A cold front will cross New England this morning into the early afternoon, but the cooler air behind the front will lag behind a secondary front. With a strong westerly flow, this will allow temperatures to remain highly elevated for Friday. While temperatures will be a notch lower than Halloween, widespread 70s are likely for southern New England with 60s across the north. Winds will be gusty behind the initial front, leading to a breezy day for New England all day today.
Scattered showers along the front in northern New England this morning will become more isolated heading into the afternoon. For southern New England, there is a chance of a few isolated showers popping up. While moisture is in place for showers, forcing will be very weak across southern areas, so the dry times will roll on for most.
With the lack of showers along the front for southern New England, combined with gusty winds of 25-35mph and lowering relative humidity behind the cold front and continued mild temperatures, will lead to high fire concerns once again after a brief and slight reprieve. A Red Flag Warning has been issued for all of southern New England for Friday. The Salem fire has been reported to be extinguished, but conditions will be favorable for spark ups for the rest of the week.
The continued mainly dry weather has allowed for drought conditions to expand across southern New England. The Greater Boston area is now under a "severe drought" while moderate drought conditions across much of Massachusetts and eastern Maine. While the current monitor doesn't take into account for Tuesday night's showers (the map is released every Thursday and contains data from last Tuesday morning to this Tuesday morning), those showers were unlikely to have made much of an impact as New England really needs a widespread soaking at this point to begin to alleviate this expanding drought.
As far as rain changes go for the upcoming week, a widespread soaking rain remains out of the picture. After the cold front passes for Friday into Saturday morning, an expansive 1,035mb high pressure will build into New England, bringing dry and mainly sunny conditions for the weekend. On Monday and into Monday night, a warm front will lift through New England, bringing the prospect of a few showers, similar to this past week's warm front on Wednesday.
The low pressure system that the warm front is attached to will once again be forced well to the north of New England due to a ridge of high pressure offshore. This will keep the best forcing for showers to the north as well. The system's cold front that will get dragged through New England is currently looking unlikely to bring the region widespread rain around the middle of next week, though more showers will certainly be in the cards. The best chance for beneficial rain will remain across the northern third of New England.
Current Weather Prediction Center 7-day rainfall outlook:
As far as temperatures go, the whiplash of warm and cool air looks to continue for the next week. The next week or so will behave a lot like the previous week did with warm and cold fronts moving through. The weekend and Monday will likely feature temperatures around seasonal averages for early November. After that, the aforementioned warm front will lift into New England, placing New England back into the warm sector for Tuesday and Wednesday, with temperatures peaking on Wednesday.
Much like the warm sector from this past week, temperatures are looking quite warm for the time of year. They likely won't get quite to the levels seen on Halloween, mainly due to the more eastward placement of high pressure but well above average for early November with 60s north to 70s south. Just how warm it gets will depend on smaller-scale factors (cloud cover, wind direction), as always.
As per usual, the system's cold front will slice through New England as it pulls away. Temperatures will likely gradually drop back to seasonal levels after this front heading toward the end of next week.
The general trough-in-the-west-ridge-in-the-east pattern looks to generally continue for much of the next week. This will make it more difficult for truly cold air to get into the region in the first part of November. When temperatures rise, they will likely be well above average with the drops bringing us back to seasonal levels rather than truly cold levels, though overnight lows this weekend into early next week will be chilly with optimal radiational cooling conditions in place.
500mb height anomaly showing the trough-in-the-west-ridge-in-the-east pattern setting up early next week. The western trough looks to break down later in the week:
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