Tropical Tuesday kicks off with warm temps and high humidity this morning as both air temps and dew points run in the 70s. With the atmosphere loaded with moisture and increasing support for storms developing this afternoon, tropical-like rains will accompany the storms that do form. As a few lines of strong storms run over the same areas for an hour or two, localized totals of 2-4″ of rain falling in a short period of time will create localized flash flooding. If your town gets hammered with downpours, keep an eye out for street flooding and rapidly rising small streams. The highest risk for that will be near and north and west of 495.
Close to Boston, we’ll see the storm risk go up around 5pm, give or take an hour, and across Southeastern Mass, weakening storms won’t approach until after 6pm.
The main storm threat will be the torrential rains, but also, a few storms could produce locally damaging wind gusts. The highest risk for those stronger storms will be northwest of Boston. Although the hail/tornado threat is low, it’s not a 0 chance. We’ll watch for that slight potential is any storm that rotates in western and northern Mass as well as N.H. this afternoon.
While not to be taken exact, I do think the model print out below gives a good idea of how variable rain totals can be in a set-up like this. Some towns can pick up 3″+ of rain, while others get less than 1″. It’s the nature of the game in a tropical-like air mass that’s in place.
While today will be active, we’ll quiet down for the rest of the week as sunshine and lowering humidity returns.
Have a good day and check back with us on air and online this afternoon to track the storms.
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