Good morning everybody, clouds are quickly building into the region, and our frontal boundary will swing through the WMass region by late this afternoon.
Showers will arrive by about noon in the west, and translate east with time. This thanks to a powerful low in southern Quebec down to 986mb this morning.
The surface cold front and the mid-level trough are both “going negative”. When a region is within the southeast quadrant of a deepening low pressure’s circulation, there tends to be substantial and even an increasing field of wind energy that moves through a region, and that’s what is transpiring today.
Luckily, it’s not going to be very warm (highs will be in the low to mid 50s), so we can’t generate a lot of instability at the surface. Still, with ample wind shear and steep enough lapse rates, some thunderstorms may become strong to marginally severe this afternoon, with isolated wind damage being the main threat, and small hail possible.
Aside from any wind maxima within a t-storm, south winds will gust to 40mph or so by this afternoon ahead of the front, and then 30mph to 40mph out of the west behind it tonight and tomorrow.
Wind Advisories were dropped as you need gusts to 47mph to prompt those, but it’s gonna be windy nonetheless, and some isolated outages or tree damage is possible.
For this evening, showers and storms clear the region by about 6pm or so, and we may see a change to some snow showers in the Berkshires and high terrain around dinner time or so, with some light dustings possible.
The westerlies blow tonight, and lows will be cold in the mid to upper 20s with wind chills into the teens by morning – wintry!
For Wednesday, expect a blustery day, especially earlier on, with highs in the upper 30s to mid 40s with westerlies gusting 30-40mph at times, and slackening in the evening. Lows will drop into the mid to upper 20s, and we will have mostly clear skies before midnight for ideal Lyrid meteors viewing, with some high clouds building in after that, though just before dawn Thursday morning MAY provide some viewing opportunities as well.
For Thursday, we’re partly to mostly sunny during the morning, and highs will rise into the upper 40s to low 50s, but clouds will build in during the afternoon.
A coastal storm will develop from a southern Plains system that races east-northeast and pushes off the Mid-Atlantic coastline.
The best chance for rainfall will be south of the MA/VT-NH border with this one, and some snow showers may develop at the onset late Thursday night, before a cool rain arrives for Friday, lasting into the afternoon, and quitting by evening with highs in the upper 40s to mid 50s. Lows will drop to the low to mid 30s.
Saturday is the pick of the weekend!! Sunny, mild, highs 55-60, very nice looking.
Sunday is not the pick of the weekend!! Rainy, cool, highs 45-50, very not nice looking.
Keep an eye to the west today folks, air mass change underway…