After a fantastic Fall weekend across the area, featuring sunshine and seasonable temps, the tables have turned. We start off today with rain, allowing for wet roads for the morning commute. Rain and wind won’t be all that intense today, in fact, it’ll taper to drizzle by midday, but the stage for a damp and dreary pattern is certainly there.
As energy from the Midwest dives down and connects with area of low pressure off the Carolina Coastline, it allow that coastal low bomb out (develop rapidly with a 24+mb drop in less than 24hrs) as it gets closer to us. Rain ramps up tomorrow morning and wind starts to ramp up tomorrow afternoon. As wind and rain hammer the area through Wednesday morning, I’d expect a lot of slow downs on the roads, especially for tomorrow evening’s and Wednesday’s morning commute.
A widespread 3-5″ of rain is possible, which has prompted a flood watch to be issued. We’ll keep an eye on the street flooding potential, poor drainage areas getting flooded out, especially if clogged by leaves, and the risk of small streams rapidly rising. The heaviest rain will be from tomorrow morning – Wednesday morning.
In addition to the flood watch, a high wind watch is also in effect for eastern Massachusetts. Gusts 50-60mph, strongest at the coast, will likely cause isolated to scattered powers outages as well as pockets of tree damage. Winds inland will gusts to about 40mph, but with a saturated ground and leaves still on the trees, isolated power outages are possible there too.
One thing working in our favor… High tides are astronomical low. That means even with a 2-3 foot storm surge and a prolonged easterly fetch over 24-36 hours, coastal flooding will be minor, not major. Large waves and minor coastal flooding will also cause minor to moderate beach erosion, but again, would have been worse if tides weren’t on the astronomical low side of the charts.
