Miguel Pierre

Premium: Severe Weather Threat for the Interior Northeast Friday into Saturday

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Today will be another very warm and humid summery day for the Northeast with more widely scattered showers and thunderstorms popping up this afternoon and evening. Due to the stronger mid-level ridging, very weak wind fields and less instability with warmer mid-level temperatures, these storms will likely be less intense and fewer and father in between than on Wednesday. But will still be very slow-moving and capable of producing some heavy rainfall and flash flooding in some spots.

However, a shortwave energy embedded in a larger upper-level trough will be amplifying over the Great Lakes Friday and Saturday. This will cause low pressure to deepen and track northeast through the Great Lakes into Southeast Canada on Friday and Saturday. As it does so, it will drag a frontal boundary will be moving be slowly through the region, as ridging from the Western Atlantic gradually breaks down. Large scale ascent and lowering heights will support more numerous showers and thunderstorms over the Interior Northeast again.

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Miguel Pierre

Public Analysis: Hot Again Today, Then Unsettled with T-Storms Possible Tonight thru Monday

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Good morning and happy Saturday! After a few weeks of more pleasant, warm weather, we finally got a reminder that it’s still mid-July late this week. We had three consecutive day of 90°+ temperatures in many of the climate reporting sites around the region, such as Central Park, NY and Newark, NJ. Which officially makes these last few days of hot and humid weather a heat wave. Some locations will add 4th day to the heat wave today, before more unsettled and cooler weather arrives tonight and Sunday.

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Doug Simonian

Medium Range Analysis: Severe Weather Chances this Weekend

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Good evening! We hope you all had a great Monday. For the most part, the area had a beautiful, summer day, but some western suburbs of NYC had some strong thunderstorms and flash flooding. These storms quickly weakened as they headed towards NYC, as the pattern right now is generally not favorable for severe weather in our area. But that may change come this weekend, when the general synoptic pattern may start to favor strong to severe thunderstorms.

It’s pretty far out in time, so plenty can change — but at this range we like to look at general features of the pattern and what they signal, since there is inherently less noise in broader signals. One thing we like to look at is a pattern that can favor advection of an EML (Elevated Mixed Layer) into the region. The EML is a layer of very hot and dry air from around 700mb (around 10,000 feet) and up that originates in the desert southwest. This hot and dry air air is not contaminated with moisture and thus it can cool quickly with height, creating a lot of mid-level instability. These EMLs often combine with rich, tropical Gulf of Mexico moisture in the low-levels of the atmosphere in tornado alley and lead to some of the biggest severe weather outbreaks.

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Miguel Pierre

Premium Weekly Outlook: More active, progressive pattern this week

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Good morning and happy Monday! Overall it was a beautiful weekend, especially as lower humidity settled into the region on Sunday. But a more active, progressive weather pattern is expected this week. This comes as a strong heat ridge begins building over the Rockies and Western Plains this week and the AO/NAO remains positive with lack of high-latitude blocking. This pattern will allow some ridging to build into the region this week with heat and humidity building. Multiple disturbances are expected to move from the Great Lakes/Ohio Valley through the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, with threats for showers and thunderstorms this week.

First off,  high pressure will be moving off the Mid-Atlantic coast, with a return southerly flow developing over the region today. Mostly sunny skies are expected this morning, then some clouds will be increasing and filtering the sunshine as a warm front approaches.  Humidity will begin increasing later this afternoon as dew points rise into 60s. More lift and instability ahead of warm front may lead to a few isolated showers or thunderstorms popping up over the region later this afternoon. Temperatures will rise into lower to middle 80s area wide. South-southwest winds today will allow for sea-breezes to keep coastal sections in the 70s much of this afternoon.

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