Posts

John Homenuk

1/18 PM Zone Update: Gradual clearing, unsettled pattern continues

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Clearing was gradual to occur, as expected, throughout the Northeast United States today as a storm system off the coast of Southern New England slowly departed to the east. Residual moisture in the low levels of the atmosphere was to blame, and ocean effect snow even continued over parts of Maine for several hours as well. Clearing will occur tonight as the storm pulls even further away and the atmosphere dries.

High pressure will build in from later tonight into Thursday, with fair weather expected to return. Temperatures will still average above normal for the majority of the area during the afternoon on Thursday — by several degrees, in fact. But high pressure remaining overhead will mean fair and calm weather through all of Thursday and into the overnight period.

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John Homenuk

1/18 AM All Zones Update: Lingering moisture before high pressure

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A storm system which brought wintry weather to parts of interior New England this morning is still meandering off the coast of Southern New England, with a surface low pressure moving eastwards a few hundred miles south of Cape Cod. This surface low pressure will slide eastward (almost southeast at times) into the Atlantic. Trailing moisture, especially in the low levels of the atmosphere, will allow drizzly conditions to continue this morning, with gradual clearing.

The moisture will linger a bit longer over northern parts of our region, particularly Connecticut and Eastern New York. But gradually, low and mid level clouds will clear as the afternoon goes on. Even with the presence of a departing storm system, temperatures will remain above seasonal normals for the majority of the area — not even slightly so — with afternoon highs around 5 to 8 degrees above normal across the board.

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John Homenuk

Large high pressure may bring prolonged pleasant weather

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The pattern over the past few weeks has been, without doubt, a progressive and active one. There haven’t been any dominant areas of high or low pressure in our area, but instead the pattern has kept moving with intermittent periods of troughing and ridging as well as multiple cold fronts. If medium range forecast models are reasonably accurate, that’s about to change.

Models are in good agreement that a massive trough will develop over the Western United States during the mid to latter part of the  next work week. With the mid level jet stream recessed into Northern Canada and no real high latitude blocking to speak of over the Atlantic,  a ridge of high pressure will build over the East. Some forecast models even suggest the high pressure could get as strong as 1035mb — totally dominating the pattern over the Northeast.

What does this mean for us? Well, first, we’ll be in a transition period. The ridge will develop eventually, as long as model guidance isn’t totally out to lunch with the pattern progression. But first, we’ll deal with a cold front late Sunday into Monday and a few mid level perturbations early next week. Afterward, it means that we’ll likely enter a period of prolonged pleasant weather.

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