The lows this morning ran 45-53.
Today’s highs reached 73-82.
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Low temperatures are expected to range between 52 and 57 degrees tonight, with clouds increasing, especially in our northwestern regions. Some patchy fog is possible.
Showers and thunderstorms are expected in our northwest and far west areas tomorrow, but the rest of the region will receive rain by Monday evening into Monday night.
The weather will gradually turn partly cloudy from the northwest and far west to the southeast and east during the afternoon.
High temperatures will range from 76-82 on Monday with a southwest wind and then drop to 59-62 Monday night.
As for Tuesday, after clearing some areas, cumulonimbus clouds form in the afternoon with sunshine and cold air at the top, and a general atmosphere in the upper part of the country with intermittent to scattered rain.
With northwesterly winds, maximum temperatures are expected to range between 68 and 73.
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In the cold air aloft, after morning patchy to fog areas Wednesday and 45-49, 65-71 and scattered showers possible Wednesday afternoon.
The wind will be north.
Patchy to foggy areas and a cold night is expected Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Lows are likely to reach 39-45!
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Thursday looks good with cumulus and sun with north winds and highs between 66-71, followed by patchy fog and 40-45 Thursday night.
Weather will likely be 72-76 on Friday with the sun and wind heading to the northeast.
Winds will turn south on Saturday with increasing clouds, reaching 76-81.
It looks like the upper low and cold front may be slowing down a bit, so it will be dry for most of Saturday, but some rain could get here by the evening or early night.
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This cold front and upper trough remains extremely important to Hurricane Lee’s path. A hurricane may only be a 2 or 3 hurricane as it approaches from the northeast, but its sheer size and age will result in a 4 to 5 magnitude surge and the tropical storm radius and hurricane force wind field will be very wide. The Idalia was a very compact Class 3 class. The Lee might only be 2 or 3 bits, and would have a much wider wind range.
However, it is worth noting that the analog years for late summer, fall, and winter are 1940 and 1994. Oddly enough, a similar hurricane hit the Northeast in 1940.
It was towed towards the Carolinas, then embraced the northeast from New Jersey to Massachusetts to the Canadian Navy. New Jersey and Massachusetts were hardest hit in a Category 2 storm that caused damage.
However, 1940 was nothing like the disastrous 1938 hurricane that struck the Northeast…the worst hurricane there since 1821.
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Notice how the lee is pulled toward the coast, then pulled up and parallel along the northeastern coast.
Given this wind field, the large area of rain and the high seas, regardless of exactly where the landfall is northeast, the damage will be significant.
Perhaps a slight delay in the depression for an additional 6-8 hours will help drag it towards the northeast, leading to more impact.
If it got really close to Massachusetts or Rhode Island or Maine or we made landfall there, it would be a billion-dollar disaster.
So, scattered showers and thunderstorms will be possible here Saturday night into Sunday with temperatures in the upper 70s to lower 80s.
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Your 10-day forecast:
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Some scattered showers are possible on Tuesday, September 19 with an upper disturbance and 69-73, followed by better weather with 70s and lows in the 50s to 50s for several days.
I’m still seeing a narrow window for all MCS stations tracking drought-stricken Texas to move into the Gulf and possibly trigger a tropical depression or storm.
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However, there is still this warming trend in late September.
We’ll actually need to keep an eye on Margot, which will likely be a hurricane in the western Atlantic.
Although the total number of tropical systems will be very small, the two systems in the Atlantic (Lee & Margot) will be large. Over the past few weeks we have seen a tremendous amount of activity in the Atlantic Basin. This system is much less important in numbers, but it is important in terms of the status of the only two storms over the next few weeks.
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With that heat, we also have quite a bit of instability due to storms and high humidity in the plains to the midwest, which indicates some extreme weather events from late September to early October.
Some of those storms will get here.
Surface CAPE Forecast:
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With CAPE, the western upper basin will plow to the southeast, then to the northeast.
That means several days of severe weather on the plains from Minnesota and North Dakota to Texas, with storms eventually reaching the Midwest and lower Ohio Valley.
Here temperatures are possible to range from 80 to 90 with dew points as high as 68-73.
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A cooler pattern with upper exhaustion should arrive after October 5.
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