The heat and humidity are on repeat with both returning today and lingering through the weekend, both Saturday and Sunday. All three days will also feature a small chance of a passing storm or downpour but I really want to stress that these are low chances and they will only impact a small portion of your day — if at all.
Take yesterday for example, we had a few storms yesterday afternoon and evening, but I couldn’t even fill an entire rain reports list. Now, with the tropical humidity, it would give the potential for a tropical downpour. So if you do happen to get tagged by a shower or storm it could be a good downpour, not just a few sprinkles. Feast or famine with the rain amounts going forward through Sunday.
The chances for these storms are small, some days are higher than others. If yesterday was a 20% chance, then today is 30%, Saturday is 30%, and Sunday is 20%. So these are all low, but maybe a little bit higher chance of a storm both today and Saturday.
Here’s a few future radar snapshots showing the rain chances today and tomorrow. I wouldn’t zone in on the exact location of these downpours and storms, but rather the isolated nature of them. When the downpours pop up like this in the summer heat, it’s too small of a scale (no front, etc.) for the models to capture their exact location. Rather, it’s the general trend of a few pop up storms and downpours.
The bigger story is the return of the heat with numbers back in the lower 90s this afternoon and the tropical humidity that will make it feel closer to 100°. Yesterday gave us a very slight sea breeze, most towns were 90-91° but Boston’s high was only 86°. It not like a May sea breeze that cools the coast 20° — these August sea breezes only drop us 5° or so. Without a strong northwest wind today, I think we’ll sea breeze again, but that’ll still put the coast in the upper 80s this afternoon.
Temperatures Saturday may be like one or two degrees cooler, topping out in the upper 80s versus lower 90s but with the tropical humidity remaining in place, it’ll still feel like 97-98° for most of the afternoon. Rinse and repeat for Sunday. Remember, both days have that really small storm chance.
I assume people will be flocking to the beaches this weekend and it’s a great weekend for that! It’s hot, it’s humid, don’t forget the sunscreen, the UV index is very high both days. Just remember that small storm chance, if you’re out on the sand and the skies darken you may need to step inside for a few minutes.
Here’s some good news on the rainfall front! The downpours we had on Monday and generally higher rain chances overall in the last week or two have given us some nice relief in the drought monitor. Now, it’s a start, and we still have a ways to go but we really made some progress. You’ll notice on the drought monitor below, there are still areas under a severe drought (dark tan) but it’s a lot better than two weeks ago when it was all of eastern Massachusetts (about 40% of the state).
In fact week over week, the severe drought fell from 14% to 10%. The biggest improvement came in the moderate drought, falling from 89% to 37%. Still though, 90% of the state is still abnormally dry.
