The heavy showers and thunderstorms are finally ending across the region after doing so much flood damage to areas including but not limited to Leominster, Fitchburg, Princeton, Springfield and Chicopee.
Now I want to tamp down some of the hype and fear that may be going around concerning Hurricane Lee and how it could affect our weather this weekend.
First off, a hurricane IS NOT and I repeat IS NOT going to impact our area this weekend. Instead, I think Lee may get just close enough to our area to perhaps give us some fringe effects, especially across Central Mass. Gusty north winds may end up being more of an issue than rain.
It looks as though Lee may pass about 150 miles or so to the east of the Cape during Saturday afternoon on its way to Nova Scotia That said, the storm will be transitioning from a purely tropical system to one that's extra-tropical and because of this, the overall wind field is likely to be pretty large.
This means that northerly winds may gust up to 25-35 mph at times across Western Mass and up to 30-50 mph at times across Central Mass during Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening.
As for rain, if Lee passes that far offshore of the Cape, any meaningful rainfall would be confined to eastern Mass and the Cape with the possibility of a mixture of sun and clouds across all of Western and Central Mass throughout Saturday, even though it'll be pretty windy.
It needs to be strongly emphasized though that the forecast track of Lee is not even set in stone yet and will likely shift around throughout this week. Because of this, changes to the forecast are likely for the weekend, so stay tuned!!
FINALLY, I want to repeat once again, we are NOT going to have hurricane conditions across the area this weekend.
Also, I want to briefly touch on our next chance for storminess, which looks to be on Wednesday afternoon and Wednesday evening as a slow moving frontal boundary moves through.
Widespread showers and thunderstorms are likely throughout Wednesday afternoon and evening. With the very humid conditions that are expected, I have concerns that torrential downpours with another round of localized flash flooding could be a definite problem. In addition, there will be just enough of an unstable air mass so that a few of the thunderstorms may be on the strong to severe side with gusty winds the main threat. It's something that I'll be keeping a close eye on.
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