This Weekend Still Looks To Be A Washout Due To Rainy & Windy Weather Across Western & Central Mass

For Tonight & Thursday: A big high pressure system is expected to control the weather throughout tonight and Thursday.

Clear to partly cloudy skies are expected throughout tonight. Low temperatures will be between 42 and 46 Degrees. Winds will be Northeast at 10 to 15 mph.

Thursday looks to be a partly sunny day with high temperatures around 65 Degrees. Winds will be Northeast at 10 to 20 mph with gusts to 30 mph.

A Rainy & Windy Weekend Is Expected: A strong low pressure system is expected to head northward over the next couple of days. This low pressure system is expected to stall somewhere between the south coast of New England and just offshore of the Cape throughout this weekend. The stalling of this strong low pressure system is expected to mean a prolonged period of rainy and windy weather across the entire area throughout this weekend. How heavy the rain will be and how windy it will get is going to depend on how close this low pressure system gets to our area. This is something that is still somewhat uncertain & because of this, the exact forecast for this weekend remains somewhat uncertain.

The various weather forecast guidance seem to be clustered in two potential scenario outcomes:

The first scenario is for the strong low pressure system to stall near the south coast of New England and then loop around near Long Island during this weekend before heading eastward away from our area by early next week. This first scenario would lead to rain, which would be heavy at times, starting by Friday night and then continuing through all of this weekend before it gradually comes to an end sometime on Monday. In addition, northeast winds of 20-30 mph with gusts of up to 40-50 mph would be common throughout all of this weekend. In this first scenario, widespread rain totals of 2 to 4 inches would be common across all of Western and Central Mass this weekend.

A second scenario would include the strong low pressure system staying a bit further east and tracking slowly to the east of the Cape during this weekend. This second scenario would lead to some periods of light to moderate rain to occur beginning by Saturday morning and then continuing through the entire weekend. It should be noted that in this second scenario, it would not rain all of the time & the rain would remain mostly light in intensity. Rain totals in this second scenario would range from one quarter of an inch (0.25”) to one half of an inch (0.50”) across Western Mass to one half of an inch (0.50”) to one inch across Central Mass. Additionally, northeast winds of 15 to 25 mph with gusts of up to 35 mph would be common throughout this weekend across all of Western and Central Mass.

So, as you can see, two very different scenarios lead to two very different weekends in terms of weather across the entire area. Obviously, this makes for a very difficult and somewhat uncertain forecast.

Based on everything that I’ve looked at in terms of weather data, the final outcome of this weekend’s weather will probably be somewhere in the middle of the two scenarios I went over with you.

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

Friday may end up being dry, but cloudy and windy all day long. High temperatures will be around 65 Degrees. Winds will be Northeast at 20 to 30 mph with gusts of up to 40 mph at times.

Rain is expected to overspread the entire area some during the late night hours of Friday night. Low temperatures Friday night will be between 45 and 50 Degrees. Northeast winds of 20 to 30 mph with gusts of up to 40 mph are expected.

Rain is expected all day Saturday across all of Western and Central Mass and the rain may be heavy at times. It will also continue to be windy with northeast winds of 20 to 30 mph with gusts of up to 40 mph. High temperatures will be around 60 Degrees.

It appears that rain will continue throughout all of Saturday night and Sunday across all of Western & Central Mass and the rain could be heavy at times. Additionally, it will continue to be windy throughout Saturday night and Sunday with northeast winds of 20 to 30 mph with gusts of up to 40 mph. Low temperatures Saturday night will be around 45 Degrees. High temperatures will be around 60 Degrees.

At this point, it appears that the rain will gradually come to an end during the day on Monday with sunshine returning by Tuesday and Wednesday.

Forecast Rain Totals: At this point, I think that rain totals may range from around one inch across Western Mass to somewhere between 1 and 2 inches of total rainfall with locally higher amounts across Central Mass.

Downed Trees & Power Outages?? The combination of winds that will frequently gust up to 40 mph for an extended period of time from Friday 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.

Bottom line is that I urge everyone to keep up-to-date with the latest forecasts as the forecasts will likely still change over the next day or two. Many more updates will be posted as needed.