Wet weather has been the story of the forecast over the last few days and will continue to be the story of the forecast through Wednesday. There are three separate systems at play for us throughout the 7 day forecast.
1) The stationary front sitting… well, stationary… over New England.
2) A cold front in the Midwest that will kick out the stationary front and provide us with drier air to close the week (sun and low humidity!)
3) Hurricane Lee
Ok so the short term forecast is all about that stationary front. As the cold front to the west moves eastward it will nudge that stationary front east tomorrow so most of the rain will shift offshore. It’s most of the rain, not all of the rain. So while tomorrow is a drier day than today, it’s not 100% dry. And while we’ll still have a lot of clouds, I do think we’ll see some breaks of sunshine as well. It will also be another humid day as the drier air doesn’t return until the cold front passes.
The next feature we watch is the cold front. That will move through Wednesday afternoon. When that passes our rain chances will go up again. Wednesday is another humid day with scattered shower and thunderstorms.
Behind that cold front, the sun will come back for a couple of days. Thursday will be sunny with lowering humidity, while Friday takes the cake for the day with low humidity. The drop in humidity is lagging the front a little bit. Then our focus shifts to Hurricane Lee over the weekend.
So what’s the latest with Lee. Lee is currently a category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 120 mph and gusts up to 150 mph. It is moving off to the northwest but will eventually make a more northward turn and parallel the US East Coast.
The official forecast from the National Hurricane Center takes Lee back up to a Category 4 storm this evening/tonight and then slowly weakens the storm as it heads north, but it does keep the storm maintaining hurricane status.
The first stop is off the coast of Bermuda. The cone juuuuuust crazes the island. But before we show that let’s discuss the **cone of uncertainty** that we use on these graphics. It’s not the cone of impacts — meaning impacts from the storm can and will extend beyond the cone. The cone of uncertainty is the uncertainty of where the center of the storm will track. So yes, it’s possible that the center of the storm can take that far easterly track and clip Bermuda. It’s also possible it takes the more westward side of the cone and lessens the impacts. But not everywhere in the cone is created equal. The *most likely* track is the center of the cone where the icons are. As you head toward the fringes of the cone, while still possible, is less likely than the center.
From there, the storm continues north and holds the category 1 status. The cone (keep in mind the explanation from above) clips Nantucket. Again, that does not mean the rest of us like the Cape do not see any IMPACTS, it’s the center of the storm. But in the same sense, Nantucket is on the fringe of the cone so it’s less likely than the center of the track that stays out to sea. We won’t know more about impacts — who, what, where, when until the storm track and uncertainty becomes a little more refined, but at a minimum we’ll be watching for extremely rough surf with the close proximity of the storm. Stay tuned for updates with Lee this week!
