Good morning everybody, well yesterday was quite a day for many, with house-shaking thunder, gusty winds, downpours, and a report of what may have been a microburst up in Greenfield and Franklin county from the storms that popped ahead of the main cluster that came through a little later in the afternoon. Trees were downed, and hail was reported from Franklin county up into southern VT.

As for today, a cold front is approaching our area, which will provide some lift in the atmosphere. Lift is one of three main ingredients necessary to produce powerful convection (vertical, up/down wind currents from the Earth’s surface to the tropopause, which is generally the layer in the upper atmosphere below which our weather occurs). This convection produces strong to severe thunderstorms of the type we had yesterday, except that we didn’t have much lift yesterday. It was the copious moisture and surface heating that combined to give rise to convection.

We should see periods of sunshine, which combined with the very moist air still in place in Western Mass, will destabilize the atmosphere again, and with the approaching cold front, should fire up more strong to severe thunderstorms. The main line is forecast to come through this evening, sometime around dinner time or thereafter, but we could see isolated to scattered clusters of storms before that.

A FLASH FLOOD WATCH is posted for western MA, as storms could “train” today, meaning multiple cells could pass over the same area. Be careful when you are out and about today, as we could see several inches of rain from these storms and downpours.

Because lapse rates will be fairly weak, large hail should be limited, as any convection has some “brakes” applied to its velocity and power.

Highs will be in the mid to upper 80s, and dewpoints in the low 70s again.

Now we turn our attention to what has become Hurricane Arthur. Arthur is expected to pass to the south of The Benchmark, passing about 100 miles south of Nantucket. As the hurricane passes over the outer banks of NC tonight, and heads our way tomorrow, the interaction with the cold front passing through our area, could pull a rain shield poleward (i.e. northward), and create periods of rain for Western Mass, especially during the first half or first two-thirds of the day.

Anyone traveling to Cape Cod for 4th of July weekend should know that you will be experiencing tropical downpours Friday at times, with thunderstorms, and winds could gust over tropical storm strength Friday night (39mph or above) as the storm makes its closest pass.

Nova Scotia is likely to get a direct hit from Hurricane Arthur, as well as NewFoundland.

The front acts like a broom and sweeps this soupy air and Arthur seaward, and will set us up for a beautiful weekend with cooler, drier air, highs around 80 degrees, and sunshine.

So a couple more days of inclement weather to go through, and our reward is just around the corner.

I’ll be reporting as much as I can today as weather develops. Have a great day!