The Week Ahead

MON 5/5: What a dreary weekend that was. There wasn't too much rain to speak of, about 4/10ths of an inch for the weekend as a whole, but the clouds, drizzle, fog and cold temperatures certainly made things dismal. Thinking back to Friday's post, it's hard to say what day really was better. They were both pretty ugly. Saturday stayed in the 40s - some 10 degrees below normal. Yesterday we were just stuck with lots of fog and mist and cool temperatures. Anyhow, the good thing about May is when the sun returns it makes a world of difference and can really push the temperature upward. And with Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday all looking fair with a good amount of sunshine, we can look forward to a couple of nice days.

With early fog and clouds and some cool northerly winds continuing around the Cape on Monday, we should expect Monday's sunshine to be least effective when it comes to warming things up. Highs will struggle through the 50s, with some spots on the Upper Cape hitting 60F. On Tuesday and Wednesday the atmosphere aloft will warm up and this, combined with weakening sea breezes, will allow for progressively milder afternoons. Tuesday should feature plenty of sunshine with highs in the mid 60s on average, with Wednesday pushing closer to the upper 60s. The only exception might be right along the water's edge where midday and afternoon sea breezes could knock a few degrees off the daytime highs.

While a weak front *could* induce a shower Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, our next shot at widespread rain comes during the second half of the week. An initial shot of showers looks to ride into the area on Thursday, with a more pronounced shot of wet weather looking likely Friday into Friday night. It's this second shot of wet weather (currently associated with an upper level low spinning eastward near southern California) that may very well be accompanied by some gusty east winds and quite chilly temperatures (blah).

With a low pressure area tracking east northeastward from the Ohio Valley, intensifying as it deos so and passing just south of New England, we may actually be dealing with a mini late season nor'easter so-to-speak if computer guidance is correct. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds as climatology suggests we are at a time of year where the development of such a system would be less likely. Given this, and the fact the upper level support for the surface storm seems to weaken over the course of the week, I'm not sold on this stormy solution quite yet. That said, nearly all model guidance tracks the storm south of the region, keeping us on the cool side of the storm and most intensify the low center down under 1000 mb and give us a good shot at some nasty, wet raw weather Friday and/or Saturday. In fact, the most recent GFS cranks out well over 2 inches of rain and has a very strong northeasterly low level jet for a time Saturday. This could be a feedback issue. Either way, I'm not on board yet, but it's interesting none-the-less - especiallly given we have very high tides over the next 5 days and a strong onshore flow would could cause some problems.