Welcome to Wednesday and Sara is waking up!

 

Today’s Northeast weather discussion…

The surface chart shows, high pressure in control, providing sunny skies. Looking at radar we can see the entire region is rain free.  Today won’t be as breezy as yesterday, with generally wind gust around 10 mph at times. The winds will dimmish as we go through the day. The clear skies and lack of wind, will insure that tonight into tomorrow morning will be quite frosty with very cool temperatures.

We have a system lifting toward the Great Lakes, as this gets into the Great Lakes, an upper-level area of strong low pressure will form near the Canadian Maritimes. This will act as a block, forcing the system in the Great Lakes to track south and east tomorrow into Friday.  Western toward central Pennsylvania and far western New York State could see some rain later tomorrow afternoon into tomorrow evening. The areas closer to the low could see 0.50 to 0.75 of an inch of rain. The chance of anyone east of there to see much if any rain is slim to none.  On Friday this system will be tracking over Virginia, meaning most of the rain will be over the far southern Maryland, Delmarva Peninsula and points south. The vast amount of the region will stay dry, those in Southeast Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, as well as parts of New England will have a chance for some rain showers, but nothing meaningful.  

On Friday and Saturday, temperatures will be warming. The interaction between the low to our south and the low in the northern Atlantic, will force the low in the north to retrograde west closer to New England, those in New England will see increasing clouds, with rain showers breaking out over Maine later Friday morning, the rest of eastern New England and New Hampshire could see a few scattered showers, while western New England has a shot at a few isolated showers. Northern parts of Maine into New Hampshire could see a mix change to rain.

Sunday high pressure pushes the storm to the east, resulting in dry conditions for the region and temperatures becoming above average.

Sunday night and Monday a cold front will swing through, bringing a chance for scattered showers. Ahead of the front, temperatures will be mild. Tuesday sees high pressure back overhead, so it looks to be dry.  Wednesday a frontal system will try and push in, but the high looks to stay strong, outside of western areas seeing scattered showers, the rest of the region is looking to stay dry.

There are signs of possible snow in parts of the region toward the end of next week. Those downwind of Erie and Ontario could see at least some measurable snowfall. Too soon to know anymore than that, so we will see how things trend.

The tropics.

Invest 99L

The disturbance we’ve been following has been designated Invest 99L.  An invest is just a tropical disturbance that has a higher chance of becoming a tropical depression, so it bears closer investigation by the NHC.

The NHC has the 2-day and 7-day development odds at 90%. The conditions for development are becoming very favorable, with SST of 84°F-86°F with a lot of ocean heat content below the surface, light to moderate wind shear, surrounded by a moist atmosphere.  With these types of conditions, we could see some rapid intensification down the road. During the weekend into next week wind shear is going to become very low, so 99L could become a major hurricane. 

It's looking increasingly likely 99L will move west as it loses the steering currents, then slows way down as it meanders under high pressure in the western Caribbean. At this time, it would likely become hurricane Sara. Then as a front gets closer, this would lift toward the Yucatan, then around mid-next week, it could quickly turn toward the southeast Gulf, possibly becoming an issue for Florida. We need to keep an eye on soon to be Sara. It remains to be seen if Sara will have an impact on our weather.