The biggest concern in the short term is the mounting fire danger regionwide. Temperatures are on a slow and steady rise each day with dewpoint temperatures remaining quite low. This has resulted in low relative humidity that has removed most of the already paltry amount of moisture from the dead vegetation and brush left over from last growing season. The product is lots of dry fuel available to burn, and multiple brush fires have already been reported across New England in the last 30 hours. With no change in the weather pattern for the next couple of days, it's likely we'll find high to very high fire danger persisting for much of New England, which means caution is urged with any flames or incendiary devices including cigarettes. Fire danger class map is featured here, with widespread high and very high fire danger for today. 
The lack of rain in the forecast for the next couple of days ensures this danger will continue to build, and the number of reported brush fires will continue to rise. After a clear, mostly calm and cool night Wednesday night - not as cool as previous nights thanks to airmass modification but cool, nonetheless, abundant sunshine will boost temperatures very quickly on Thursday. As for the ocean storm development we've been eyeing, that storm looks as though it will be quite impressive for the fish, and cold cloud tops are likely to define a center that will produce banded precipitation. The question here is whether one of those bands will extend northwest to the Cape overnight Thursday night, which seems like a possibility for the Outer Cape. Otherwise, there's now good agreement on this storm remaining contracted just enough....and just far enough east...to keep the rest of the precipitation offshore. Outside of the storm envelope, clear skies should prevail with the sharply defined surface and upper level ridge in control, holding even the cirrus deck over far Eastern New England. By Friday, the storm starts jogging east and the more contracted nature of it means there's less propensity for onshore flow at the surface than there could have been, so while a sea breeze is still possible along coastlines, most of the interior - even a few miles inland - is still expected to warm handily. A cold front begins to sag south Friday afternoon, and while most of the scattered showers associated with the front will fall in Quebec, a few may cross country lines into far Northern Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. By Friday evening, the surface cold front is settling south across Northern Maine.
From a few days out, it seemed the upper level low spiraling across the nation's midsection at the end of this week would be the next feature of interest, but the cold front dropping south will beat it to the spotlight. This backdoor cold front appears likely to keep all of Maine and Northern NH cool on Saturday, with temperatures south and west of the front jumping into the 60s for many spots before an afternoon frontal passage that will dramatically drop temperatures and bring in cloud cover. Southwestern New England certainly may rise into the 70s before a late afternoon or evening frontal passage. Cool air will be in place regionwide on Sunday with widespread highs in the 50s but at issue is both cloud cover and precipitation. The issue of cloud cover stems from dry advection after the initial surge of cool, moist air from the northeast that may eat low altitude clouds for some of northeastern New England, but then the question of middle altitude warm advection ahead of the eastward moving upper low comes into play for a middle altitude deck. At this point, the safest bet was more clouds than sun with the mid-level warm advection coming back into the picture from west to east, and showers seem likely along and near the front. At this point, the question is how this is going to return back across New England, with the distinct possibility that low level dry advection never allows more than scattered rain showers in eastern areas as the warm advection battles back slowly all the way through Marathon Monday but an onshore cool flow continues for most of New England. The truth is that this is a highly uncertain forecast on precipitation amounts Sunday into Monday, but the bet for mostly clouds and cool temperatures with highs in the 50s seems like a good bet. The warmth will be slow to return for the middle of next week but will come in once the Canadian maritime high weakens and moves east Wednesday.
Matt
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