Today's Forecast: Showers & Storms
By Erica Grow on August 1, 2012, 5:52am
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After a couple dry days, we're bringing the risk for heavy rain back into the forecast today. A slow-moving cold front is the culprit, as you can see in the image above. With temperatures reaching into the low 80s, winds out of the south, and dewpoints in the 60s, we'll have enough instability for showers and thunderstorms as the front moves through.
The reason this system could produce pockets of heavy rain is because of the incredibly slow movement of this front. A storm cell that moved through Pennsylvania overnight produced rainfall rates in excess of 1"/hour in a couple spots. As storm cells slowly move through Connecticut today, we'll have that same potential for heavy rainfall. However, not everyone will get rain today; this doesn't appear to be a likely setup for a coherent line of heavy rain, like the strong line that formed last weekend.
As you can see on the map, high pressure is anchored over the Great Lakes region. It's going to move into New England as we head toward the weekend, but the center of high pressure is expected to miss us to the south. Model data (especially the NAM) pushes a southwesterly flow toward us on Thursday and Friday, helping to raise 850mb temperatures to around +20C. This temperature scenario usually leads to high temperatures here in Connecticut of around 90 degrees. Since it will still be warm and humid in the wake of today's cold front, an isolated pop-up thunderstorm is still possible for the next few days.
A much larger storm system is showing up on the model data for Sunday and Monday. Stay tuned to wxedge.com for more updates!
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