Although our First Alert continues through Saturday, no storms are expected for our Friday – just heat and humidity!
The combination of temperatures around and just over 90 degrees, coupled with humidity, will deliver another day of heat index values near and over 95 degrees, impacting the body in a season that has largely been devoid of deep heat in New England.
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The absence of storms comes thanks to a combination of no strong disturbance overhead, and a uniformly warm to hot atmosphere, reducing the potential for cool/warm conflict to spark storms. Beaches will be a great place to escape the heat Friday afternoon, with ocean water temperatures around 70 (although a pool of cooler water is sneaking into Boston Harbor and the entrance to Cape Cod Bay, it largely remains just offshore) and a weak sea breeze during the afternoon – beachgoers at south facing beaches along the south coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, as well as the south side of the Vineyard and Nantucket, should beware for some rip currents Friday.
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After a warm Friday night with quiet weather, even more humidity will push into New England Saturday morning, making for an extremely soupy day. One jet stream level disturbance is predicted to soar overhead of southern New England Saturday morning between about 9 and 11 a.m., and with the additional influx of humidity ongoing, this may touch off a round of showers, downpours or even some thunder from west to east across the southern half of the six-state region, though any given spot likely wouldn’t see it last more than 30 to 40 minutes.
The afternoon is a different story: An approaching cold front from the northwest will spark multiple rounds of downpours and thunderstorms across New England during the midday, afternoon and early evening. Because they will generally build from northwest to southeast, the Cape and Islands likely stay soupy but not stormy after any morning downpour chance until evening. Elsewhere, as afternoon thunderstorms really start filling in from 1:30 p.m. onward, the storms will feed off the abundant humidity and are likely to drop a few inches of rain in a short period of time in heavier downpours — this will be sufficient for flash flooding, which is our biggest concern for southern New England, in particular, Saturday afternoon to early evening.
As always, use extreme caution in low-lying areas when the heavy rains fall, and avoid driving through flood waters. There is also the likelihood of localized damaging wind gusts in stronger storms, and as has been the case the last couple of storm events, a rotating storm capable of producing a brief tornado can’t be entirely ruled out. Regardless, cloud-to-ground lightning is a threat with any storm, so Saturday is a day that requires those with outdoor plans to have an easily (and, with multiple rounds of storms, perhaps frequently used) available shelter that is electrically grounded and enclosed. Shortly after suppertime Saturday, the storms will depart as the cold front driving them pushes southeast across New England, delivering a brand new air Saturday night with staying power.
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By Sunday, humidity will be gone, even for the South Coast, Cape and Islands, as pleasant air with high temperatures in the 70s arrives under fair sky, though by late day a few of the fair weather clouds may yield an isolated shower. The comfortable air sticks around much of next week in our exclusive First Alert 10-day forecast, with a few scattered afternoon showers Monday, a lower chance Tuesday, none of them expected to be all that impactful, then perhaps some scattered thunder returning toward the end of the week.
