Warming air ends the week, with weekend showers ahead

After days of wandering closer to New England from the west, the persistent upper level storm crossed over our six-state region Wednesday evening with a round of thunderstorms and isolated damage, and now has moved east of New England. 

A severe thunderstorm warning was issued Thursday afternoon in parts of northern Vermont. See all severe weather alerts in your area here.

Typically, west of these disturbances we find improving weather – not perfect, but better – and that’s the forecast for Thursday. Morning clouds giving way to sun won’t deliver a completely rain-free day: isolated, brief, quick-hitting showers are possible in central and southern New England from bubbling, puffy cumulus clouds Thursday afternoon, while heartier clouds in northern New England will deliver scattered showers and perhaps a thunderstorm in the mountains, in particular. 

Nonetheless, with plenty of breaks of sun, temperatures will rebound through the 70s to near 80 for daytime highs.  Any isolated showers that manage to develop Thursday afternoon will quickly melt away during the evening, leaving a mostly clear night and a sunny start Friday.  Once again, clouds will build Friday afternoon, but this time it will be a new disturbance – amazingly, yet another slow-moving upper level storm nearing New England from the west in what has been a remarkably steady pattern of such disturbances over the past couple of weeks.

As this new disturbance approaches, the building clouds will eventually produce a few showers or a thunderstorm Friday afternoon and evening, developing from west to east, then filling in as more focused showers overnight Friday night into Saturday. The best way to describe Saturday is showery.

Our First Alert Team is always very honest and transparent about what we know and what we don’t, and from a couple of days out we know showers will come and go, developing often, on Saturday. What we don’t know just yet is where some of these showers may stall – under slow-moving upper level storms, we often see showers stalling and consolidating into one or more pockets of stubborn rain, and that probably will happen Saturday for some communities in New England, it’s just a little too early to say exactly where.

Outside of those slow-moving pockets of rain, we still find multiple showers, but they tend to be more broken and passing.  So for now, our safest bet is to plan on showery weather Saturday and we can fine tune as we get closer in time. Interestingly, our exclusive NBC Forecast System forecasts a nearly equally high chance of raindrops Sunday, but we believe this probably will be different: though showers may fall from time to time, they should be more scattered, quicker moving and lighter, allowing for more sun and a better, brighter and milder day for Father’s Day – a day we’re fairly optimistic about.

We’re also optimistic about a lot of next week. Admittedly, yet another slow-moving upper level storm will be nearby most of the week, but right now we’re hopeful it may stall just southwest of us, keeping our chance of showers more limited over the course of week, and that’s the optimistic solution you see us leaning toward in our exclusive First Alert 10-day.  If things change, we’ll be the first to let you know!