Wednesday Forecast

46 Comments

7:31AM

DAYS 1-5 (APRIL 3-7)
The balance was tipped slightly too mild and not enough precipitation intensity for the snow to visit most of the region this morning. Still possible some mix occurs before mid morning in southeastern MA under a heavier band of precipitation, which has been generally rain. Either way, the bomb of a storm that is causing this will pass southeast of Cape Cod today and intensify a bit more as it heads toward eastern Canada. Its expanding wind field will cause a moderate to strong west wind later today as the air dries out rapidly. But this drying air coming off the hills and mountains to the west will also allow it to get rather mild, so this time you won’t be feeling the chill of winter behind the departing storm. It will turn cooler for Thursday and Friday however, and a disturbance may kick off some clouds Thursday before a low pressure area from the Ohio Valley spreads a more vast cloud canopy into the region Friday, followed by a rain threat later Friday, that may start as snow briefly in some areas. The bulk of this system will move through Friday night and may make the very start of the weekend gloomy early Saturday, but improving conditions will follow for the balance of the weekend as high pressure takes over. It will end up on the milder side, but coastal areas probably turn cooler with sea breezes on Sunday.
Forecast details…
TODAY: Overcast start with rain, may mix with snow briefly southeastern MA, then a clearing trend west to east. Highs 50-56 Cape Cod, 57-63 elsewhere. Wind N 10-20 MPH, higher gusts especially eastern coastal areas morning, then W 15-30 MPH with gusts 35-45 MPH afternoon.
TONIGHT: Mostly clear. Lows 28-35. Wind W 15-30 MPH and gusty early, diminishing slightly overnight.
THURSDAY: Sun then clouds. Highs 46-53. Wind NW 10-20 MPH.
THURSDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy evening. Mostly cloudy overnight. Lows 30-37. Wind light N to NE.
FRIDAY: Cloudy. Rain develops afternoon but may start as snow/mix in some areas. Highs 40-47. Wind E 5-15 MPH.
FRIDAY NIGHT: Cloudy with any snow/mix going to rain, then rain tapering to drizzle with patchy fog overnight. Lows 35-42. Wind SE 5-15 MPH.
SATURDAY: Cloudy/fog/drizzle and a chance of rain showers morning. Mostly cloudy to partly sunny afternoon. Highs 52-59. Wind variable 5-15 MPH.
SATURDAY NIGHT: Clear. Lows 32-39. Wind light variable.
SUNDAY: Partly sunny. Highs 55-62 except cooling back along the coast. Wind light variable with coastal sea breezes.

DAYS 6-10 (APRIL 8-12)
A quick push of warm air is possible early in the period before we return to a cooler and somewhat unsettled pattern. There’s some uncertainty as to how it plays out at this point. Much fine-tuning to do.

DAYS 11-15 (APRIL 13-17)
Chilly start, brief warm up, then may cool down yet again. Overall pattern should be drier however, but this is still a low confidence forecast for now.

46 thoughts on “Wednesday Forecast”

  3. Good morning and thank you TK.

    A few thoughts as I start the day:

    1. Left the house shortly after 8AM with a few sprinkles and still 0.37 inch in ye ole rain bucket.
    2. RAP and HRRR zeroed in on the total qpf quite well. The NAMS were way overcooked, although they tried to make a correction with the 0Z runs. The GFS was way too dry.
    3. The 500mb and 300mb flows were well amplified to get the bulk of the system up here, however, as I mentioned yesterday, the 200 mb flow was NOT amplified enough
    and provided enough of an Easterly component to the storm trajectory as to keep
    the brunt of the system South and East of us.

    It clearly was a very tough snow forecast and we all knew it was iffy. Tk alluded to the fact that just 1 degree could make all the difference in the world and apparently it did.

    Did Anyone in the WHW community see any snow at all, even some flakes mixed in?

    Have a great day all and happy Spring.

    1. Not to mention that for the most part, the intensity wasn’t there or not there long enough.

  9. Sun’s trying to break through.
    Still raw and 46 at last check, although it’s probably a bit warmer than that now with brightening skies.

    55 at Bridgeport; 54 in NYC at 11 am

  10. What the bleep is going on with the 12Z GFS for 4/8-4/10.
    Looks pretty WINTRY for sure. YIKES! What a mess. Rain/sleet/snow….
    Lions and Tigers and Bears, OH MY!!!!

    2. Doesn’t look any better than yesterday other than focusing the unsettled weather on Mon-Wed rather than the entire week. After a 60 degree day Sunday, it keeps us in the 30’s and low 40’s the rest of the week.

      That is a sleet/ice storm set up the GFS is depicting there. Not very common in April though we did have this occur last year when we received that freak sleet storm in the Hartford area on April 15.

      Just for kicks, this is the GFS 10:1 snow/sleet map for next week:

      https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs&region=neus&pkg=asnow&runtime=2019040312&fh=240

      Lots of sleet in there to be tainting those totals so much higher than the Kuchera map you posted….

  11. The GFS does appear to be out on an island with its setup early next week though.

    FV3/CMC/ICON/Euro are all warmer and have the boundary set up much further north.

  12. The 00z Euro was interesting for late next week around Day 10 with a strong system approaching from the west and passing to our south with cold air in place.

    Would be an up front thump of snow for us and significant snow producer for eastern NY, the Berks, and central/NNE.

    1. Thanks for sharing, Tom.

      More like no spring in central New Brunswick. We in SNE can at least point to a few days or weeks of spring, sometimes even a month or so. I think it’s rather limited in central New Brunswick, though they do have a definite summer with warm and hot days, and a beautiful autumn (shorter than SNE, but bursting with color).

  16. If this was a month earlier, we would have easily had several inches of snow. Any rain would have been restricted to the Cape, if that far north. And we wouldn’t have had to rely as much on dynamic cooling.

  17. Sad news from the NFL. Matthew Stafford’s wife has a brain tumor. Stafford has always struck me as a likable person. Not a great QB, but when it comes to life issues that really matter (ultimately sports do not matter in the grand scheme of things) I don’t care about greatness on the field.

    https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2829320-matthew-staffords-wife-kelly-announces-she-will-undergo-surgery-for-brain-tumor?utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial

    2. Very sad indeed. I know they are having great success with some forms of brain tumors and surgery. Prayers for her, her family, and the doctors treating her.

  19. These are the sort of sneaky warm days that often get taken for granted in terms of their impact on monthly/seasonal temperatures. We get plenty of them, especially in a pattern like this. They get overshadowed by the inevitable cold/raw days. But when it’s all said and done and the statistics are finalized, days like this are what will help propel us to a spring that will go in the books as warmer than normal.

    2. A lot of those cold/raw days are not actually that much below normal, if at all. Sometimes you have a day (or more) that may have a chilly high temp but an above normal low temp because the temperature just doesn’t change much, so the days perceived as cold/raw are maybe near average, and then you get a day like today, and a lack of any lasting legit chill, and you end up milder than average. There is actually a decent theory why it’s more common for temps to be above average than below in our latitude, and it doesn’t even have to do with a warming climate. It has to do with the way air masses tend to work, we derive an average temperature from a fairly persistent and normal atmospheric habit of cool or cold spikes of air tending to produce bigger negative departures for a day or maybe two, while between these short-lived episodes come longer periods of time when the days will run a little above the average. In other words, it’s “normal” to have more days slightly above average mixed with fewer days much below average, and days that run well above or slightly below are a little less common than the rest. Not sure if that makes sense or if I lost you on it. If so, let me know and I’ll try to come up with a better explanation.

      2. Thanks TK! Makes perfect sense about the higher low temperatures on those cool/raw days. That’s an excellent point. Also agree that extreme cold shots tend to be shorter lived than warm spells, but that the warm anomalies usually aren’t as impressive.

        Ultimately, it has to balance around an average, and these theories can’t explain why the average is increasing. Somewhere in there, we have to be getting periodically warmer than we used to. But it can definitely help explain perception and how most of the weather we see is very much in line with our normal mid-latitude climate regime.

  20. 0.45 inch at Logan

    Would have been a nice moderate snow event if this had been March 3. 😉

  21. I find it interesting that while the CPC outlook has most of us at temps below normal, it has Alaska as a blowtorch.

    -NAO?

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