Dry, Warm until Friday, Cooler Weekend

Moving on from a stress-filled tropical forecast challenge last week to a boring forecast this week…that’s all part of the game of meteorology. This coming week’s “pleasant mornings (low to mid 60s on the Northshore) and almost hot afternoons (upper 80s)” are all courtesy of a building upper high and surface flow that is from the southeast around a surface high in the Carolinas. This is shown by Tuesday’s ECMWF AI forecast where the upper high is shown in solid red and the the arrows show wind direction. Since most of us only got a few drops from Isaias, it’s time to turn on your sprinklers again. For swimmers, this might be your last week to enjoy the pool unless you don’t mind heating the pool with a vengeance.

But the flow will really change for the weekend. Strong NW flow aloft (look at shape of orange color-fill) will bring a cold front (blue line) through here Friday evening, giving us NE winds (blue arrows) and a lovely weekend. Daytime highs won’t climb past the mid-upper 70s Saturday and Sunday under sunny skies with low humidity, but how cool it will get is debatable. Some models dip us into the mid 50s, others maybe give us one night of 59. Unfortunately, the front will come through dry — so keep watering.

The Foreca graphic looks reasonable, except that morning lows next Sunday might be five degrees cooler, especially in inland areas of the Northshore. I also think bringing a chance of showers in here a week from Monday seems precocious — perhaps next Wednesday.

Models are having a tough time handling the transition from a hot September to more of a late fall pattern — at least across the heartland. My take is that the week of October 19 will feature a mix of clouds and sun, a chance of showers starting that Wednesday, highs in the low 80s and lows in the mid-upper 60s. That’s a bit above average.

When the pattern really does flip and we a strong upper air trough in the east, this might be a year for the big late October cold front - where one day it’s 83 in the afternoon, then the winds turn to the north and howl, and the next morning you send your kid to the bus with a jacket and temperatures in the 40s.