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Crisp October Air Returns For Tuesday

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A bit of a wild day across New England to kick off the week! There were numerous reports of downed tree limbs and power lines across western New England during Monday afternoon, when wind gusts were in the 35-60mph range. Most of the strongest wind gusts were felt right ahead of a paper-thin squall line along an advancing cold front. It was one of those days where if we had a little more instability to work with, there could have been some more dangerous atmospheric fireworks. Thankfully, that was not the case. Some scattered power outages were reported and unfortunately trees fell down on some property (cars and a deck the most notable). Some of those trees came down without the help of the squall line. Boston saw damage in the middle of the afternoon while the rain was well west!

The severe threat is now greatly diminished, and we're mainly just going to look at scattered showers and downpours through midnight. Rain will continue for the Cape past midnight before wrapping up just before daybreak. Winds should stay gusty, but more in the 15-35mph range than the damaging gusts we saw earlier.

Sadly, I'm afraid there will be a casualty due to Monday's weather...our beautiful foliage! With colors approaching peak in many areas, a gusty day with heavy rainfall isn't exactly what you root for. I'm sure there will be a decent amount of leaf debris on the ground when we all wake up Tuesday morning. There will also be quite a different feel to the air. Dew points will crash overnight, and temperatures will follow too. A crisp air mass will greet us all! Clouds may linger over the Lower Cape and Nantucket early, but almost everyone will wake up to sunshine. Those bright skies will hold on all day with highs in the low/mid 60s and a gusty northwest breeze 5-20mph.

High pressure will stay in command for Wednesday, with abundant sunshine and seasonably cool temperatures. A general on-shore flow will keep the coast in the low 60s, while mid 60s will be more likely inland.

It's the Thursday through Monday time frame that now has our attention. Models have had a tough time with it, but it appears the ghost of Karen will come back to impact our weather! It will slowly swirl and drift (most likely as a more typical storm, not a tropical system) off the East Coast this week, and eventually head up in our direction. Confidence in the forecast details is fairly low for the moment, as there's been very poor run-to-run model consistency.

The main question is - Who wins: High or low pressure? The high will be situated to our northeast, and the low will try to battle its way up the coast. At the very least, clouds should increase on Thursday and winds will stay onshore. The stronger onshore winds will probably end up closer to the Chesapeake region, where they'll have to watch out for possible beach erosion issues. For us, it just means cool weather and perhaps some building surf for the end of the week.

Right now we'll call for skies clouding up from south to north on Thursday, showers likely on Friday with considerable cloudiness, and a weekend where we'll live on the edge with the storm just barely off the coast. There's a chance the entire period will stay dry, or the entire period will keep clouds and showers around. So bottom line is enjoy Tuesday and Wednesday, and we'll work out the fine details for Thursday and beyond over the next 24 hours!

 

 

 

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