Soggy Start To Holiday Weekend Across Northeast

As we work our way toward the unofficial “start of Summer,” Memorial Day weekend, Mother Nature is priming an early-springlike storm for the Northeast.

The setup for this storm is very similar to a nor’easter that would be commonplace in January or March. Low pressure has been marching northeastward from the lower Mississippi Valley into the eastern Great Lakes throughout the day today. This evening, a fresh area of low pressure is forming near the North Carolina Outer Banks. That low is then expected to move northeastward along the coast toward New England.

Were it January, the new low pressure system would very likely combine cold air across the interior East with the Atlantic moisture to produce a bounty of snow along the Interstate 95 corridor. Fortunately, it is not January, so instead a cold rain is expected from New Jersey to New England over the next day or two.

As the low intensifies off the coast, waves of heavy rain will spill back into New Jersey, Long Island and the New York metro area overnight, overspreading southern New England by Thursday morning and arriving in New Hampshire and Downeast Maine by afternoon.

With plenty of moisture to work with, rainfall totals will be gaudy. By the time it ends Thursday evening in New York, 1 to 2 inches of rain will be commonplace. Thursday will be a complete washout for the Boston area, with some locales picking up as much as 2 to 3 inches of rain. It will finally come to a close across northern New England with a similar 1 to 3 inch rainfall total. Most of the rain will come down slowly enough to preclude flooding, although periods of heavy rain throughout the day will be enough to ruin outdoor plans.

While we’re not talking about January-like temperatures that will produce heavy snow, much of the Northeast will still see the mercury struggling on Thursday. New York will be hard-pressed to get above 52 degrees, while Boston holds near 50 degrees. Interior locations such as Gardner, Mass., Keene, N.H., and Sanford, Maine, will only see highs in the lower to middle 40s. These readings are more typical of late March than late May!

As if that weren’t enough, winds of 10 to 20 mph will blow throughout the region, with gusts of 30 to 50 mph possible along the coastline, where a Wind Advisory has been issued. These winds will make those temperatures we just mentioned feel more like the upper 30s to lower 40s.

The good news is that the chilly blast will be short-lived, as milder air will slowly seep into the region as the storm pulls away. The second part of the holiday weekend will feature increasing sunshine, with temperatures climbing back closer to seasonal averages near 70 degrees.