Good morning folks, at this point we just need to get through a dynamic and substantial storm system that will occupy most of the 24 hours that will comprise our incoming MoonDay, with some wind to follow on Tuesday. Otherwise, today, and the rest of next week should feature calm and fair weather before we see some more showers for next weekend.

For our Sunday we may want to rename it NapDay: mostly cloudy, light wind, cool, highs upper 30s to mid 40s, maybe a sprinkle, sleepy. Yours truly is going to spend part of it at an art museum and enjoy the works of creative peeps.

For tonight, clouds thicken as a blizzard cranks up over the western Great Lakes and draws a powerful southerly siphon of moist air all the way up the eastern seaboard, hurling it at New England overnight and through Monday.

Lows will drop into the low to mid 30s, and first showers will arrive between about 2-6am Monday morning, and I can’t rule out some brief freezing rain in northwest MA and SVT when it first starts, so watch your surfaces up that way very early Monday morning.

Thereafter, it looks we can expect the arrival of a bursty slug of heavy rainfall due to incoming warm air (a/k/a “warm advection”, with advection referring to warm or cold air transport). At this point, this looks to move through between 5am to 9am from northern CT to SVT (the valley either side of 7am).

Should this transpire, it will slow the morning commute by lowering visibility and may even cause some larger puddles to form if it really maxes out.

After that, we move into the later morning and can expect periods of showers through the day into the afternoon, with southerly gusts picking up by mid to late afternoon, and gusting to 40mph at times.

Highs will spike to the mid 50s to low 60s, and it is the combination of temperature and any downpours or thunderstorms by Monday night that could cause isolated pockets of wind damage.

These early Spring-ish southerly flow events tend to create inversions as much milder air from the south is transported into New England where temps tend to be cooler, such that mild air rises up and over the cooler air, creating the inversion.

In other words, air that is milder above a lower-level layer of cool air is “inverted” from the normal pattern of air getting cooler as you rise up in altitude.

Inversions prevent wind aloft from mixing down to the surface well, but if we get heavy-enough rain and/or temps that hang in the low 60s Monday evening, inversions can be overcome somewhat and in our incoming case, we could see some gusts to 60mph or more in the region, especially east of I-91.

As it stands, it’s more likely we’ll see gusts of 35-55mph, which is already plenty strong enough and liable to “turn your head around” as JT crooned so many years ago, as well as causing some isolated power loss.

So, strong wind and heavy rain with some embedded thunder is expected Monday evening and night until the middle pre-dawn hours of Tuesday morning when the cold front sweeps west to east through our region, possibly ending as some snow or sleet in the Berkshires, Taconics and SVT by dawn.

We’ll dry out behind the front, but some lake effect scattered snow showers can’t be ruled out, and certainly the weather headline of Tuesday will feature westerly gusts of 25-40mph kicking up as a powerful snowstorm for the Great Lakes region pulls east-northeast into Canada.

Highs on Tuesday and Wednesday will be unseasonably cold under increasingly sunny skies (especially by Wednesday), holding well into the 30s with lows in the low to mid 20s.

Thursday and Friday continue to be dominated by higher pressures, and milder temperatures with highs well into the 40s, with lows either side of 30º as calm weather continues.

By next weekend another nose-down, west-northwest to east-southeast tracking Clipper system may bring some more rain to our region, or some snow mix in SVT and far northwest MA, but as I like to say (and especially in comparison to our Monday storm) it’ll reside squarely into the #NoBigWhoop category.

Have a great day and check out Your Nutshell, Daily Celestials or join the conversation on FB below!

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”
― Joseph Campbell

YOUR NUTSHELL:
–Light wind, mostly cloudy, doldrum-y Sunday ahead with highs upper 30s to mid 40s
–Clouds thicken tonight, lows in the low to mid 30s, showers arrive after 3am
–A slug of warm-advection heavy rain moves through 5am-9am from south to north, slowing the morning commute with lowered visibility
–Highs will spike into the mid 50s to low 60s
–Periods of showers continue from mid-morning through the day with southerly gusts picking up by mid to late afternoon, gusting to 40mph at times
–Heavy rain with embedded thunderstorms combined with very mild temps and a strong low level jet bring southerly gusts of at least 35-55mph
–There’s a low chance some areas could spike to 60mph gusts, especially over CMass or northeast CT if it’s mild enough
–All of this storminess winds down in the later pre-dawn hours of Tuesday morning with a cold frontal passage
–This may change the Berkshires or SVT briefly to snow, with westerly winds gusts picking up for Tuesday, reaching speeds of 25-40mph at times
–Lows drop to the mid 20s to mid 30s
–A few high terrain snow showers are possible Tuesday from lake effect
–Fair weather dominates later Tuesday through Friday
–Highs will hang in the 30s Tuesday and Wednesday with lows in the low to mid 20s
–Thursday and Friday features highs in the 40s with lows either side of 30º, with more showers possible by the weekend, no big winter storms coming

YOUR DAILY CELESTIALS
STAR:
–OUR STAR ROSE AT: 7:02am this morning
–OUR STAR SETS AT: 6:56pm this evening
–TOTAL DAYLIGHT TIME: 11 hours and 54 minutes

MOON:
–OUR MOON SETS AT: 3:17pm this afternoon
–MOON SET DIRECTION: West-Southwest
–OUR MOON RISES AT: 5:54am tomorrow morning
–MOON RISE DIRECTION: East-Southeast
–MOON PHASE: Waning Crescent (14.1%)