Last week, New England saw an intense heat wave by mid-April standards. Hartford last Friday shocked me with a reported high of 96 degrees. This tied the city's all time monthly high for April. Other cities across the region not only broke records, but shattered them by 10 or more degrees. This Thursday and Friday will again see a warm up, but not nearly to the extent of last week. This week's warm up will not be as widespread across the region.
Thursday morning will start off cool, and plain cold, in spots with temperatures dropping into the 20s and 30s region wide for lows. The temperatures will rebound quickly during the day as a ridge begins building into New England along with a westerly flow. Thursday will be a quintessential spring day across New England with quiet weather and highs around average or slightly above average.
The real heat up sets in for Friday, leading to another summer-like start to the weekend. The ridge in the jet stream will settle over New England (more specifically western New England) for Friday before moving offshore by Saturday. This will lead to widespread 80s from Massachusetts' Connecticut River Valley westward and Connecticut. Central Massachusetts, southwestern New Hampshire and southern Vermont are looking to reach well into the 70s, with some 80s possible in these areas.
Eastern New England will not get into this warm up. While temperatures will jump above average, they will not shoot up into the mid 70s to 80s. This is due to the fact that the ridge will settle more over western New England. In addition to this, winds will be out of the east, allowing the sea breeze to push further inland, similar to what happened last Friday afternoon. These factors will keep eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, eastern New Hampshire and western Maine in the 60s. The rest of Maine, the immediate coast of New Hampshire, as well as Cape Cod will remain in the 50s.
Saturday will likely remain warm for the areas that saw the heat on Friday. Confidence begins to drop off over the weekend as an incoming storm still needs to be worked out in regards to timing. It still looks like the storm will strike on Sunday, which would allow temperatures to climb on Saturday, though not to the levels seen on Friday.
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