We haven’t had much in the way of severe weather this summer in southern New England which makes sense given how dry the pattern has been but today is different. It’s warm and muggy and we have ingredients in the atmosphere (strong wind and lift) that will likely produce scattered strong to severe t-storms later today. The mechanism that will “lift” the warm/humid air up into the atmosphere is a cold front which is located across eastern New York state late this morning:
Once the warm/humid air gets hoisted up into the sky it (the rising air) will then interact with the strong jet stream wind to produce strong to severe storms. Interior New England looks like the area most likely to see strong/severe storms:
Understand that not everyone will see severe storms in that red blob….rather, most likely versus other regions of New England. The primary concerns will be frequent lightning, locally heavy rain, damaging wind gusts and yes, even a couple of brief tornadoes are possible.
Future radar data indicated the window of opportunity is from about 3-7pm:
The storms will weaken fairly quickly after 7pm but showers will continue for the night and into Sunday. Sunday does look gloomy with periods of rain during the morning hours then drying out later Sunday afternoon. Bring rain gear to Gillette for the Patriots game. Rain is likely for tail-gating right up until kickoff but then dry out as the game proceeds. Pleasant weather returns Monday and is with us for much of next week.
Stay Weather Aware later today for those thunderstorms!
~JR