The Week Ahead
By Matthew Figueiredo on August 19, 2012, 12:59pm
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Most of New England woke up to clear skies Sunday morning. With a stationary front now off the coast, weak high pressure has settled in for the day providing pleasant dry conditions from Canada with light NNE winds which will keep it cooler at the coast. This cooler dry air has penetrated much of the eastern half of the nation providing welcome relief from the prolonged summer heat and humidity. The eastern trough is still making for a SW flow up the east coast. High clouds are already riding up into New England today. These clouds are the blow off from the tops of thunderstorm clouds currently over the Carolinas. Sunday will remain dry with filtered sunshine with highs climbing into the 70′s near 80 with a cooling sea breeze. These high clouds will continue to stream north tonight, but lows are still expected to drop into the 50′s thanks to the dry air in place with some radiational cooling. Monday becomes a bit more interesting. These showers and storms are along with a developing wave of low pressure which will ride along the stalled front south of New England. The low will be tracking just south of the benchmark Monday spreading in clouds with the risk of showers pushing into SNE, especially CT RI & SE MA during the later afternoon and early evening. Some of our models are showing most of this energy staying far enough off the coast for just a glancing graze for the south coast. But our more reliable model has the low tracking a bit closer to Nantucket with a more pronounced risk of showers & embedded storms for Monday afternoon and night. This model is currently the outlier of the model suite, but it is hard to completely write it off. In fact, due to the strength of the upper low with the SW flow aloft up the coast, while a lot of this rain will miss south. At the same time a cold front will be moving in from the west. This could trigger scattered afternoon showers or storms in the north and west during the afternoon and help keep the heaviest rain just off the coast. There are several models more partial to this solution. In other words, it really could go either way at this point. In terms of the Patriots game in Foxboro Monday night, the closer the low tracks to Nantucket the better chance of showers during the game. If most of the rain tracks off the coast and the cold front to the west is the main weather maker instead of the coastal low, we will be looking at drier conditions for the game. My forecast as of now is for a few afternoon showers south which could last into the early evening. It does not look very wet at this point, but it is all track dependent. Definitely something to watch in the next 24 hours. If you’re going to the game, have the rain gear handy and keep a close eye on the radar. If you see the rain staying south you should be in the clear. Once this low pulls away, any other low riding along this stalled front should track far enough south to keep most of New England dry with just a few clouds spreading north from time to time. High pressure will follow in for the middle to end of the week with low humidity and seasonably warm temps near 80-85 Wednesday through Saturday. Saturday still poses a risk for afternoon thunderstorms with a cold front pushing through. Please feel free to leave comments! Follow me on twitter @matthewWXfigueiredo Thanks, Matt. F
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