forecast

First Alert Weather: Damaging Thunderstorm Potential

Our weather team issued First Alerts as we track thunderstorms Wednesday and a potential tropical storm by Saturday

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First Alert weather continues in New England for this afternoon through the evening with strong thunderstorms expected. 

With a few light showers at times this morning and early afternoon, these thunderstorms will drop heavy rainfall as they feed off increasingly sultry, moisture-laden air, which is delivering clouds stubbornly breaking for sun.

Some storms will grow strong enough for locally damaging wind and perhaps hailstones at their center. An isolated tornado can’t be entirely ruled out, either, for the northern half of New England including southern Maine. 

Many of us who see thunderstorms will see heavy downpours capable of localized flooding and frequent cloud-to-ground lightning –regardless of whether they meet the criteria of a severe storm with damaging wind and hail.

“When thunder roars – go indoors!” – if you can hear thunder, lightning is close enough to be a concern. Dugouts, gazebos and the like are not safe from lightning unless they have full piping and electricity through them, so for the youth sports finally kicking back into gear, parents should stick close to the playing field.

Check if you can see storms approaching on our NBC10 Boston or NECN mobile app interactive radar, because a car is a perfectly safe place to be during a thunderstorm. 

The storms diminish late Wednesday evening for partial clearing and areas of fog, but the humidity won’t decrease Thursday. In fact, high temperatures pushing 90 degrees will couple with dew point temperatures around 70. The combination will create heat index values, or “feels like” temperatures, over 90 degrees for a steam bath feeling. 

An evening storm won’t be commonplace but could grow strong as it would have plenty of heat and humidity to feed off of. 

Friday into Saturday, our attention will be focused on our team’s next First Alert – a developing storm along the Mid-Atlantic coast. 

A storm spinning up over the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, the ocean current that parallels the east coast, is pinned by the National Hurricane Center with having a 70 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression or tropical storm. Our team is forecasting it will move north to New England.  

Though the exact track and strength are to be determined, we know a period of increased downpours, thunderstorms and gusty wind is a distinct possibility from late Friday into early or midday Saturday. We’ll fine tune the details as we draw closer. 

The system is expected to continue trucking northeast Saturday evening, returning New England to heat, humidity and scattered afternoon thunder for Sunday. Our mid-summer pattern rolls on through next week in our exclusive First Alert 10-day forecast.

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