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

Prolonged Wind-Swept Rain Is Still Expected All Weekend Long: Weather analysis this afternoon showed a strengthening low pressure system that’s located to the east of the Mid-Atlantic coastline. This low pressure system is expected to strengthen as it moves very slowly northward reaching a position just south of Long Island by late Saturday. The low pressure system is then expected to stall & then sit and spin just south of Long Island from Saturday night through Sunday and even Monday. This stalling of the low pressure system is going to mean that we will have a prolonged wind-swept rain across all of Western and Central Mass throughout all of this weekend. This rain is even expected to last through the day on Monday before it comes to an end Monday night and Tuesday.

So, let me break down what to expect from this storm this weekend across Western and Central Mass:

Rain: Radar imagery as of this afternoon showed a shield of rain pushing northwestward and now reaching parts of the Cape.

The shield of steady rain is expected to slowly expand northwestward and should begin to overspread Central Mass between 8 pm and midnight this evening. The rain then looks to overspread Western Mass during the after midnight hours of tonight.

The rain is then expected to continue throughout all of this weekend with the rain expected to continue through all of Monday.

One thing that I wanted to mention is that it may not actually rain steadily the entire time this weekend. The reason why I think this is because there are signals in the data that suggest the rain will break up into bands of moderate to heavy rain that rotate through at times as that low pressure system strengthens and then mills around to the south of Long Island. That being said, it definitely will rain enough this weekend to make it a washout.

Total Rainfall Amounts This Weekend Through Monday will range from 1 to 2 inches across Western Mass to 2 to 3 inches of total rainfall across Central Mass. I do think that there will be locally higher rainfall amounts across southern and southeastern parts of Worcester County where there may be more frequent bands of moderate to heavy rain rotating through during this weekend.

Given the long-duration that the rain will be falling, I don’t think that we’re looking at any sort of flood concerns across the region this weekend. There could, however, be areas where street, highway and poor drainage flooding could be an issue when any bands of heavy rain rotate through.

Wind: It is going to be a windy weekend across all of Western and Central Mass & combined with the rain will lead to a pretty miserable weekend.

Northeast winds are expected to increase to 20 to 30 mph with gusts of up to 40 mph during tonight & continue through all day Saturday.

A period of stronger northeast winds of 20 to 35 mph with gusts of 40 to 50 mph looks to occur during Saturday night & Sunday morning and this is when the peak of this storm should occur.

During Sunday afternoon and Sunday night, expect northeast winds of 20 to 30 mph with gusts to 40 mph. These winds should decrease on Monday with north winds of 10 to 20 mph expected all day long.

These strong winds occurring for an extended period of time combined with trees that are still fully leafed will lead to broken tree limbs and the potential for isolated to even scattered power outages throughout this weekend. I think the time frame that may see the highest concentration of broken tree limbs and possibly some power outages will be from late Saturday afternoon through Saturday night and Sunday morning.

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