10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY FOR THIS PAGE TODAY… THANK YOU ALL FOR STICKING WITH ME AND SUPPORTING MY WORK… I AM ETERNALLY GRATEFUL TO YOU FOR EVERYTHING… EACH WEEKEND AFTERNOON WILL SEE SOME ISOLATED SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS WITH PARTLY SUNNY SKIES AND PERIODS OF MORE CLOUDS THAN SUN… WARMER AND HUMID… BRIEF COOL DOWN EARLY NEXT WEEK THEN HEAT WAVE MID TO LATE WEEK… 7:30AM SAT…
Good morning everybody, before I dive into this morning’s report, I wanted to acknowledge that a decade ago today I launched this page as nothing more than a separate place to house my pontifications and psuedo-dissertations on the weather events that impact the western Massachusetts region.
As many of you know, I never had any intent that it would become anything more than a personal place I could post to a hundred FB friends when big events came through, like Tropical Storm Irene or the Halloween Nor’easter which were the first events I reported here.
Now, 10 years later, almost 44,000 of you have circled around this digital hive to get my nutty/wacky take on our incoming weather on a daily basis, and while I am off the mark at times as every weather person will be until we can sample every cubic meter of the atmosphere every 5 minutes, my intention is to provide you with timely, useful information to help protect life and property and optimize your safety and planning.
I’m grateful for all of my readers, which goes without saying, and I am especially thankful for my patron saints who have supported my work (and those who continue to) via contributions, or purchases of my annual weather wall calendar (call for photos for the 2022 edition will go out next month), or my bi-annual apparel/shirt sales.
You have given me a role and a purpose that I cherish, and I take very seriously, and will continue to, so I thank you all from the bottom, top, sides, front, back and center of my heart! <3 I'll put a more specific post up tomorrow about it, but I have launched an all-season shirt sale with a special design to commemorate 10 years here, so if you're interested and want to do some early holiday shopping, just click the link below: https://www.bonfire.com/dhtwns-decade-anniversary-apparel/
WEATHER REPORT
As for our weather this weekend, we’re kind of sandwiched in between weak low pressure down near the lower Mid-Atlantic coastline, high pressure to our southeast, high pressure north of Lake Superior in Ontario, and a frontal boundary draped through southeast Canada and the eastern Great Lakes.
This is funneling more moisture into our region on southwest flow, and hence more clouds will be around today. We’ll have partly sunny periods, I expect, but it won’t be as sunny as yesterday.
AIR QUALITY/SMOKE
A quick reminder: western wildfires are still ongoing, and we’re starting to get some smoke wafting into the New England region once again, so those who are sensitive to this will be noticing it at times. I will keep an eye on it, but no Air Quality Alerts are posted, but remember you can always to go airnow.gov for more information.
A FEW SHOWERS/STORMS POSSIBLE
Though many of us will stay dry today as our highs reach the mid to upper 80s with humid conditions, some will see isolated showers or thunderstorms in the afternoon (see attached chart). Severe weather is not expected at this time.
For tonight, any showers/storms will wane and lows will drop into the low to mid 60s with a light southerly wind.
For Sunday, that frontal boundary to our northwest approaches and tracks southeast as low pressure areas ripple east along it, pulling it in our direction.
Highs will rise into the upper 70s to low 80s with more clouds than sun, and some afternoon showers and thunderstorms will be scattered about, but many will stay dry. It will be continued humid through this whole weekend with dewpoints in the 60s, and Sunday lows will bottom out in the low 60s.
Monday will be similar to Sunday temperature-wise but with mostly sunny skies as our front will clear to our south (only waiting to come back north as a warm front Tuesday, which will precede our heat wave second half of the week).
Highs will reach the upper 70s to mid 80s, and we can’t rule out an afternoon shower. Lows will be in the low to mid 60s.
On Tuesday, our warm front lifts north and we rise into the mid to upper 80s under mostly sunny skies, and humidity will begin to really surge into mid-week.
Wednesday through Friday will be hazy, hot and humid (Triple H weather) with highs in the mid 80s to low 90s (hottest in the southern Pioneer Valley), and this is when I’m most concerned for air quality issues, including ozone concentrations at ground level, and also fine particulates from western wildfire smoke.
In addition, scattered afternoon showers and thunderstorms will be possible each day, and dewpoints will rise into the upper 60s to mid 70s, so humidity will be oppressive at times.
This is likely to prompt the issuance of Heat Advisories by the NWS for at least parts of our region during that timeframe.
By next weekend, we should see a cold front move through, which may trigger strong to severe thunderstorms. By the end of the weekend I think we see cooler, drier air move in to start the following week, which will be good, because Transperformance happens in the Pines Theatre at Look Park in Florence, MA from 4-9:30pm, Tuesday August 17th, and I am in 3 bands that night, including a band I put together featuring the songs of Pat Benatar which will be performed by the lovely and uber talented Amy Wilkinson so I’ll be continuing to visualize good weather for a rock and roll catharsis my friends and this community needs very much after this the first 18 months of this thing called a pandemic!
Anyway, that’s the news from Lake Fitzgerald, have a great day and thanks for all of your support, encouragement, and your readership over these past 10 years!