Welcome to the weather blog! While the web address has changed, the blog will still be the same Monday through Friday discussion - with some improvements! Over the course of the next few weeks and months, you'll find me experimenting and adding new features. Maps, pictures, and other multimedia are enhancements I'm hoping to be able to make as I learn more about how to maximize the new site. Format will be similar to the old version - you'll find a general non-technical weather summary below, and when available (most days) a detailed technical meteorological discussion will follow. If no technical discussion is available when you check in during the morning, check back later as it often comes after the Weather Summary - I try to indicate at the end of the general weather summary when/if a technical discussion is coming. My email is contact@mattnoyes.net. This blog is for you, so I hope you enjoy it! -Matt Noyes
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Matt's Weather Summary: After a spectacular weekend, relatively warm weather will linger across New England on Monday. A cold front moving through from the west will shift winds from southwest to west-northwest by afternoon, and this will begin the process of oozing cooler air into New England. As a result, even though the sun will shine through the day, temperatures won't climb too much above either side of 60 degrees - still not bad for the middle of November! With a storm system moving away from New England, and a bubble of cool high pressure building in from the west, breezes will be active today, with gusts up to 25 mph south and 30 mph north.
The counter-clockwise flow of air ahead of a strengthening storm system to our west will help to pull warmer and more moist air toward New England overnight Monday night and through Tuesday. The problem here is that...at the very same time...cool air will still be filtering in from Canada. Because cool air is more dense and heavier, the result in a situation like this is for the cold air to set up in the lower levels of the atmosphere while the warmth and moisture rides overhead - a favorable setup for precipitation, and where it's cold enough, for winter weather conditions. That will be the case for the Northern Mountains of New Hampshire, and through Central, Western and Northern Maine where a half foot of snow may accumulate. Precipitation will develop in far Western New England for the morning commute, with snow showers in Southern Vermont, and rain showers in Western MA and CT. By mid-morning, steadier and heavier precipitation will spread eastward across most of New England, perhaps beginning as a brief period of sleet (ice pellets) and even a few flakes mixed in for Southern New Hampshire and extreme northern MA, but these areas should go to rain within a couple of hours. Farther north than Concord, enough snow may fall to accumulate near 1" in some areas before changing to sleet and rain during the afternoon, 3" in extreme Northeastern VT, the White Mountains, running east-northeast to Bangor before a change to sleet. As mentioned above, the Northern Whites and higher terrain of Maine will find close to 6" by the time precipitation changes to sleet and rain overnight Tuesday night. These are preliminary estimates and certainly may change upon re-evaluation later Monday or Tuesday morning.
Rainfall will taper to showers Tuesday night through most of New England, with the northern wintry mix tapering to scattered showers of rain and sleet. By Wednesday, warmer winds will begin to mix down the surface - and as winds shift to the southwest, this warmer air will push into Southern New England, where temperatures should rise into the upper 50's or even lower 60's Wednesday afternoon under mostly cloudy skies with a few showers around. Farther north and east, from the mountains through most of the state of Maine, cooler air will linger with plenty of clouds, drizzle and some showers. Later Wednesday afternoon and evening, an energetic cold front will approach New England from the west, and bring with it showers, downpours, and perhaps even a few rumbles of thunder. This front will usher in cooler and drier air for the end of the week.
Have a good Monday...
Matt
Matt's Technical Meteorological Discussion: Updated Monday, November 14 at 10:40 AM
Good mixing today brings wind gusts to 25 mph south, 30 mph north, and allows for adiabatic warming to team with downslope flow for a team effort to battle back against cold advection. Net result is for 925 mb temps of 0 C (Burlington, VT) to 10 C (Cape Cod) to produce highs ranging from the upper 40's to lower 60's from northwest to southeast. Few showers on Cape/Islands as of this writing exit east quickly with approach and passage of cold front, though front lags behind showers. Temps rising quickly this AM ahead of front but that halts and even reverses direction a bit after passage.
This front has never been very impressive, but drier and colder air is found around James Bay this morning and will drain slowly southward as a bubble of high pressure builds across Southeast Canada. The result will be for enough cold and dry air to be in place through the Northern mountains for another winter storm Tuesday afternoon into Tuesday night. The trend in model guidance has unquestionably been for this cold air to build farther and farther south in each successive run. Still, we're going to be coming off a boundary layer that was rather warm today and with increasing clouds tonight, the dewpoint is likely to fall more than the temperature. That being said, this still lowers the wet bulb temperature enough to generate wintry precip in Northern NewEng. With 850 wet bulb temps below zero as far south as extreme northern MA at the onset of the precip mid-morning Tuesday, it's possible we find a bit of sleet in these areas, tho won't be a big deal with quick warming at these levels. Farther north, cold enough for snow, though one concern is a lack of -10 C temps (closer to between 0 and -5) at 700 mb which means we have no active ice nuclei at this level. Still, saturation extends upward to 500 mb where temps are plenty cold enough, so this should produce a heavy, wet, huge flake sized snowfall in the mountains. Straight 10:1 ratio should ride for this event in these locales. Looks like most of VT excepting the northeast Kingdom warms up enough aloft to avoid accumulating snow, though some mountain valleys may see a period of freezing rain for several hours Tuesday. NE Kingdom likely to see a few inches of accumulation. Especially tricky locales for forecasting include the area of 1" I have from north of the I-93/I-89 split up to Central Carroll County and Northern Grafton where I have 3". The trickiness here comes from large elevation dependency, which in these types of events where warm boundary layers cool thanks to evaporative and dynamic cooling always means there's a fairly substantial difference from hilltop to valley, so have tried to play the average but will probably tighten up the gradient in this area in final adjustments later today or Tuesday AM. Other area of tricky forecasting is Bangor area and Maine coastline. The water's warm enough in the Gulf of Maine that any solid easterly component rather than due northeast will kill the potential for much if any snow along the coast, and at this point I'm concerned about a more due east or even ENE flow being enough to cut back significantly, so I've kept just a mix with sleet and snow for the immediate coastal locales, but even by Augusta air should be cold enough for an inch or so of snow before a changeover, and by Bangor, 850 and 925 temps are slow rise with surface ridging holding onto the cold for snow through Tuesday afternoon. QPF begins to drop off when heading this far north and east as the warm advection is a bit more modest away from the main circulation.
Tuesday night into Wednesday the models are too far north and east with the boundary layer warmth. The warm front riding into NewEng should get stuck from Southern Maine to the White Mountains, and in these locales, Upper 30's to mid 40's will be the range on Wednesday. In Central and Southern NewEng, warmer air able to make some inroads - especially since it won't be fighting freshly fallen snow - and I'd expect temps to make it into the upper 50's or lower 60's. Exact temps will depend on who sees breaks of sun - with my estimated farther south position of the surface warm front, there's a good chance low level clouds linger farther south than the models are progging, and regardless there's plenty of clouds at and above 500 mb. Cold front progresses E late Wed and Wed Ngt, and while stability indices aren't thru the floor (LI's remain above zero) should be an area of higher total totals sliding thru and with ample low level moisture input and deep moisture evident by precipitable water values approaching 1.5", have added thunder for late Wednesday.
New airmass in place Thu and Fri, but Ci increasing with warm advection aloft again later Fri.
If you haven't checked on the tropics lately, TD #27 is spinning up and most of the operational guidance brings it westward as indicated by NHC track forecast. The trick here is that most guidance also curve the storm sharply northward over Western Cuba, then interact it at least to some extent with Northern Stream energy (this interaction and the details vary from one guidance product to the other). But the bottom line on this is that the consensus is to curl this thing northward - and sharply - later this week. Earlier this year we scoffed at such model predictions given the monstrous Atlantic ridge holding strong. Obviously November comes with a very different synoptic setup, as evidenced by the dry and sheared environment north of TD 27 right now. The evolution and interaction of this system with the Eastern Seaboard is progged to occur next weekend, but I'd keep it loose for now, as tremendous uncertainty exists here - uncertainty is inherent with any tropical system, but with such a fast and amplified flow this increases uncertainty of shortwave timing greatly.
Good luck and have a good day.
Matt
