Thursday Forecast

49 Comments

7:11AM

DAYS 1-5 (JANUARY 30-FEBRUARY 3)
We end January with one dry and seasonably chilly day and another dry and slightly milder day as high pressure moves across the region then offshore and away. We will start February with a slightly unsettled weekend and by slightly I mean being skirted by the northwestern edge of a broad low pressure area offshore Saturday bringing a little rain and possible mix into southeastern sections, and some upper level energy coming across Sunday with slightly colder air in place, resulting in the possibility of some snow showers in the region. High pressure will bring fair weather Monday and we’ll already be moderating in temperature by then as things are moving right along.
Forecast details…
TODAY: Mostly sunny. Highs 30-37. Wind N up to 10 MPH.
TONIGHT: Mostly clear. Lows 13-20. Wind variable under 10 MPH.
FRIDAY: Partly cloudy. Highs 37-44. Wind variable up to 10 MPH.
FRIDAY NIGHT: Clouding over. Lows 26-33. Wind E 5-15 MPH.
SATURDAY: Cloudy. Chance of mix/rain favoring eastern CT/RI/southeastern MA. Highs 35-42. Wind E 10-20 MPH, higher gusts southern areas.
SATURDAY NIGHT: Mostly cloudy. A rain or snow shower favoring southeastern areas. Lows 30-37. Wind N 5-15 MPH.
SUNDAY: Variably cloudy. Chance of a snow shower. Highs 35-42. Wind W 5-15 MPH.
SUNDAY NIGHT: Clearing. Lows 20-27. Wind NW 5-15 MPH.
MONDAY: Mostly sunny. Highs 38-45. Wind W 5-15 MPH.

DAYS 6-10 (FEBRUARY 4-8)
Milder then average throughout the period though some variability in temperature, with warmest likely occurring on February 4. A couple low pressure areas will impact the region, the first in the February 4-5 period with rain showers as mild air dominates, the second sometime in the later February 6 to February 8 period which may have more of a mix involved as slightly colder air will be present by then.

DAYS 11-15 (FEBRUARY 9-13)
Fair weather to start this period then being near a boundary between mild air in the southeastern US and colder air in eastern Canada means we’ll likely turn unsettled again for the balance of this period, although it’s far too soon to detail what any storminess may produce as far as precipitation type goes.

49 thoughts on “Thursday Forecast”

  6. The stores have plenty of snow/ice melt available. This is actually the best time to get some and stockpile it while the weather pattern is so quiet. If I happen to see some leftover on a shelf even in the early spring I get at least a couple bags. People including the cashier look at me funny but I just tell them that it has to snow again eventually.

    Why people love to run around at the last minute when all the Warnings are hoisted I’ll never know.

  7. Thank you, TK.

    At this point I’m okay with a continued mild winter, provided the heat and humidity are minimal this summer. I’m afraid, however, that may be too much to ask. If I had money, I’d have a summer cottage somewhere in Newfoundland. Alas, I don’t have money.

  8. Thanks TK.

    14 degrees at my house this morning….actually felt like winter!

    This is an interesting graphic on recent performance of the GFS and Euro ensembles. Shows model biases in the 6-10 day and 11-15 day ranges. Note how the GEFS has had a big time cold bias while the EPS has been fairly accurate temp wise.

    https://www.americanwx.com/bb/uploads/monthly_2020_01/IMG_20200130_094239.jpg.d418a4e4098083797c7ed1f7820b22f0.jpg

    Something to keep in mind when running the GFS model out to 384 hours and seeing what looks like a colder pattern with more snow opportunities down the road and then see it go poof inside 7 days.

  11. That was an interesting 12z GFS run. Very active and unsettled pattern through mid February. Boundary setting up across or near New England much of the time with waves and waves of precip moving through.

    Next week….it’s unsettled starting Tuesday and pretty much straight through Saturday. Temps each day are going to be highly dependent on where that boundary sets up. Could very well be 20’s and 30’s with frozen precip in CNE/NNE and pushing 60 towards the south coast.

  12. Ch 7 advertising year without a winter forecast models suggest “ widespread warmth “in February brining us close to the unofficial start of spring . Lol ok

    1. I bet we get hit with a blockbuster one 3 day storm . There is only one catch start at 3:00 Friday and all cleaned up by 7am Monday morning

      1. We’ll input that timing request into the atmosphere and weather models 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

    2. Also ch 7 is just showing that because of projected temps and by all means I’m not knocking ch 7 . I would like to get some snow for the folks who want it here.

  13. If the southeast ridge is going to become a player in February, that doesn’t automatically mean New England will be way above normal temp wise.

    Quite the contrary, it could be an opportunity for winter weather events. It will depend on probably the phase and set up of the NAO as to whether the ridge puts New England into the warm sector OR puts just the southeast US in the warm sector and there is cold high pressure to the north of New England.

  14. This is what I will say about Mark’s post’s above. Data can be factual, but still captured and presented in ways to reach a favorable conclusion for support of a hypothesis or an individual’s agenda. This particular individual has had a long standing disagreement with NWS NCEP and does what he can to discredit their work.

    The GFS is flawed, but so is the ECMWF and there have been significant chunks of this late fall and winter where the GFS has been a more reliable forecast tool if you know how interpret output and correct for biases and adjustments for actual climatic set up vs climatology.

    If anyone actually believes the CMC or UKMET outperforms the GFS on a regular basis as for predicting sensible outcomes then you are just fooling yourself to get to your desired outcome.

    The internet does not help with this. You get also sort of honks who don’t understand the strength and weaknesses of weather models and too have their own agendas to move forward with, making statement of facts that are not grounded in the model’s output or meteorology. Example – the system that will pass to our south and east on Saturday. I read multiple times that the ECMWF was missing this because it does not handle shortwave energy well in the SW US. No, this had nothing to do with why this storm would appear and not appear on the ECMWF and other models. You needed to look at the northern stream and see if that branch was going to cut through the NJ area or if it was going to run the border of the Carolinas. ECMWF more consistently diagnosed the strength and depth of the northern jet.

    ECMWF/GFS/NAM will serve you well if you work with them in conjunction and adjustment with each other. The rest are just superfluous weather dork porn. I have had my occasional runs with other models. A winter 10 years ago the GGEM and its ENS made me look like a genius, but it locked in on a 6 week pattern and I rode it. A few years ago the UKMET did the same thing. But they don’t just hit one, they hit for several weeks and then return to there regularly scheduled uselessness.

    As for this winter; Our memories are short. 2012-2013 8″ of snow in December in January and 55″ in February and March. 40″ from two storms. The March storm was completely anomalous to the pattern with a giant 400 mile fetch that I totally missed on.

    My personal thoughts – Above average temps, with average precip during early February, trending cold and dry into mid-march before a warmer set up for spring sets in.

    2. Thanks. My youngest and I were talking about the 8 inch winter this morning. But we thought it was 2011-2012. Maybe we had more than I thought that winter or we had two in a row. I know water temp was 46 in Humarock 1/1/12 as my niece did the polar plunge.

  15. Tom, I agree with your comments above. In a sea of unfavorable teleconnections for snow/cold right now, we do actually have a -EPO which is favorable for cold air intrusion into the US, at least the western US. The battle between that and the southeast ridge is what is going to create that boundary setting up near us with an active pattern. I have also seen projections of a -NAO possibly returning late Feb into March which could reinforce this. This looks like a prime pattern for a lot of mixed precip events. in the short to mid term. A -NAO might give us a better opportunity for snow events down the road (or cold just make us colder and dry as JMA suggests).

    Regardless, it’s an active pattern with cold air nearby and two months left in meteorological winter. The odds that every major teleconnection are going to remain unfavorable for the next 60 days are not very good. Not to mention, you can get frozen precip and snow events even in an unfavorable pattern as JMA notes.

    The winter is over and clock is ticking comments on January 30 are nauseating, esp. the continuous tweets from Eric Fisher who I normally enjoy following. I’ll gladly eat crow if we don’t manage a few more snow events this winter.

  17. We should know all there is to know about the remainder of this winter by sunrise on February 2 between Punx Phil and our own Ms. G. 🙂

  18. Thank you TK! And JMA
    I strongly agree that winter is not over by any stretch of the imagination, we are not even into the month of February yet. I think that we have to remember that the atmosphere is fluid dynamics and chaos theory rolled into one. The computer models based off of different algorithms, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, do a decent job trying to predict the outcomes within a certain margin of error which grows exponentially after day 5. That being said, I think one would be naive to believe that a certain pattern is a lock and we can write off half of a particular season.

  19. The people who are saying winter is over or the clock is ticking are all people who love winter and heaps of snow. I feel like they are saying it to dare winter to hit hard. lol

    2. Kind of like day one when people say the pats can’t make playoffs. This year of course worked but then a broken clock….well, you know the saying. I think you are correct that it is in good part hoping to stack the odds.

  21. 12z Euro, like the 12z GFS is very active next week with the boundary over us and wave after wave of low pressure moving through. We start out on the warm side and end up on the colder side.

    CNE and NNE do well with snow which the ski areas could really use. Some accumulation in SNE as well. It is the third system late next week into next weekend that offers the best chance to deliver some accumulating snow for interior areas of SNE.

    12z Euro Snowmap through 2/9:

    https://www.pivotalweather.com/model.php?m=ecmwf_full&p=sn10_acc&rh=2020013012&fh=240&r=us_ne&dpdt=&mc=

    1. I do think the ski areas – which had such a bonanza last year (remember Jay’s Peak total, which I believe got close to 500 inches) – will fare okay in the coming weeks. I fear, however, that SNE will not, as marginal temps and changeover to rain or mix in some instances will curb snow amounts significantly.

      1. Ski areas did well last year too. In the long run, they matter most to me. Nice to see them have some good years. They sure had some bad times back years ago

  22. Vicki, you mentioned a quid pro quo – my trading a mild winter for a summer without heat and humidity. Well, I’d also trade a hot and humid summer for a cold and snowy winter, the latter being achieved through foreign (Canada) interference in our weather.

  25. This is a blowtorch pattern setting up (if we can say it ever left), but end of next week still intrigues me. Possible anafrontal wave and rain to snow situation. Many details to work out but my early leaning is that parts of New England see at least a moderate snow event around next Fri-Sat.

    1. I think TK is hinting at this also with how he’s worded the Day 6-10. Basically a prolonged unsettled stretch, high confidence on a rain event around midweek, then a lower confidence event of rain, mix, or snow to end the week.

        1. In this particular pattern, with so little cold air available anywhere, I think that’s how it is going to be. Even this morning, the snow/mix prospects for that period I mentioned look bleaker on the guidance than they did last night, but that’s why it’s low confidence, and it’ll still need to be watched for awhile longer.

        2. Any event beyond a few days is. Not just snow events. And it’s quite likely that would not likely be “just” a snow event anyway, should it occur.

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