You have to admit; we have had it pretty good here for the last several months. We’ve essentially been in that “Goldilocks zone” of near perfect weather.
Not too hot, not too cold (until early this morning), very little rainfall, and certainly no stormy or impactful weather.
Here in New England, we know that eventually it will be time to pay the piper. Right on cue, the collector is coming, and our first real storm of the season is on our doorstep.
When you hear the word nor’easter, I am guessing it conjures up thoughts of wind whipped snow or giant waves crashing over our sea walls. While sometimes that does occur, nor’easters are not just a winter phenomenon. Storm season in New England typically begins around now, in October, and lasts through March or April. This is when we tend to get clashing airmasses of warm and cold that feed on an infusion of energy from the warm Gulf Stream off the East Coast.
So, off we go! Let’s break down this October nor’easter the first of the young season…
Our weather team has issued a NEXT Weather Alert for Sunday through Tuesday…
SATURDAY:
Here’s the good news…the entire holiday weekend will not be ruined! In fact, I think most of us will be able to salvage not one, but two days.
Saturday will easily be the pick of the weekend. There will be some cloudiness across southern New England but the farther north you go, the sunnier the skies!
Near ideal weather up north for hiking or leaf peeping!
SUNDAY:
Let’s call Sunday a transition day…Temperatures will be 5-10 degrees cooler than Saturday and the cloud cover will thicken as the day wears on.
But, all is not lost! There will still be some filtered sunshine in the morning, especially to the north. Sunday remains a decent day for a road trip or a hike in central and northern New England.
The rain should hold off for most of the daylight hours on Sunday except over extreme southeastern Massachusetts. There are likely to be some showers over the Cape and Islands by midday, continuing into the afternoon. Elsewise, I think the rest of the area stays dry until later in the afternoon.
The northeast winds will start to pick up later in the day, gusting 25-35mph over southeastern areas.
Essentially the storm is just arriving Sunday evening and night.
MONDAY:
The peak of the storm arrives Monday. This is when we expect the heaviest rain and strongest winds. Monday has the look of a washout in southern New England. I still think northernmost New England will be mainly dry, albeit overcast and cool.
Northeast wind gusts will peak between 30-45mph across the coastal plain, and between 45-60mph on the Cape Cod and the Islands.
There may be some isolated wind damage and power outages but we do not expect any significant or widespread issues.
TUESDAY: The storm will hang around to our south through the day on Tuesday but it will begin to erode and weaken. So, you can expect continued showers, but less intense than Monday and also slowly diminishing winds. Still a very grey, wet and windy day, but with signs of improvement.
Rainfall totals from the entire storm will be highest across the Massachusetts east and southeast coasts. A conservative estimate is between 1-3″ but there is a chance of isolated pockets reaching as high as 4-5″.
This is largely good news given our recent drought status however, if too much falls all at once, there may be some localized flooding.
Lesser totals are expected to the north and west.
The National Weather Service has issued a Coastal Flood Watch for Sunday and Monday for our entire Coastline.
Thankfully, the astronomical tides will be lowering each day, therefore we only expect minor coastal flooding.
Forecasts call for about a half foot of inundation on vulnerable coastal roads and you can see, using the chart below, that this would not put our area in any significant flood threat.
Finally, the seas will be very angry and churned up early next week. Wave heights just offshore are expect to be 5-10 feet or higher.
As always, the WBZ NEXT Weather Team will have you covered throughout the storm. We advise you stay tuned to WBZ-TV and CBSBoston.com for frequent updates.