Thursday Forecast

104 Comments

7:14AM

DAYS 1-5 (OCTOBER 17-21)
It was like winning the weather lottery here in southern New England, having a sharp disturbance about as strong as you can see this time of year combine with a rare shot of southern jet stream energy to form a rapidly intensifying low that then came right up overhead. Impressive winds and heavy rainfall was experienced, as expected. Instead of listing details in terms of rain amounts and wind gust reports, I will let you all discuss that in the comments and I will move along with the updated forecast, which has a few adjustments. Nothing really to change regarding the weather the next few days though. We’re not done with the storm system yet, as the center of it will be completing a tight cyclonic loop north of the Massachusetts border and then move eastward, exiting New England via Maine later today. This set-up will cause a strong westerly wind and wrap-around rain showers as the low departs. Drier air will work in tonight and especially Friday, although during this time we can expected a gusty breeze to continue. Then a nice break for the weekend as high pressure settles to the south and a warmer westerly air flow takes over, but there is a little change for Sunday’s outlook. A system coming out of the Gulf of Mexico is going to end up off the East Coast by the end of the weekend, and the overall pattern will be warped a bit from what it looked like earlier, with fair weather hanging on but possibly a more southerly or southeasterly air flow. When Monday comes, a more southerly flow is expected as high pressure to the north of the region also bridges southward just east of the region, keeping the low offshore at bay.
Forecast details…
TODAY: Variably cloudy. Scattered rain showers. Wind variable becoming W and increasing to 15-30 MPH with higher gusts.
TONIGHT: Partly to mostly clear. Lows 38-45. Wind NW 15-25 MPH, higher gusts.
FRIDAY: Mostly to partly sunny. Highs 56-63. Wind NW 10-20 MPH, higher gusts.
FRIDAY NIGHT: Clear. Patchy frost. Lows 35-42 except 40-47 immediate shore and urban areas. Wind W up to 10 MPH.
SATURDAY: Sunny. Highs 60-67. Wind W up to 10 MPH.
SATURDAY NIGHT: Clear. Lows 38-45. Wind light variable.
SUNDAY: Sunny. Highs 65-72. Wind SE 5-15 MPH.
SUNDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy. Lows 50-57. Wind S up to 10 MPH.
MONDAY: Partly sunny. Highs 63-70. Wind S 5-15 MPH.

DAYS 6-10 (OCTOBER 22-26)
A little slower timing expected, with mild air and a risk of rain showers October 22, then a front pushing through with a drying/cooling trend October 23-24 before it warms back up ahead of the next front October 25. That front may bring some unsettled weather by October 26.

DAYS 11-15 (OCTOBER 27-31)
Overall westerly flow but indications are for a trend toward near to below normal temperatures with at least one threat of precipitation in an overall dry pattern. Leaning away from activity being added to by any moisture from the south as it looks like that will be lacking.

104 thoughts on “Thursday Forecast”

    1. Not so specifically. It is hard to predict those things along a coast like this because of the unknown exact position of a low center and the shape of the coast in the most vulnerable area.

  4. Thanks TK!

    Yesterday Pete noted two more strong coastal storms ahead.

    Next Wednesday-Thursday and next weekend.

    I for one am coastal weary. Save these for winter.

    1. A bit bold to go for 2 more that far in advance, in my opinion. Not so sure about either. The first will be a remnant tropical low in transition, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a strong coastal storm. Reasonable guidance has it quite the opposite.

        1. It’s more like what the atmosphere decides to do. This particular event was a rare combo for the pattern we’re in. It’s not likely to repeat anytime soon.

  5. National grid has our power being restored tomorrow morning. I started up the generator and have lights, hot water and wifi.

    Our road is blocked off on one end.

  6. Important to keep things in perspective, like Truro’s 103 MPH wind gust being recorded at 114 feet up.

  7. Thanks TK.

    This storm definitely did not underperform. 3.27” of rain in the rain gauge here in Coventry and now 4.20” on the month securing yet another month of above to well above normal precip.

    There is a large tree down blocking my road a few hundred years west of me. Schools are on two hour delay but buses are running late as there as long list of other roads in town with blockages.

    Bottomed out at 975mb pressure. Lowest I have seen here. Impressive!

    1. I was about the same. I had to reset my altitude for my Davis Instruments equipment that changed the pressure to agree with Logan which is about
      5-6 miles away.

      My low reading was 972. something, and after making the elevation adjustment, it raised my mb by 1 0r 2. So my low was probably 973 to 974 mb. Wondering
      what Logan’s low reading was???

    2. Ah ha – I just posted about my rain gauge accuracy to JPD. With you ate 3.27, I am not as uncertain as I was.

      Are you stuck at home with the tree down on your street?

  8. Good morning again.
    WOW! That was quite the storm.

    On the way in, I encountered a medium tree down in JP blocking a road and manned
    by police. Saw some large branches down in Roxbury. Other than that, very uneventful
    this morning.

    I received 2.41 inches in ye ole bucket in JP.

    1. My gauge read 3.86 this am. I have had no reason to question it in the past, but wunder stations around me have closer to what you got JPD. The gauge read 1.00 even when I went to bed and having watched the rain until that point, I don’t question that one bit!!

      2. I just checked Wundermaps. Those rain totals are TODAY’S totals
        only and do not include what was in the bucket prior to Midnight.

        I see a 1.9 near me. I had 1.97 for today and 0.44 for yesterday
        for my 2.41 total.

          2. Not to mention, but depending upon how
            people have their equipment set up, their day
            may or may not end at Midnight.

            Things may not always be as they “appear” to be.
            🙂 🙂 🙂

    2. Does anyone have the link to the last 24-48 hours of hourly observations?
      I don’t seem to have that link here at work.
      thanks

  9. Thanks TK !

    Benefitting from no school as I couldn’t fall asleep last night. I guess I’ll never get rid of this weatherbug.

  10. From Tom’s link it looks like Boston bottomed out at “about” 975.3 mb, but it could
    have been slightly lower between obs.

    Boston’s all-time October low-pressure reading was 982.4 millibars.

    I think we SMASHED that!!!!!

  11. Good morning and thanks, TK…

    2.42″ and 976.6 in Taunton.

    I guess the HRRR wind gusts did pan out pretty much!

  12. Saying pembroke will be without power until 6:30 am tomorrow morning . I kind of maybe believe it because the wind will still be strong down this way all day .

  13. I know in CT Eversource will not put people up in the bucket to restore power if the winds are gusting to 40mph or higher.

    1. LOL!!!
      So am I. The other day the 0z GFS run had a Halloween snowstorm for my area with a foot of snow.

  16. there will have to be a lot of patience because this type of storm does localized damage so power restoration is much slower. and of course they have to prioritize places like hospitals and assisted living facilities and nursing homes.

  21. Pressure is up to 28.98 inches or 981.37 mb

    Here is an exact inches to millibar converter.

    http://www.csgnetwork.com/pressinmbcvt.html

    btw on the Meso West maps, when pressure is selected
    it only give 3 digits like now it has Boston as 898.
    Baffling? Not really as it stands for 28.98 inches.
    it knocks of the leading digit and the decimal.

    30.25 inches would read as 025
    31.10 inches would read as 110

    Here is the Meso West map with pressures:

    https://imgur.com/a/FLPVNPz

  22. Thank you TK! Lost power in Halifax for a little bit but managed to recover before we woke for work. Started out with a 2-hour delay for school which was then turned into a complete cancellation. Lots of trees blocking roads down this way and many still without power.

  24. 3 out of the last 4 times Boston’s radar was downn for scheduled work there was a significant storm. And that has to be scheduled well in advance so nothing can really be done.

    1. I don’t understand all of the logistics, but it seems to be some sort
      of contingency should be built in to handle significant weather events.
      What a shame.

  25. Power just came back . Last thing I wanted after leaving the house at 2 am this morning was to come home to no power

  26. I was just thinking, in our general area of the world during the last 6 – 7 weeks, the atmosphere produced :

    A 910 mb Cat 5 hurricane. Weakened, the hurricane then received a charge of energy from the jet stream and significantly impacted the whole length of Nova Scotia, from its southwestern most point all the way to its northeastern most point.

    Then, for the month of September, the south baked to the tune of 6-10F temperature anomalies above average.

    Now, we just experienced a coastal storm whose pressure fell more than 30 mb in less than 24 hrs.

    What’s next ………..

    2. There are still a lot of events that occur that we would not have heard about a couple decades ago.

    1. I’ll take a Historic blizzard as long as nobody experiences any loss of any kind & my family is safe while I work a billon hours overtime !!!!!

    3. It’s coming! One storm that will produce equal snowfall to TKs entire winter snowfall forecast…. 🙂

  29. I love the snow but have it not fall on a holiday where people can’t get to where they need to be. If we could have a quick hitting snow event during the early morning hours of Christmas like we in 2018 it would be perfect. The snow started at 4am that morning done at 10am. I believe there was some thundersnow with that.

    1. I’m ready for snow any time, but I agree it’s not great when it impacts travel. With Thanksgiving at its latest possible date this year the chances of snow increase during that weekend.

      Btw, `your’ Yankees must win tonight. It’s going to be hard. Good pitching can stop good hitting.

  30. Thank you, TK.

    I have a peculiar question. Pardon my ignorance, if that is implied in the question. Why when a low is departing the region and the wind changes to a westerly does it appear that it’s much windier, say, 30 plus feet from the surface than it does at the surface? Today, for example, is a windy day, but much, much windier 30 plus feet above the surface than it is near the ground. I notice a significant differential when storms depart, but not when they approach or when they’re near us. Then, the differential between wind speed at the surface and just above the surface doesn’t appear as great. Maybe I’m imagining things?

      1. Guess that would be why I do not notice a difference. The trees on the hill behind the house are probably 50 feet above our lawn And we have wind everywhere. But I also think sometimes the neighborhood is set up like a chute that carries the wind down the hill. Also, I thought around 30 feet was the optimal position for an anemometer.

        1. I was anything but clear. We have nothing more than baby trees other than what is on the hill behind the houses

  31. Joshua I agree it’s a must win to get the series tied two two. If they go down 3-1 you got to win three straight and beat Verlander and Cole to do that. The Yankees offense the past two games has not been there. Cole did not have his best stuff in game three as the Yankees had chances to get runs off of him.

  32. A little perspective…

    A temperature record and a pressure record are vastly different.

    A temperature record is a result of a large scale air mass and a set of conditions that allow a station to reach a high or low not seen in a period of record on a particular date.

    A pressure record is harder to achieve because it’s basically like having the chance of a pinpoint going over one spot on a map. It’s rare. We’ve seen many low pressure areas of that magnitude at this time of year at the same latitude as Boston, but none of them have come close enough to passing directly over the city to have a pressure reading there that low, between October 1 and 31. The way that atmosphere works, we could break that record next week, or never see it again. But it will probably fall somewhere in between next week and the end of the world. 😉

  33. A few of my wrap-up thoughts on this event…

    *This was a big storm, and yes, in some regards, historic. It generally played out pretty similar to what I laid out yesterday afternoon, though “round 1” of wind seemed to over-perform while “round 2” today has maybe under-performed just a bit. Nonetheless, a heavy hitter, and one that will linger in memory for awhile.

    *It’s generally a fools errand to compare one class of storm to another, but the sort of impacts we saw from this are probably comparable to what a Category 1 hurricane impact would bring.

    *The models did fairly well with this, both global and hi-res. The GFS lagged, however, and even with its “upgrade” displayed the same bias to correct the low westward that it has countless times in the past. I actually was buying into the GFS “splitsville” idea several days ago, but that’s not really what happened, though the low was progressive enough to prevent this from being anywhere near historic on rainfall.

    *The other day I characterized Eric Fisher’s tweets as hit or miss. This morning he had what I would consider a total misfire in describing the tidal fluctuations at Boston last night as a meteotsunami. Maybe TK can chime in here (and maybe I’m wrong), but this looked much more like storm surge than a tsunami, and they aren’t the same thing. Terminology aside, however, the water rises were impressive.

    *Onto the next one! The next 7-10 days look pretty quiet but the pattern after could potentially be very interesting. Would not be at all surprised if most of SNE sees its first flakes, perhaps even first measurable snow in spots, the last week of the month.

    1. From observing similar events in other parts of the world during my time as an agricultural and marine forecaster in the private sector, I’d say storm surge. Just the right amount of deepening combined with the trajectory of the low and the shape of the coastline where the water rises were most impressive.

      Definitely an impressive storm! For my local area, it doesn’t rank near the top. Our damage and power outage situation around here was not very impressive, and we were definitely lucky. Most of the tree damage I saw in Woburn consisted of stripped leaves, numerous twigs and small branches down, scattered medium branches down, and isolated large limbs down. In my travels (and I covered alot of the area) I saw one “almost whole” tree down as I reported overnight.

        1. And, thank you WxWatcher. I’ve been remiss in not thanking you before for your great insights. Your contributions to WHW are much appreciated.

          1. Thanks Joshua. Always enjoy your posts also, your insights into weather and other current events nearby and beyond are appreciated 🙂

  34. WxWatcher you were mentioning the possibility of snow flakes and perhaps measurable snow in places last night meteorologist Joe Furey from WTNH in CT said on air he believes there will be snow before the end of October. TK do you see that as a possibility? I know a few days ago the 0z GFS run showed a foot of snow for Halloween in my area.

  35. One final note…

    The debate over what is or isn’t a “Nor’easter” is bizzare. I don’t understand why some people really care about this? Theoretically any area of low pressure that produces northeast winds is a “Nor’easter”. Basically the only factor involved is the track of the low, which determines the wind flow. It has no bearing on the strength of the storm or its impact. There’s no “Nor’easter database.” It’s a colloquial term, nothing more.

  36. This may have been mentioned. I’m waiting for a meeting to begin and saw this.

    For example, in Boston the barometer bottomed out at 975.3 millibars. Boston’s previous October record was 980 millibars; the city has records dating back to 1893.

    I think it was Eric who tweeted it earlier also

    He said this is the fourth worst October power outage

    1. Crazy thing is this was only like the 4th biggest October power outage in recent years

      He also mentioned it will be hard to break the storm in 2011

      1. The previous maybe hit an area harder that had older trees more clustered than the hardest-hit areas this time. That could be one factor at the very least.

        1. Or they were bigger storms.
          Eric

          had more in 2011
          Sandy had more in 2012
          October windstorm 2 years ago had more
          Irene did too, but that was in August

          He also said

          tbh I’m not even sure of this cracks the Top 15 outages this decade. Would have to do some searching

  37. Eric

    The observed pressure this morning of 973mb in Concord, NH is the lowest on record there for any month May through November. Comes up 10mb short of the all-time record

    2. This is such a great example of the fluid atmosphere and how sometimes things from so far apart can come together at just the right moment for a relatively small group of people to experience something at its maximum. Most of the time something this intense happens over vast ocean or sparsely populated harsh landscape. Once in a great while, it happens somewhere else. It happened this time, and this is why we had record low pressure set at a few locations.

  40. Dodged a bullet with this one. Tweet from Meteorologist Ryan Hanrahan
    Last night’s peak storm surge in New Haven was about 4.2 feet. Had that happened during an astronomically high tide (last night’s tide was pretty low) the water levels would have exceeded Irene and equaled Hurricane Sandy.

    1. Wow. Eric said something similar about Boston…not exceeding sandy but setting a new high water mark ….possibly.

    2. In theory. It may not have equaled Sandy fully though. That impacted such a large area and had such a big fetch. This would have been on a much smaller scale. But, it didn’t happen, so we did indeed get lucky.

  41. The Farmer’s Almanac forecast: Harsh winter. Gets much publicity.
    The Old Farmer’s Almanac forecast: Very mild winter, below normal snowfall. *crickets*

    Just thought I’d point that out. 😉

      1. Of course the educated reader would know not to take the forecasts in the publications all too seriously, but it was amusing anyway. 🙂 I do like those publications for all the information in them and the stories, some of them quite quirky. Yes of course we can get all that info on the internet but there’s something neat and nostalgic about having it sitting in a publication that has really good-smelling pages. 🙂

  43. Power still out in a good portion of town. No school today. Our neighborhood is still in the dark. The moonlight looked beautiful last night.

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