Noisy Night To Delightful Days
With high humidity in place and a so-called jet max plus cold front approaching, the atmosphere is dynamically set to deliver a rainy night. Strong vertical motion should result in some drenching downpours and nasty lightning in various places. Gusty winds and hail cannot be ruled out but severe weather should only be isolated. It is certainly possible that some areas will miss much of the action as clusters of activity split. The good news is that this turbulence signifies an introduction to a fresh new air mass which will rule through Wednesday and after several very sticky days, it will be a welcome change. The dew points will drop from tonight's sultry upper 60s to tomorrow afternoon's lower 50s. The final patch of showers is timed to depart around dawn followed by the arrival of a sharp clearing line from west to east during the morning commute. The sunshine will become uninterrupted until later in the afternoon when patches of clouds will arrive from northwestern New England. This represents a trough of low pressure which will crank out a few spotty showers mainly over the northern mountains. Expect high temperatures near or slightly oer 80 tomorrow afternoon as the westerly wind blows at 10-25 mph. The tide will be high just before 6am and just after 6pm.
Looking ahead, comfortable weather for sleeping will occur tomorrow night and Tuesday night with lows in the lower to middle 50s in many of the suburbs with lower to middle 60s in Boston. Tuesday and Wednesday will feature plentiful sunshine although some streamers and filaments of feathery clouds and a few small puffy clouds will be visible. After highs in the upper 70s on Tuesday, it will warm up to the middle 80s except upper 70s at south-facing coastal areas on Wednesday thanks to a freshening south-southwesterly wind as a large zone of high pressure builds off Delmarva. After that, more humid air will be pumped back into the region with highs in the middle to upper 80s on Thursday. As another cold front approaches, a few showers and storms may be triggered later that afternoon and evening. This front will be pushed offshore by a bubble of high pressure supporting mainly sunny and less humid weather on Friday with highs in the lower 80s. Next Saturday will gradually turn more humid again as clouds increase later in the day.
As of 8pm AST, Tropical Storm Irene was centered at 17.8N & 64.9W or near St. Croix and about 90 miles east-southeast of San Juan. Maximum winds have increased to near 60 mph with additional strengthening expected so Irene should become a hurricane tomorrow morning and a Hurricane Warning is now posted for Puerto Rico. For more details, log on to the National Hurricane Center. Everyone along the entire eastern seaboard should monitor the progress of Irene this week because present prognostications suggest the storm will come close to Florida on Thursday then make a direct hit on South Carolina on Friday. After that, it is quite possible that Irene will hug the coastal plain from North Carolina into New England. Keep in mind that it is too premature to be confident of this projected track and right out of the gate, it may depend upon Irene's precise trajectory in the next 24 hours pertaining to part of the circulation interacting with some mountainous terrain over the Dominican Republic. A slight shift north of that region would result in more rapid intensification and a potentially slightly revised track. Currently, it is not out of the question that our region would be battered by tropical storm force winds and torrential rains next Sunday into early Monday. It will be interesting to monitor the subsequent forecast cycles of the various meteorological mathematical models in the days ahead. You can definitely count on some zigging and zagging!
Melissa Mack delivers her AccuWeather Forecast in the morning and Todd Gutner follows later in the day.
Make it a great week!
