Despite the dreary morning, we had a really nice turnaround this afternoon… for most of us. We all started out cloudy, gray, and cool but take Worcester for an example. Once the warm front pulled through and the sun came out, temperatures skyrocketed!
It really ended up being almost the tale of two seasons with an early spring day on the coastline to an early summer day inland where temperatures touched 70° in spots!
The key to the forecast today was the clouds. Well, wind was part of it too, but you can tie them together. The onshore wind from Boston up the North Shore was persistent all morning and early afternoon which kept and held the dense cloud cover in place. Where we didn’t have an onshore wind, the warm front was able to clear sooner and poke some holes in the clouds.
Each morning, the National Weather Service launches a weather balloon into the atmosphere and it transmits weather information back to us from the upper levels to give us more information than just at the surface. One of the many reports we get from that launch is the temperature at higher levels, and today that temperature profile looked something like below. As you go up on the graph, it’s higher in the atmosphere. Farther to the left is colder temperatures, farther to the right is warmer temperatures. Notice the cold air at the surface and warmer air just above the surface.
If we zoom in, you’ll see our morning air temperatures (40s) and above us were temperatures that were in the 60s! The problems it that thick cloud cover essentially acted as a wall to prevent that warmer air from making it down to ground level. That’s also why as soon as we busted holes in the clouds and saw some sun, temperatures climbed 5-10° in just an hour or two!
Once we let some of that warm air come down, we saw temperatures jump from the 40s, through the 50s and into the 60s! Some of us even touched 70°. Due to, well physics, the sun and a little wind can actually help push our numbers higher than the 61° that’s above us. We can take that line straight down and get that temperature to 70°.
Anyway, weather lesson aside, we’ll sweep out the warm air this evening and get sent back to reality tomorrow. Now for most of us it’s a colder day tomorrow, but for some (the coastline looking at you) it’s a warmer day as we head to the 50s. Sun will come back tomorrow but so will the wind! We could see gusts over 30 mph at times Friday.
The weekend forecast looks outstanding! The wind from Friday will back down for both Saturday and Sunday and we’ll keep full on sunshine both days! Temperatures will be near average (that’s 53°) for both Saturday and Sunday. Right now we’re going for 50° on Saturday and 53° Sunday. But Sunday will be a cooler coast day, with highs likely staying in the upper 40s there.
