Who's On First?

Posted by Pete Bouchard

If you're reading this, chances are you came here to get more detail on what the heck is happening tomorrow. No doubt the forecasts are all over the place. You've probably heard there will be snow "here" but not "there". Heavy snow may be possible, but not guaranteed. Favors the coast, but that's anywhere from Portland to Chatham. And they're calling it some cop-out name like "Norman".

Do they really pay these people to make forecasts?

Let's take this from the top.This snow event tonight and tomorrow is what's known as a Norlun Trough. It was named after two meteorologists who provided ground-breaking research on the subject back in the early 1990s: Steve Noguiera and Weir Lundstedt. (Not sure where the "r" part came from.) In any event, the event seems unique to the New England coast and is burned into the memories of just about every meteorologist who attempts to predict them. There are many times the event doesn't materialize and/or we come away with half our forecasted snow amounts, just because of the sheer variability and difficulty of simulating the event in our weather models. Many liken this to a summertime "chance of thunderstorms" forecast: conditions may be favorable for a storm, but that doesn't mean you'll get hit.

And that's how I'm playing it. There are some things that are still beyond the level of detail provided by our weather models. While I'm not walking away from the storm, I'll tell you my confidence is running a little below normal. Last time we had one in New England was in early January 2011 in Connectictut. Over a foot of snow fell in southwestern parts of the state.

Now it seems the axis of heavy snow will be just out of reach - shifting towards Portland, Maine. Our amounts have gone down from this evening as a result.

Like I said, it's just like forecasting summer storms...which is kinda where I wish we were now.

Here's a "fer-shur": Bitter air will follow in the wake of this storm tomorrow night and Wednesday. This is long term stuff too. May not come up "for air" until early next week.

Pete

Bam! Pow!

Posted by Jeremy Reiner

Bam. Pow! Those were some nasty storms last evening with some towns in metrowest & the city itself blasted with locally heavy rain, hail, lightning and strong wind gusts. A cool front is the culprit and that front will linger across the region again today. That means another round of some scattered showers & t-storms likely.

Thunderous Start to Workweek

Posted by Pete Bouchard

Heat and a bit of humidity fed a strong - and sometimes severe - line of thunderstorms today. By the time the dinner hour rolled around (6pm-ish), the storms had consolidated into a line. Everyone got a drink of water and a big drop in temperatures - some falling nearly 20 degrees in minutes!

Rear-view Mirror

Posted by Jeremy Reiner

As we exit our recent soggy pattern we do so with one more weather system capable of producing scattered showers & t-storms. This cool front is a slow mover (aren't we all on Monday mornings?!) up in northern New England right now. This slow moving front will settle into our part of the world very late this afternoon bringing a chance of some scattered t-storms between 4-pm. Until then you have a great day with mostly sunny skies along with temperatures in the low 80s. For some, a bit on the humid side for much of the day.

We'll Take Average

Posted by Chris Lambert

Well, we had a lot of clouds this afternoon, but at least not a lot of rain.  Sure a few showers were out there, scattered about, but hopefully they didn't ruin any plans you had with dad.  Temps made it into the mid to upper 70s, which is close to the average for this time of year.  In fact, the whole 7-day forecast is within 5 degrees of average each and every day.  That means lots of upper 70s and lower 80s on the board.  Not bad being average this time of year, huh?