Thunderstorms Expected This Afternoon & This Evening Across Western & Central Mass

Thunderstorms Expected This Afternoon & This Evening: The main weather story for this afternoon will be the coverage and intensity of thunderstorms that are expected to accompany a southward moving cold front. Moisture and forcing from the cold front will combine with some unstable air from afternoon temperatures of 90 to 95 Degrees to produce the development of scattered to numerous thunderstorms this afternoon into this evening. Latest indications point towards thunderstorms quickly developing across the entire area by about 2-3 pm or so. Thunderstorms will become numerous in coverage across the area by the 4-6 pm time frame with the thunderstorms continuing through this evening before diminishing by midnight tonight. The environment across the region is expected to be favorable enough for a few thunderstorms to be strong and capable of producing wind gusts of up to 40-60 mph. Another concern with thunderstorms this afternoon and this evening will be heavy downpours that persist for a while due to the slow movement of the thunderstorms. This means that rain totals of up to 1 to 2 inches are possible in localized areas that see stronger and slower moving thunderstorms. This means that street, urban and poor drainage flooding could be a concern in some localized spots. Saturday: I have good news for Saturday’s weather as it looks a lot less wet than it did previously. While there could be some early morning scattered showers, the rest of Saturday looks cloudy with perhaps some peeks of sunshine possible at times. High temperatures will be between 55 and 60 Degrees. Winds will be Northeast at 10 to 20 mph with gusts to 30 mph. Sunday: Sunday also is trending much drier than what it looked like previously as low pressure may remain further offshore. That said, we still will need to watch how far west the rain pushes into the area as its quite possible that areas near and east of I-190 and I-395 see rain in the afternoon, while areas west of I-190 and I-395 stay dry all day Sunday. For now, I think that Sunday will be cloudy and there could be some scattered showers in the afternoon across Central Mass, while Western Mass stays dry. High temperatures will be near 60 Degrees. Winds will be Northeast at 10 to 20 mph with gusts to 30 mph.