Wet & Windy

According to weather lore, "red at night, sailor's delight" usually indicates nice weather ahead but not this time. Today's early sunset around parts of the Boston area was stunning with bright yellows through fiery red colors caused by the sunlight passing through the thinner layers of clouds in the western sky. The eastern sky was more heavily overcast reflecting the moisture streaming north-northwestward from a developing ocean storm. Since the storm is in a mode of retrogression, our weather will be backing in on us from out over the ocean. A ribbon of rain has surged up over Cape Cod and is slicing across Cape Ann onto the Maine coast. Over much of eastern Massachusetts, rain is falling into a layer of dry air so the rain is evaporating. Eventually the whole column will become moistened and saturated and rain will make its way to the ground. During the passage of some heavier showers, sufficient evaporational cooling will lead to some ice pellets with a slight chance of some snowflakes but warm air advection from the east should negate any long spells of sleet and snow with rain being the main precipitation. Once the rain begins, its tempo will vary through tomorrow with occasional to periodic light rain, sprinkles or drizzle likely lasting through Tuesday. There should not be any prolonged downpours so the rainfall amounts are projected to be one half inch to slightly over an inch in most of the region.

Wind is another factor in this storm. The orientation of this storm with its upper level system is creating a north-northwesterly wind at the surface and because of that, we cannot call the storm a true nor'easter. The good news is that this wind parallels the coastline or is an offshore wind. Consequently, there will not be much of an onshore component near the coastline into tomorrow morning to create any significant tidal surge. Nevertheless, the current cycle of the month is still generating above average tide heights due to the just past new moon so a scheduled tide of 11.5' at 12:11pm tomorrow with up to a foot or so of surge would cause some minor coastal flooding and force the closure of the usual vulnerable shore roads from late morning into early afternoon. Building seas will cause more beach erosion and enhance splashover. The National Weather Service has issued a Wind Advisory for the coastal plain tonight into tomorrow as possible gusts exceed 40 mph. The storm will loop onto the lower Cape tomorrow morning then shift southward then southeastward and linger over the Atlantic all week. In fact, the remains of Tropical Storm Tomas will likely be aborbed and loop into this giant circulation. Our surface winds will become more north-northeasterly tomorrow afternoon into early Tuesday before becoming more northerly on Wednesday. It appears that Cape Cod will have a brisk and gusty wind through at least Wednesday night.

Meantime, a ridge of high pressure building from northern Quebec southwestward into the Great Lakes will very slowly push southward. Its mass of dry air will clear out the sky from northwest to southeast. Sunshine will return to parts of northern New England Tuesday afternoon then move closer to Boston by midday Wednesday then finally arrive on Cape Cod Thursday morning. Aloft, the airmass will be warming nicely to yield potential surface temperatures of 65-70 degrees but the atmospheric setup will inhibit mixing of the warm air down to the surface so we will have to be happy with lower 50s Wednesday, middle 50s Thurday then possibly upper 50s next weekend. The warmest part of New England will be the northwestern sector. And once sunshine arrives in your area, it may last through next weekend into the first part of the following week.

Now that we are back to standard time, there will be earlier daylight for your morning commute. Sunrise tomorrow occurs at 6:26am but dusk also arrives earlier as sunset happens at 4:29pm.

Melissa Mack delivers her latest AccuWeather Forecast early tomorrow morning and Todd Gutner follows later in the afternoon.

Make it a great week!