We had a couple of showers and thunderstorms over the weekend and if you found yourself underneath one of them, it was a good little downpour for a couple of minutes. The problem is the storms weren’t widespread enough to provide any meaningful relief to how dry things have been through most of the year so far. That will change today and tomorrow with some much needed rain on the way. The drought monitor from last week shows all of eastern Massachusetts under a severe drought.
While the sun is out this morning, clouds will be quick to increase and eventually rain will follow suit so be sure to grab the umbrella as you head out this morning. While I think we are all dry until noon, it’s not like right at noon all of the widespread rain arrives. In fact for the first couple of hours after noon (until 2-3pm) the showers are scattered and lighter. It’s not until 5-6pm that the steadier and heavier rain arrives.
Around 5pm or so, the rain will become quite a bit heavier. We’ll have some embedded downpours and a good dose of water for a few hours. That will be the story of the evening. Later this evening, especially overnight, the rain will taper off to showers and showers will be the story overnight and into your Tuesday. Tuesday will keep showers around, so keep the umbrella around, but it’s not as steady, nor as heavy as what the rain will be later today.
Our two day rain totals should get just about all of us 1-2″ of rain, with a few towns surpassing 2″ of rain in areas that see a few consecutive downpours this evening and overnight. While these are rain totals that will take us through tomorrow afternoon, most of this will be accounted for by midnight tonight.
It has been incredibly dry this year, especially in eastern Massachusetts. These bars/numbers are for Boston (Worcester isn’t quite as extreme), but the whole area still needs rain. Boston is nearly 10″ below normal for water for the year so far with every single month being below average for rainfall. Today’s rain will chip away at that, bringing up the monthly number a little closer to normal. While it’s a start on the yearly deficit, it’s just a dent in the work we need to do to put some water back in the ground.
