TROPICAL STORM WARNINGS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED… FLOOD WATCHES CONTINUE THROUGH 8PM MONDAY… ANY WIND THREAT IS OVER, THOUGH THIS WAS NOT GOING TO BE A BIG WIND PRODUCER AS MENTIONED… GENERALLY, A HALF-INCH TO 3″ OF RAIN HAS FALLEN ACROSS THE REGION, BUT SOME AREAS ARE UNDER HALF AN INCH… HEAVIEST AFTERNOON RAINS HAVE PUSHED INTO THE BERKSHIRES, TACONICS, AND SW.VT… THE WORST WILL NOT COME TO PASS WITH THIS STORM, THOUGH SMALL POCKETS OF FLOODING WILL BE POSSIBLE TOMORROW AS HENRI’S REMNANTS SWING EAST THROUGH THE REGION AND OUT TO SEA… 6pm Sunday…
Good evening everybody, we’ve had wind gusts of 40-70mph across eastern CT, RI and southeast MA this afternoon, and gusts more like 20-40mph across the WMass region into CMass, and northwestern CT, up into SVT and SWNH, with some areas not even reaching 20mph.
Currently, about 1000 people are without power in WMass, about 7000 without power in CMass, and about 20000 without power in north-central and northeast CT, so about 28000 in the region I cover.
Anywhere from a half inch to around 3″ or more of rain have fallen in many areas, and some folks have received less than half an inch of rainfall.
All Tropical Storm Warnings have been cancelled.
If you were bracing for outages, that threat due to wind is essentially over as of the 6pm hour, though we can’t rule out a few isolated outages here and there in the high terrain, but that would be the exception.
Flood Warnings are posted for all of the western hilltowns and a Flood Advisory is posted for the Berkshires where heavy rain has recently passed through and dropped 1-2″ of rainfall in a short period of time.
While there has been flooding in Springfield and Hartford today, and a couple of other places, the major flood threat did not materialize, as Henri, now centered over Hartford County has tracked more west-northwesterly than anticipated and is headed toward the junction of NY/CT/MA borders. It also drew in my dry air along its southern and southeastern flank, decaying its precip shield more quickly than I thought.
The bulk of the precipitation for this afternoon and evening over WMass and northwest CT is over.
This was not expected, I believed that Henri was going to slow down sooner, and that southwest MA into northwest CT was going to see heavier rain for longer there, producing a threat for moderate to major flooding.
That thinking proved to be wrong, as the heavy rain is now exiting the Berkshires, and focused over the Taconics of eastern NY, and even more so the Catskills of southeast NY, the Poconos over northeast PA, and northern New Jersey.
This is where I was off, and while that’s good news in that the flooding threat is mitigated for this evening, I was off in my thinking.
So for tonight, the heavy rain threat will be mostly west and southwest of my coverage area portion of southwestern New England (southern Berkshires, southwest hilltowns of WMass, northwest CT, and the central and southern Taconics of eastern NY).
We in WMass, CMass, northern CT, SVT/SWNH will continue to see periods of mostly light to moderate rain with lulls, but aside from a few localized areas, nothing that will produce flash flooding or street flooding.
MONDAY
However, Henri’s remnants will eventually stop tracking west into the Litchfields, southern Berkshires and eastern NY and will stall, and come back east tomorrow morning, afternoon, and depart the WMass region during the evening.
As this happens, while there will be no tropical storm-based winds at all, there is a very low chance for an isolated weak tornado mainly in CMass and EMass in the afternoon, and more importantly, new flash flooding concerns may develop as pockets of heavy rainfall develop around what’s left of Henri’s by-then non-tropical circulation.
So, an additional half inch to 3″ of rainfall is expected across the region, but should fall sporadically-enough so as to not cause the kind of major flooding that was expected to be produced by Henri just yesterday and the day before, and even this morning, though I had outlined it would be a smaller area, and likely not like Irene’s catastrophic flooding.
Still, we’ll need to monitor during the day any heavy rain developments for pockets of flooding potential, which I will do.
I want to thank you for all the reports today, and while I’m glad being wrong meant we didn’t suffer as much at the hands of the weather as we could have, my thinking was wrong regarding the worst impacts it seemed were going to transpire today, but didn’t, and you should know that.
I hope you have a good evening, and I will update later tonight if conditions are notable for doing so, or if new Advisories, Watches or Warnings are posted by the NWS.
Thank you…
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TROPICAL STORM HENRI APPROACHING RI/CT BORDER ALONG THE COAST… OUTSIDE OF EASTERN CT, RI, AND SE.MA, WIND IS BECOMING LESS OF AN ISSUE… SOME HIGHER GUSTS WILL BE SEEN IN BURSTS IN THE WMASS/CMASS HIGH TERRAIN, BUT VALLEY WILL BE LIGHTER… NEW CONCERN IS FOR AXIS OF HEAVY RAIN TO DEVELOP ALONG SOUTH OF THE PIKE IN HAMPDEN COUNTY, SOUTHERN BERKSHIRES, SOUTHERN TACONICS, CATSKILLS, AND THROUGH NORTHWEST CT… WHILE ISOLATED FLOODING IS POSSIBLE ANYWHERE, THAT’S THE ZONE I THINK WHERE MAJOR FLOODING WILL BE MOST POSSIBLE THROUGH MONDAY MORNING… NEW BELIEF THAT SOME AREAS WILL SEE SIGNIFICANTLY LESS RAIN THAN THOUGHT DUE TO DRIER AIR TRAINING IN… 12:35pm Sun…
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MID-DAY UPDATE – TROPICAL STORM HENRI
Good afternoon folks, Henri ran over Block Island, RI and is coming ashore down near the CT/RI border near Westerly RI and Groton CT. We’ve got a lot to discuss, and I’m going to handle the wind portion first, and then the rain/flooding portion second, so let’s dive into the digital blabber-verse together, as I wax nut on today’s tropical storm in New England.
WIND IMPACTS/OBSERVATIONS
To start, we’ve verified surface wind gusts between 40-70mph down that way
–53mph at Groton CT
–70mph as Point Judith, RI
–41mph New Bedford MA
–55mph Woods Hole, MA
In addition, eastern CT is entering the highest wind period right now (around Noon, Sunday), and gusts of 40-60mph are possible there, with squally gusts up to 30-50mph possible in southern Worcester County and Hampden County this afternoon, with similar 30-50mph gusts possible in the high terrain of the western hilltowns, Litchfield Hills, and Berkshires. This will cause scattered to widspread outages in eastern CT and RI, and isolated to scattered outages in southern MA and the western MA highlands.
However, points north of Springfield in the valley, northern Worcester County, SVT and SWNH should see less wind, with gusts ranging anywhere from 20-40mph, so only a few outages here and there, I believe.
Given all this, most outages (which are approaching over 100,000 already down in southeast CT and RI combined), should be relegated to south of the Pike, and some high terrain areas, due to wind gusts in squally tropical rain bands.
SETUP/HEAVY RAIN/FLOODING POTENTIAL
Again, the main impact with Henri is the heavy rainfall and potentially major flooding as a result.
Henri is now forecast to track northwestward from southeast CT into northern Litchfield County on up to the central Berkshires, due to the southwestward tug by the closed upper low that is wrapped its lowest line of equal pressure (a/k/a “isobar”) AROUND the upper levels of Henri, “capturing” it, and gaining track influence over it.
This upper low is way southwest of Henri, down over the DelMarVa Peninsula, and will tug it towards the confluence of the NY, CT and MA state line near Mt. Washington, MA and Salisbury, CT, and good ol’ Bish Bash Falls!
Meanwhile, at the jet stream level, as it the jet wraps around Henri at the highest level, divergence (meaning air that is moving away from an area) will likely form around the Litchfields, southern Bekshires/Taconics and west to the eastern/northern Catskills in NY.
This will likely produce an intense area over that general region of lifting air, as air aloft that diverges away, acts like a vacuum, causing intense rising air below it, which results in heavy precipitation, today in the form of heavy rains.
I’m also seeing drier air get entrained into the eastern and southeastern flanks of Henri as it comes ashore.
All this to say that through the overnight period, the heaviest rain axis will set up a bit further south, I believe, than expected earlier, and it is there that the 3-6″ with 8″ amounts (maybe 10″ in one or two spots) should set itself up and where best chance for flooding will be.
Whereas the northern Berkshires, northwestern hilltowns of Franklin County, and at least towns like Plainfield and Cummington and Goshen, SVT, SWNH, CMass, and the Pioneer Valley from Brattlleboro to Springfield should see less rain, though it will fall heavily at times, but more sporadically, for today/Sunday.
We’ll see if my analysis proves correct, but that’s how I am seeing things right now.
However, that’s just for today and tonight.
HENRI’S REMNANTS DOES A MONDAY DOUBLE DIP
Henri will eventually lose its Tropical Storm status (as noon it was a 60mph sustained-wind tropical storm). It will track northwest into the Berkshires, northernmost Litchfields or as far west as the Taconics, east of the Hudson River as it slows down and then stalls late overnight.
By tomorrow, another low pressure area will ride northeast off of the NJ coastline and over southeast MA while Henri is stalled, and this will combine with some larger scale influences to our west to pull and push Henri east through either northern MA or southern VT/NH and out into the Gulf of Maine, to finally depart our region through Monday evening.
The remaining lift with some invigoration from the low to the south will produce more showers and downpours Monday, and add additional rainfall on top of what we get, potentially exacerbating flooding issues that develop overnight tonight.
I think by Monday night we’ll be talking about a widespread half inch to 3″ of rainfall for most places across our region, with that bullseye zone of 3-6″ with up to 8″ to maybe even 10″ in the central/southern Taconics, Catskills of NY, northwest CT, southern Berkshires and southwestern hilltowns of WMass.
Tuesday through Thursday gets very warm and very humid with more sunny periods and showers and thunderstorms by Thursday with cooler, drier conditions late week into the weekend.
Ok, that does it for the mid-day update, I hope this was helpful. Thanks for your patience with my lack of responses this morning, I was traveling from Vermont and will try to respond to as many of you as possible this afternoon. I know some of those responses needed a timely check-in, and for that I apologize, I just can’t get to everybody always, as best as I try.
I will update again probably around the 3-4pm-ish timeframe and during the evening, and again if you haven’t had a chance and want to support my work, you can do so at either/both of the 2 links below. Thank you!
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TROPICAL STORM HENRI PLOWS INTO WMASS/CMASS TODAY WITH FLOODING RAINFALL… TROPICAL STORM WARNINGS HAVE EXPANDED INTO SOUTHERN WORCESTER COUNTY, AND CONTINUE FOR NORTHERN CT… FLOOD WATCHES ARE UP ACROSS ALL OF S.VT, THE TACONICS, WMASS, CMASS, AND NORTHERN CT… MY 10-YEAR ANNIVERSARY SHIRT SALE ENDS TONIGHT (LINK AT END OF POST)… 7:15AM SUN…
Good morning folks, it’s not everyday you see a radar image of a landfalling strong tropical storm heading into southern New England, but we’ve got one today, and it’s going to cause serious problems across the region.
I am going to first provide a quick post-Henri forecast below (Tuesday and beyond) and then get into the latest details about Henri’s impacts for today and tomorrow.
QUICK SYNOPSIS
Highs will reach the mid to upper 70s today with lows in the 60s. Highs Monday will rise into the 75-80º range with lows near 70º, along with moderate to heavy rain at times, and lows near 70º.
Once we get to Tuesday, Henri will be out of here, and we’ll cleaning up the mess in the areas hit hardest.
From Tuesday to Thursday, highs will soar into the mid to upper 80s, with a few 90º readings and heat indices into the low to mid 90s, and we’ll enjoy partly sunny skies, with showers and thunderstorms by Thursday, leading to a drier, cooler late-week and weekend pattern.
HENRI’S UPDATE AND TRACK
As we sit currently, Tropical Storm Henri (it was just downgraded by the NHC) is now on approach, set to run over Block Island, RI, and make landfall in either the southeast CT or southwest RI shoreline (probably the latter), although last-minute wobbles are common with tropical systems.
The landfalling track did shift east from early yesterday morning’s thinking, but the upper low now positioned over the DelMarVa region (eastern Maryland, in this case) is going to gain more influence over Henri after landfall, tugging it more northwest and across western Massachusetts and north-central/northwest CT.
WIND
The strongest wind gust field will shift east from earlier thinking, and this means that wind gusts along and west of the I-91 corridor are likely to remain in the 20-30mph range, maybe a few higher gusts (this also applies to northern Worcester County, SVT and SWNH), but east of there is where we could get into the 30-50mph range, especially in easternmost Hampden County, northeast CT and southern Worcester County. Wind gusts of 50-70mph are expected in southeast CT, RI and southeast MA where more power outages will occur.
This will focus power outages mainly in the eastern third of CT, the southern half of CMass, perhaps a few towns like Wales, Holland and Brimfield in eastern Hampden County and immediately west of there, down into RI and EMass where winds are highest.
FLOODING
But as I’ve been yammering away at, and trying to hammer home, it is the heavy, tropical rainfall and ensuing flash flooding, street flooding, and river flooding that is going to be the main story in the WMass region later this afternoon and overnight.
The WPC has much of WMass and the northwestern half of CT in a Moderate Risk for Excessive Rainfall, and like all tropical systems (especially in New England) the heaviest rain falls along and west of the storm track, and highest winds east of it.
Already, we’re seeing the first rain bands pass from east to west through northern-central and northeast CT, as well as lighter showers in southern Worcester County and already approaching Springfield points east.
Tropical systems produce very efficient heavy rainfall, and Henri will be no different, with 1 to 2″ per hour rainfall rates at times.
And remember that in northern CT and WMass/CMass we got 2-5″ of rainfall the other day with Fred’s remnants, so the ground is already water-laden.
Given the heavy, tropical rain from Hurricane Henri coming into the region today, it will tip the scales for a number of areas, and push those into flooding, be it flash flooding, river flooding, or street flooding.
Henri comes ashore by early afternoon, and will then pivot northwest into WMass/CMass reaching a point somewhere over or near northeast CT by about 8pm tonight.
Spiraling bands of heavy rainfall with strong gusty winds embedded in them will continue track east to west through the WMass region overnight, and it will just deluge at times.
HEAVIEST RAIN
There may be some lull periods as well, but we are expecting at least 1-4″ across the entire WMass, CMass, northern CT, SVT, SWNH and Taconics region, with an area of 4-8″ setting up (some may reach 10″!) likely in the western hilltowns of Hampshire and Hampden Counties into the central and southern Berkshires down into the highlands of northwest CT including the northern Litchfields, as well as the Pioneer Valley from Greenfield south to Hartford.
Again, the 3 branches of the Westfield River are most concerning in terms of main rivers in the region, and possibly the Deerfield, and of course other smaller rivers in southern Franklin, Hampshire and Hampden Counties, and those in Worcester County too down into northern CT.
WHERE DOES HENRI END UP?
The main question to resolve is the practical interaction between the upper low of the DelMarVa and Henri as it weakens into a tropical storm, and then a tropical depression over land in MA, which will impact its track into, and out of the region.
We know that Henri will slow down over land, and at some point stall. But what we don’t know is if it will track into western CMass, then head toward Keene/Monadnock and eject northeast and away, or if the upper low pulls it more deeply into the Berkshires, stalls it, and then ejects it east down the MA/VT-NH state line and out into the Gulf of Maine.
The latter would add another inch or so of rain tomorrow and tomorrrow evening to whatever we get today with our main system, so I will watch that and update you.
The bottom line is that flooding rains are on the way for some, and some power outages are expected the further east you go from the I-91 corridor due to stronger winds.
While we can’t rule out a tornado in CMass, northeast CT or EMass, there should only be 1 or 2 of those, if any at all.
That does it for now, but check back with me today and tonight, as I will be on this covering the storm all day and night, and if you’d like to support my work, my 10th Anniversary Shirt Sale ends *tonight* at midnight, or you can offer any contribution that feels right, just check the links below, thanks very much, more soon!
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