Another wet weekend is on tap for New England, but there will be pockets of drier air too — stop us if you’ve heard this one before.
The calling card of late-spring and summer, so far, has been repeated rainfall chances, in spurts. The on-and-off nature of the rain has been in part due to repeated areas of low pressure, and some that have stalled.
Why so wet?
Each season’s featured a different flare or variation of rain. The spring showers were just that, showers, and very little severe weather.
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As we transitioned into summer, low-pressure systems have continued to track across the northern tier of the U.S. but have been more slow-to-go as high pressure has built in over Bermuda. The stagnant nature has allowed sub-tropical moisture to move from the Southeast coast to New England. It’s what’s brought the humid air overhead.
We’ve been stuck in a revolving pattern of tropical downpours and repeated chances for rainfall nearly every day this month.
And we must admit, we understand how heinous the forecast has looked each day. The tropical-like humidity induced showers nearly half the month, but much of the rain came in quick spurts.
Wet Boston weekends
Summer in New England is THE time to get outdoors. It’s what attracts tourists this time of year. But the element of timing has played a significant role in canceling or postponing outdoor plans that have landed on Saturdays and Sundays.
Weekends in Boston have been ridiculously wet. No seriously. Nearly every weekend since the start of April has featured rain.
Of the past 13 weekends, eight of them have been wet, with measurable rain fall. In a meteorological sense, measurable means at least a one-hundredth of an inch of rain. It’s tiny, yes, but we aim for precision. Anything less than that is considered a trace…but we’ve really tipped the scales.
We can look at this another way too: amount of rain that’s fallen on each day of the week.
In total, since the start of April, 8.2” of rain fell in Boston. Nearly half of that has come on Saturdays.
Think back to May 20, when it was the “rainiest rain show that ever rain showed,” as Taylor Swift proclaimed at Gillette Stadium. The second night of her Eras Tour stop at Foxborough was draped in 3.5 hours of record-breaking downpours. It rained 1.8” that day alone.
The second-wettest day of the week is Sunday, when more than 2.5” of rain has fallen.
The driest days have fallen smack dab in the middle of the week, on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Weekend rain totals were 25 times that of Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Heat and humidity…and heinous rain, too
The weekend washouts have been fueled and fed by humid tropical air, as air from the equator moves poleward and higher in latitude.
Under daytime heating, the potency of moisture has triggered thunderstorms leading to downpours throughout the start of June.
That will still ring true heading into the weekend before the Fourth of July — it’s not all wet all weekend long, but it’s not totally dry either.
Saturday will be dry but pleasant, with seasonable temperatures. Sunday remains warm, though another front moves in, inducing thunderstorms across central Massachusetts and MetroWest in the evening.
The NBC10 Boston app will be a great way to track Sunday’s storm potential, as the First Alert Weather team anticipates Sunday evening showers around Southern New England, and the Greater Boston area.
