I am guessing that one of the last things you want to hear as we near Memorial Weekend is the word “nor’easter”.
It is a fairly rare occurrence in the month of May but not completely unheard of. You may remember 4 years ago, when a late season nor’easter completely washed out the entire 3-day holiday weekend.
At least this year, the main impacts from the storm will be before the weekend arrives. Unfortunately, we cannot issue the “all clear” for the entire upcoming weekend, more on that in a bit.
Our weather team has issued a NEXT Weather Alert for Thursday.
The main impacts will be heavy downpours, localized flooding, strong winds and some minor coastal flooding.
TIMELINE:
Some light showers and drizzle will be present late on Wednesday.
The brunt of the storm will occur between about noon and midnight on Thursday.
Thursday AM commute:
Some scattered showers and drizzle, wet roads but no major impacts yet.
Thursday lunchtime:
The heavy rain arrives from south to north. The winds also begin to ramp up, gusting over 30mph along the Coastline and over 40mph on the Cape and Islands.
Thursday PM commute:
The downpours continue and now, pockets of localized flooding will be present along with some big puddles on the roadways. The winds will be near peak with gusts of 30-50mph across most of eastern MA.
Thursday night into Friday AM:
The rainfall pivots northward after midnight and by Friday morning’s commute, most of southern New England is dry or drizzling.
RAINFALL AMOUNTS:
Most areas will receive between 1-2″ of rain. There will likely be pockets with as much as 3″.
This will not be enough to cause any major river flooding; however, some smaller rivers and streams may approach their banks once again.
WIND:
As mentioned above, the winds will ramp up Thursday morning, peak during Thursday afternoon and evening, and then slowly ramp down overnight.
Maximum gusts will occur along the immediate Coastline (up to 50mph).
COASTAL FLOODING:
Our tides are approaching one of their highest astronomical levels of the year, set to peak on Sunday and Monday. Thankfully, tides are not forecast to be high enough on Thursday to cause any major issues. There will likely be some minor flooding and splashover during the Thursday evening high tide (occurring between 7-8pm).
MEMORIAL WEEKEND:
The nor’easter will be slow to depart and therefore we expect some lingering, minor impacts into the upcoming weekend.
Conditions will improve each day, with more sunshine and warmer temperatures expected by Sunday and Monday.
