A Prolonged Wind-Swept Heavy Rain Is Expected All Weekend Long Across Western & Central Mass

For This Afternoon & Tonight: A big high pressure system will control the weather throughout this afternoon and tonight.

Lots of sunshine can be expected throughout this afternoon. Temperatures will be around 65 Degrees. Winds will be Northeast at 10 to 20 mph with gusts to 30 mph.

Clear skies are expected throughout tonight. Low temperatures will be around 45 Degrees. Winds will be Northeast at 10 to 20 mph.

Friday: It’s quite possible that our big high pressure system will control our weather throughout Friday before we are impacted by a strong low pressure system that’ll be moving northward and then northwestward up the East Coast of the United States.

Skies look to start out partly sunny during the morning. Skies are then expected to become cloudy during the afternoon. High temperatures will be around 65 Degrees. Winds will be Northeast at 15 to 20 mph with gusts to 30-35 mph.

Prolonged Wind-Swept Heavy Rain Is Expected All Weekend Long: It is looking more and more likely that a wind-swept rain, which will be heavy at times, will affect all of Western and Central Mass throughout all of this weekend. That being said, there are still some questions as to where the low pressure system that’ll bring our rain and wind will track in relation to our area.

Weather analysis today shows an area of low pressure forming offshore of the North Carolina coastline. This low pressure system is expected to strengthen significantly over the next day or two as it heads northward towards our area. At some point, it appears that this low pressure system will stall and then meander around throughout this weekend into early next week. The big question to the entire forecast is where exactly this low pressure system will stall and meander around.

A majority of the weather forecast guidance are forecasting that this low pressure system will stall just south of the eastern tip of Long Island throughout this weekend before it’s ejected to the northeast by later Monday and Tuesday. This would lead to a wind-swept heavy rain to occur starting late Friday night and then continuing through the entire weekend. Widespread rain totals of 2 to 3 inches, along with northeast winds that gust over 40 mph would be common this weekend across all of Western and Central Mass.

I do want to mention that there is a minor number of weather forecast guidance members that show the low pressure system stalling much further to the south near the south coast of New Jersey. In this case, these weather forecast guidance members show our area being on the northern fringe of the storm & thus we’d see very different weather this weekend. This weather would include occasional bands of rain throughout this weekend that leads to rain totals of between one-half of an inch (0.50”) and one inch. Additionally, the winds would be a bit lower & would gust up to 30-40 mph at times throughout this weekend.

Based on my analysis of all of the weather data, I think that the weather forecast guidance that are showing the low pressure system stalling much further south might be strengthening the low pressure system too much. This over strengthening of the storm system by these particular weather forecast guidance cause the low pressure system to wrap up too early & stall prematurely.

Because of this, I think that we will probably see the low pressure system stall just south of Long Island throughout this weekend & this position will be close enough to produce rain, that will be heavy at times & windy conditions all weekend long across all of Western and Central Mass.

With That, Here Is My Forecast For This Weekend For All Of Western & Central Mass:

It appears that rain will overspread the entire area sometime between very late Friday night or during Saturday morning. Rain is then expected to fall across all of Western and Central Mass throughout all of Saturday afternoon & the rain may be heavy at times. In addition, it is expected to be windy throughout all of Friday night and all of Saturday. Low temperatures Friday night will be between 45 and 50 Degrees. High temperatures Saturday will be between 55 and 60 Degrees. Winds throughout all of Friday night and all of Saturday will be Northeast at 20 to 30 mph with gusts to 40-45 mph.

Rain is expected to continue throughout all of Saturday night and the rain will be heavy at times. It will also continue to be windy throughout all of Saturday night. Low temperatures will be around 45 Degrees. Winds will be Northeast at 20 to 30 mph with gusts to 40-45 mph.

Turning to Sunday, it appears that rain will continue all day long & it will continue to be windy. High temperatures will be around 60 Degrees. Winds will be Northeast at 20 to 30 mph with gusts to 40 mph.

It appears that the rain will continue through all of Sunday night and all of Monday before it comes to an end linger sometime on Monday night or Tuesday.

Forecast Rain Totals: I’m going with rain totals this weekend that’ll range from 1 to 2 inches across Western Mass to possibly as much as 2 to 3 inches of total rainfall across Central Mass. It should be noted that far eastern and southeastern parts of Worcester County could end up receiving upwards of 3 to 4 inches of total rainfall from this storm this weekend.

Downed Trees & Power Outages?? The combination of winds that will frequently gust up to 40 to 45 mph for an extended period of time from Friday night all the way through Sunday and trees that are fully leafed & will act like sails in the wind will probably lead to isolated to scattered downed trees & isolated to scattered power outages across all of Western and Central Mass throughout this weekend.

Many more updates on this weekend’s storm will be posted as needed.