What has changed
No significant changes have been made to the forecast.
What is an Area Forecast Discussion?
Area Forecast Discussions are the real forecasts, written 3 to 4 times daily by NWS meteorologists reading the models and interpreting what they mean for your area. They offer far deeper insight than any weather app, but they're written in dense meteorological shorthand. Plaincast uses Anthropic's Claude to summarize them into plain English, side by side with the annotated original.
Revised in 5 passages since the 3:14 PM discussion. See every revision.
Messages
A few brief spot showers possible across northern MA into mid- evening. Otherwise. dry and pleasant through Fri night outside of the wildfire smoke this evening. Lows mainly in the 50s to the lower 60s. Highs Fri mainly in the lower to middle 80s.
Chances for beneficial showers and thunderstorms on the uptake for Saturday PM into the overnight period.
A cooler start to the work week with unsettled conditions through the middle of next week.
Discussion
KEY MESSAGE 1. A few brief spot showers possible across northern MA into mid-evening. Otherwise. dry and pleasant through Fri night outside of the wildfire smoke this evening. Lows mainly in the 50s to the lower 60s. Highs Fri mainly in the lower to middle 80s.
A cold front will cross the region this evening. However. the lack of low level moisture coupled with the main shortwave forcing passing to our north will keep most of us dry. A few brief spot showers may survive into northern MA and perhaps the remote risk for a rumble of thunder in far northeast MA. Otherwise. generally a dry/very pleasant weather through Friday night. We will have to deal with some more smoke moving into the region through late afternoon. But the worst of it will likely stay to our southwest. And the good news is that it will get shoved into the mid-Atlantic after midnight and will not be an issue for Fri.
High pressure builds across the region on Friday behind tonight/s cold frontal passage. This high pressure system will shift east of us Friday night. But we will maintain dry/pleasant weather. Highs on Friday will mainly be in the lower to middle 80s with plenty of sunshine and comfortable humidity. Lows tonight and Friday night will mainly be in the 50s to the lower 60s with middle 60s in the urban heat island of Boston.
KEY MESSAGE 2. Chances for beneficial showers and thunderstorms on the uptake for Saturday PM into the overnight period.
Chances for showers and thunderstorms begin to increase heading into the weekend as a surface low approaches Saturday, bringing prolonged southwesterly flow and surging precipitable water. Latest guidance suite has increased confidence in precipitable water over 2.0", with some as high as 3.0", which lends favor to some heavy downpours developing overnight. the European model and CMC ensembles indicate a 60-80% chance of at least 0.5" of expected rainfall (mostly across the southern coastal areas and up into central CT and RI), while the the American global model ensemble is trending those higher percentiles off our southern shores and further north into northern New England. Southern New England is currently in a Marginal (1/4) risk for flash flooding, but discussion has started with neighboring offices (and will continue with the next forecast cycle) on potentially increasing that risk to a Sight (2/4), particularly across the southern coastal areas of CT and RI given the relatively high consensus in the model guidance that some heavier bands could develop across those areas.
Instability profiles continue to look relatively weak, but CSU Machine Learning probabilities continue to indicate low (5-15%) chances that some storms could turn severe.
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