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TROPICAL STORM WARNINGS HAVE BEEN HOISTED FOR ALL OF NORTHERN CT FOR SUNDAY AS HURRICANE HENRI LOOKS POISED TO COME ASHORE SOMEWHERE BETWEEN CENTRAL LONG ISLAND AND BLOCK ISLAND, RI, MOST LIKELY OVER EASTERN LONG ISLAND, A BIT WEST OF MONTAUK POINT… FLOOD WATCHES HAVE BEEN HOISTED FOR ALL OF WMASS, CMASS, AND NORTHERN CT… HEAVY FLOODING RAINS AND STRONG WIND GUSTS OF 30-60MPH ACROSS THE WMASS AND NORTHERN CT REGION (HIGH END OF THAT RANGE SOUTH OF THE PIKE) WILL PRODUCE SCATTERED TO POTENTIALLY NUMEROUS POWER OUTAGES… TRACK STILL NOT SET IN STONE BUT CAPE COD AND ISLANDS WILL NOT SEE LANDFALL OF HENRI… 6:45AM SAT…

Good morning everybody, it is humid out there, and we’ll see some isolated to scattered showers, downpours and perhaps a thunderstorm today, especially the further north you go in MA up into SVT and SWNH. Highs will be in the low to mid 80s today, and mid to upper 70s tomorrow, then increasing well into the 80s next week, with some of us hitting 90 by mid week. Lows in the 60s to low 70s throughout, and very humid.

Now let’s get to Henri…

STORM SETUP / HENRI’S TRACK
This activity is west and northwestward-tracking, due to the influence of an upper low over West Virginia, which will track east and southeast toward the southern NJ and DelMarVa coastline over the next 24 hours.

This is the feature that is going to “hook” Hurricane Henri (pronounced “aha-ree”, not “Hen-ree”) as it tracks northward toward southeastern MA, and pull it northwest likely over eastern Long Island, though it could still come ashore anywhere from central LI to Block Island, RI, I believe, sometime around late morning to early afternoon.

High pressure from the Canadian Maritimes south-southeast into the western Atlantic Ocean assures us that this storm has zero chance of hooking out to sea, I just don’t see it happening, it’s going to impact southern New England and the WMass region.

This northwest hook could send it anywhere from central Long Island northwest through southern Litchfield County and into the eastern Catskills Mountains and the southern Hudson River Valley, or from between Montauk Point and Block Island through Hartford and into the central Berkshires (i.e. Pittsfield).

WIND IMPACTS
This is not only likely to hurl heavy, flooding-at-times rainfall into the Litchfield Hills, Taconics, Berkshires, western hilltowns, and possibly the Connecticut River Valley from Greenfield south to Hartford, but wind will also be an issue with wind gusts of 30-50mph expected in all of WMass and CMass as well, down into northern CT, where gusts south of the Pike may hit 60mph in some spots.

Again this southeasterly wind direction is notorious for uprooting trees that are not typically battle-hardened and braced against hours of southeasterly flow, and we could see 3-6 hours or so of these level of wind gusts east of the Berkshires/Litchfields, so outages are expected, at least scattered in coverage, and possibly numerous along and south of the Pike west of Worcester.

FLOODING IMPACTS
From Hartford north to Northampton and northwest to North Adams and points west of that line are in a Moderate Risk for Excessive Rainfall as posted by the WPC (Weather Prediction Center), and this is where very heavy rainfall could land, and produce major flooding problems, with accumulations of 3-6″ of rain, possibly as much as 8″ of rain on Sunday and Sunday night.

That is bad news, as we already have moisture-laden soils, and at some point, the rain will just runoff rather than soak into the ground, and flash flooding and/or street flooding will result.

In addition, there is concern for the Connecticut River to rise once all this runoff finds its way into the main western New England waterway out to the Atlantic.

If you remember on Thursday (during a day which we have two confirmed tornado touch downs in Clinton, MA and Thompson CT / Webster MA, by the way), we saw Worcester get inundated with flooding that came up very suddenly from the remnants of Fred as it passed through.

This is what I am concerned about along and just west of the track where the heaviest rain typicall falls in a tropical system.

SOUTHERN VERMONT/SOUTHWEST NH
You folks get some of this party, too! I think rains will be heavy at times up there too, but a bit less, perhaps 1-4″ of rainfall, and winds gusting 25-40mph or so, and there could be some flooding issues in southern VT again.

TORNADO POTENTIAL
In addition, there is major large-scale spin or what is known as vorticity in landfalling tropical systems like Henri, and on the southeastern and eastern flank of such storms, one has to always expect that at least one or two quick-moving, weak tornadoes will form, and possibly cause very localized mayhem and damage, and so we’ll have to watch for that, mostly east of the I-91 corridor and south of Rt. 9 in WMass and CMass, as well as EMass/southeast MA, RI, eastern CT and the Cape and Islands.

TIMING
We will be seeing outer rain bands from Henri, some of which may be squally with wind gusts, by early tomorrow morning south of the Pike and quickly spreading north throughout MA by mid-morning as Henri makes its approach to the Long Island and southern New England coastlines.

Wind gusts to 40mph will be possible before noon along and south of the Pike, with gusts 20-35mph north of there around that time.

Henri comes ashore either side of noon, and tracks slowly northwest into southwestern New England, and so conditions are going to downhill rapidly during Sunday afternoon into Sunday evening with heavy rain and strong wind gusts to tropical storm force as Henri weakens quickly from a likely Category 1 hurricane down to tropical storm as it pushes into CT and possibly the Berkshires of southwest hilltowns.

By Sunday night, Henri will slow down, and eventually stall somewhere between the eastern Catskills, or more likely the Taconics or Berkshires and start to be pushed east, either side of the MA/VT-NH state line by atmospheric featrures over the central part of the U.S., raking the region again with another round of showers and thunderstorms on the way out for late Sunday night into Monday evening – hooray for us! The rest of the week looks warm to possibly hot by mid week, and very humid, with a cool down and humidity reprieve by late week, hopefully.

Again, please stay tuned for updates, track changes, and new information. I will be posting my next update sometime this early to mid afternoon, and then another final day’s update later tonight, probably around 9pm-ish, given some personal commitments that I made months ago.

I will be in now-casting mode after my Sunday morning report, so look for that, and I will be with you all day tomorrow, of course, to keep you updated on developments with Hurricane Henri’s anticipated across the WMass region and surrounding counties.

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