Welcome to the weather blog - a regular Monday through Friday discussion of the weather! While the discussions usually will only come on days I'm working, I'll issue special updates when the weather warrants. I will always post to let you know when no discussion is expected if I'm away on vacation, etc. - if no update is here and no info is available, that likely means the server has temporarily gone on the fritz and I will update as soon as technically possible. You'll find a quick weather synopsis and a general non-technical weather summary below, and when available (most days) a detailed technical meteorological discussion will follow. 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 Quick Weather Synopsis:
Strong Sunday evening thunderstorms marked the leading edge to a new airmass that has taken control of most of New England Monday, with the final transitions underway in Maine evidenced by lingering rain showers Monday morning. The trend will be for more and more of us to find sunshine Monday afternoon, but an active wind gusting over 30 mph at times will couple with the new cool airmass to create a brisk feeling day. Expect stars to be muddled by plenty of clouds in Northern New England Monday night, though partly cloudy skies will prevail farther south with chilly temperatures for one and all. The cool start Tuesday morning will rebound with the help of sunshine - strong to start the day in Central and Southern New England, but all of us will see increasing billowing clouds during the afternoon, with a few sprinkles possible in the North Country and through much of Maine. The light rain showers in Maine will diminish Tuesday evening, though the impetus for these showers will back westward on Wednesday, allowing billowing afternoon clouds through sunshine to drop light showers on most of Eastern New England. More pronounced warming will move in for the end of the week, and though a round of thunderstorms are possible Friday afternoon, most of the Memorial Day weekend is looking quite summery at this point! -Matt
Hampton, NH, apparent funnel as photographed by Karen Grygiel: 
The same strong, energetic upper level disturbance that brought severe thunderstorms to some of New England Sunday afternoon and evening continues to move east, leaving lingering rains that will continue diminishing to showers in Eastern Maine through Monday afternoon. As the storms moved rapidly east Sunday evening, traveling at over 45 mph, they brought an impressive display of cloud to ground lightning, locally fierce winds and localized large hail, as well. A water spout - more likely a tornado touchdown over water - was reported in Narrangansett Bay off the coast of Portsmouth, RI, and a funnel cloud was reported by many of you to me last evening in Hampton, NH. Damage was done by this storm, and the National Weather Service Office in Gray, ME, oversees the Hampton area and will be surveying the damage to determine if it was indeed a tornado touchdown, or straight-line winds.
Nonetheless, with the weather pattern much more progressive than it was last week, the jet stream winds aloft - the fast river of air aloft that steers our storm systems and acts as a thermostat for the atmosphere - will continue to usher the disturbance east of New England, allowing dry but cool air to filter in behind it. Early morning reports from Northern Vermont were of snowflakes in and around Jay, and Route 108 through the "Smuggler's Notch Pass" was closed due to snow! This chilly air will modify quite a bit as it "downslopes", or flows down the mountains of New England, and toward the coastal plain. This downsloping wind tends to warm the air, and that, combined with sunshine, will help to boost temperatures into the lower 60s along the coastal plain, while elevated areas will remain cooler. Across the far north, enough moisture will remain present in the lower levels of the atmosphere for plenty of clouds to redevelop Monday afternoon, and linger through Monday night while the remainder of New England maintains partly cloudy and cool conditions.
While the weather pattern is moving quickly, a "trough," or dip, in the jet stream will remain parked over New England for the first half of the week. On the north side of this trough here in New England, we remain on the north side of the metaphorical thermostat, and that means plenty of cool air. In fact, after morning sunshine on Tuesday, the difference between solar-warmed ground and chilly air aloft as a result of this trough will allow for the development of billowing puffy cumulus clouds for most of us, and a few light rain showers will result across Northern New England. By Wednesday, a similar pattern will remain in place, though the combination of lingering cold air aloft and increasingly mild temperatures here at ground level will raise the risk for a few afternoon rain showers through most of Eastern New England.
By Thursday, the entire jet stream pattern begins to reconfigure, as the trough in the Northeast relaxes, giving way to a building ridge from the south. As the ridge, or bump, in the jet stream rises up toward New England, we will transition from the cool side to the warm, summery side of the atmospheric thermostat. This will spell increasing temperatures Thursday and Friday, and right into the Memorial Day weekend! Still, a bundle of strong energy will be caught in those same jet stream winds, and will traverse New England likely sometime later Friday (though the exact timing is still a bit tentative), bringing a round of thunderstorms for most of New England before drier air settles in - along with summer warmth - for Saturday, Sunday and Monday!
Enjoy the week - see you back here tomorrow!
Matt
Matt's Technical Meteorological Discussion: Updated Monday, May 22 at 12:30 PM
As for past weather, General Wx Summary of last week gave a summary of flooding, and today's summarizes a few notes of Sun eve severe wx and Mon AM snow for Nrn mountains. Also please note have received pic of Hampton, NH, funnel and have posted with General Wx Summary at time of this posting. Good mixing to just above 900 mb today of cold boundary layer airmass and strong insolation angle will help temps to rebound but still will fall below normal all areas and cold overnight lows will help to drive daily avg temp even farther below the norm. Elevated areas will remain substantially cooler thanks to steep lapse rate and this same steep lapse rate will continue to aid in hearty Cu development outside of downsloped areas, and with weakening wind toward eve, clouds likely to try to fill in thru those areas as well.
Deeper llvl moisture advects southward overnight Mon Ngt and this promotes Sc deck across Nrn NewEng while effects of downsloping help to maintain breaks in Southern areas. With cold pool lingering aloft on Tue, boundary layer slightly warmer, and more low level moisture available thanks to moist advection from the N, plenty of Sc will pop for just about all of NewEng and where lapse rates are steepest - across North Country, ME, and also a secondary max of 850-500 mb lapse rates over the SCoast - some sprinkles or light rain showers are likely, and of course, orography will assist in precip production, tho QPF will be quite light owing to limited available moisture.
I'm expecting the same general pattern to persist on Wed and even tho lapse rates are decreasing as cold pool shifts northeast and modifies, still enuf cool air aloft to the tune of -20 to -25 C and this will couple with vort max pivoting slowly around main upper low which will aid in dynamic forcing Wed midday and PM, and this should easily overcome lessening lapse rates for showers in Maine, and perhaps into the remainder of Eastern NewEng if vort lobe and associated midlevel trof swing thru during time of max diurnal htg.
The longer range focuses on the longwave pattern, which begins with a bit of uncertainty Thu-Fri with the handling of strong Pacific vort pushing into Srn CA as of this writing. The question with this vort is whether it remains embedded in the westerlies and moves swifty eastward, or if it becomes separated from the main steering flow and slows over the nation's midsection, thereby opening up additional southern gulf moisture to the disturbance. This uncertainty has been expressed by wavering model solutions, even among the same models from run to run. The consensus, however, fits the longwave pattern and the Ensemble means, which would suggest that this vort may indeed meander south of the main corridor of steering winds, but that the fast atmospheric flow squeezed between a building broad Central US ridge and a lingering Hudson Bay upper low should keep this thing from deviating too far outside the mean flow and while it may slow Wed-Thu time frame, it should remain progressive. This does introduce some timing issues and therefore varying assessments of convective threat for Fri, esp given the vort when figured with the cold front settling southward through southern Canada so at this point I think it's wise to keep a threat of thunder in the forecast for Fri for all spots, tho if the shortwave comes thru early enuf that threat would be mitigated.
Regardless, heights continue to build into the weekend, peaking on Sunday but protecting NewEng from precip thru the period, the way I see it. The front coming south out of Canada will slam the brakes on as it encounters the building ridge and while extreme Northern NewEng still may have to monitor the forecasted position of that front for Memorial Day, overall I'd say the majority of NewEng stays quite literally high and dry as air about 6-8 degrees C above normal comes streaming in at 850 mb. This alone would produce sfc temps in the lower to middle 80s, then factor in a downsloping flow and the summertime heat is on with some spots pushing 90 on especially Sunday. As for what could ruin this, certainly more abundant cloudcover would knock us down, and a farther southward frontal position would introduce tstms and cooler temps, but right now I really don't see those possibilities as being realized.
As we enter the beginning of June, uncertainty becomes much greater among the Ensemble members, but what is agreed upon is a trough retrogression over the Northeast and eventually into the Great Lakes, which would favor beating down the heat a bit, though temps should remain above normal thru the start of the month given the open boundary layer and low level flow to southern and western warmth, and this will be further fueled by heat that will be building over a period of several weeks of dry and hot conditions - and in fact perhaps a further escalating drought issue - for the southwestern US where conditions in the SW quarter of the nation may stay devoid of moisture for the next month! Still, with the retrogression of the upper level trough, this would mean shortwaves accompanied by upper level diffluence would be allowed to drop southeast toward NewEng, and coupled with the diffluence, this would favor both warm and cold advective convection in the Northeast, so the start of June may be an active one with regard to thunderstorm development.
Tropics: I think we have to examine things a bit more closely this week regarding what potential, if any, exists for the first week of June. There have been repeated signals over the last several days among Ensemble members of a tropical wave marching west and finding some organization in the Western Caribbean or Eastern Gulf during the first week of June. I hope to expand upon this with some more clarity either tomorrow or Wednesday in my next technical discussion.
Enjoy the rest of your day.
Matt
