sample. I could look at, say, the 18″+ storms as well, but by then it’s a pretty small sample. Could also go back further in time, and maybe that’s something I’ll do at some point. The teleconnections are so noisy, you need a pretty big sample for the results to be meaningful.

    1. I don’t think that will happen here with the temps this week . Might not make 60 -70 but pretty decent week on tap in my opinion .

      2. The temps Tue & Wed have nothing to do with what goes on later Thursday. Your area is vulnerable to the event as well. That front is coming through Wednesday evening and there is a lot of cold air behind it.

  34. 12z CMC and ICON also had that swath of snow for Thursday but further north into VT and NH. 12z Euro had it as well but further west in PA.

    70 degrees Wednesday and 3″ of snow 24 hours later….wouldn’t that be something?

  35. To me what were having now what we see in March a lot of times where you get the spring tease a few later shoveling snow have it melt and go back to mild. Last year the snow from the second blizzard lasted a lot longer than a typical March snowfall.

      1. Don’t laugh JPD. My gut tells me that TK and AccuWeather may actually agree on this one. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day…AccuWeather, not TK of course. 😉

    1. Those threats are separate waves on the boundary once it sinks south of here.

      One or two more waves of precipitation follow that on the weekend.

        1. Either, but if I had to lean one way or another it’s wet south, frozen or freezing north for Sunday.

  40. What ever the case might be, in terms of snow, we need something to keep the chill in the air for more than a day so ski areas can build a base. If it snows and then just melts, its as if it wasn’t there.

    1. Ski reports indicate the bases are still solid in the 3 northern states. The outlook going into the second half of winter was for decent conditions up there and less favorable conditions south. Might be able to build a bit back up in southern areas next few weeks but it’s getting late season now – sun angle going up.

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