Another Clobbering Coming
Did you enjoy watching the sun setting at 4:33pm today? I doubt it. On the flip side, however, the mornings will be lighter earlier for the next two or three weeks and that is good news for students and workers who must leave early in the day. For me and I bet for many of you, November is a bleak month. The lengthening hours of darkness are depressing. I was just thinking about how anyone could live in Alaska from November through April. I could only reside there in the long hours of daylight during the summer. Anyway, back here, showers of falling leaves lead to us spending too much time in the yard. The growing season has ended and the trees become bare except for some of the straggling oaks. Statistically, November is the gloomiest month of the year. The bright side is to look forward to football games and Thanksgiving Day which is one of my favorite holidays of the year.
Colder weather is seeping into New England now and it will be reinforced later tomorrow and Tuesday as a vigorous upper level low passes by to the north opening the gates for chillier air to press in from Canada. After today's lower 50s, the temperatures will fail to rise out of the middle 40s the next couple days. Overnight lows will dip into the 20s in many of the suburbs especially tomorrow night. The good news is that a zone of high air pressure will be poised right over the region on Tuesday. Albeit cold, Election Day will feature unlimited bright sunshine in a clear sky over most of the Northeast. There will be a very gentle breeze which may blow up to 10 mph closer to the coast. GET OUT AND VOTE!
Looking ahead, another clobbering currently seems inevitable. All indicators are flashing caution as bundles of energy in the jet stream dive over an amplified ridge way out west and dig into the mean trough position over the eastern portion of the country. Sound familiar? A deepening low pressure system aloft will translate to the lower levels and produce bombogenesis just off the North Carolina coast. The intensifying storm will track north-northeastward then northeastward just off the NJ coast and southeast of NYC. Unfortunately, this placement will create a siege of strong northeast to northerly winds for those areas battered by Superstorm Sandy. Thankfully, there is no tropical storm or hurricane to get sucked into this circulation but the already weakened and damaged coastal area down there will be hammered again to a lesser degree. More locally, we can expect the winds to ramp up Wednesday afternoon and max out later Wednesday night into Thursday. Gusts will increase to 25 up to 55 mph especially along the coast. Scattered power outages cannot be ruled out again. Fortunately, the scheduled high tide heights will be up to a foot lower than during the Sandy attack so a storm surge of 2 up to 3 or so feet would only produce minor flooding with a few pockets of moderate flooding with the most vulnerable high tide occurring at 5:41am on Thursday. Seas will be building again so more wave battery and beach erosion is probable. The heaviest rain will fall closer to a coastal front which will pivot in from the southeast and end up somewhere over southeastern MA. Just northwest of that frontal boundary is where 2-4 inches of rain may materialize and that would probably include much of the Boston area. Farther northwest from western Worcester county north and west, less rainfall is anticipated. It may be sufficiently cold to support some heavy wet snow in the higher elevations of the Berkshires into Greens and Whites. The storm will slowly pass near or just south of the Cape later Thursday night and Friday morning so the rain will be lighter, showery and more misty at that time. As the system shifts offshore, the rain will end from northwest to southeast during Friday.
Following the storm, a ridge of high pressure will build into the region enabling a return of bright sunshine next weekend. There could be some residual clouds Saturday morning mainly over Cape Cod. After highs in the 46-51 range except middle to upper 50s on Cape Cod during the storm, most of the area will be 55-60 except a bit cooler along the coast next weekend.
Melissa Mack delivers her latest WBZ AccuWeather Forecast in the morning and Todd Gutner will follow later in the day.
Make it a great week and vote Tuesday!
