Good afternoon everybody, we’ve seen thunderstorms and plenty of rainfall in northern CT and along the MA/CT border and in other areas, but despite some periods of rainfall earlier, much of WMass has been sitting under a persistent subsidence zone (i.e. sinking air that has developed between heavier bands of rain, oriented east to west, which has totally dried out the rain shield over parts of WMass).

Part of the reason for this is that the storm until now has been too far south to fill in the rain shield region-wide so there have been bands that developed.

We knew that we’d see lulls mixed in with showers today, but I didn’t expect this one to be this persistent and long-lasting with rain in CMass evaporating as it tracked westward into WMass.

What has arrived as the more likely impact for Saturn’s Day has been the wind in the region, which has already been gusting between 30-50mph this afternoon and has knocked out power to over 5,500 households in WMass and CMass combined, and around 11,000 households in northern CT.

As our 992mb low center continues to track north and come close to our region, it will start to push more moisture into the region at all levels, and showers should become more numerous into the early evening and overnight period, through Sunday morning, and we can expect the wind to follow suit with gusts of 30-50mph becoming a bit more widespread tonight and into Sunday morning.

Wind Advisories have been *expanded* into all of WMass (even the Pioneer Valley) and continue for CMass and northern CT, with a new Flood Watch now up for CMass / Worcester County with up to 4” of rain possible there by tomorrow night.

After the Sunday morning peak, showers and wind should be come either lighter and/or more scattered into the afternoon with continued easterly wind gusts of 20-40mph at times.

However, by sometime Sunday night into early Monday morning another batch of steadier and/or heavier rainfall with breezy conditions will develop as the storm sits nads pints near NJ, before it gets kicked out through southern New England later on Monday.

Outages will continue to increase tonight and Sunday morning, but hopefully by Sunday afternoon into evening (despite more rain expected tomorrow night) crews will be able to stem the tide.

Again, watch out for leaf-down areas with slippery roads due to pasted wet leaves on pavement, as well as for ponding on roadways by tomorrow morning.

It’s early innings with this storm, folks, and today was expected to be lighter impact in terms of rain, but again, I did not expect such a deep dry pocket to form over WMass!

Have a great evening, and I will update again later tonight, Dave.