Hello everyone!

Today will feature another day of warm weather with the chance for some showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Before we can think too much about the storms, we’ll need to burn off some low clouds and fog currently in place across parts of Maine and the valleys of New Hampshire. With SW winds developing this morning, fog and low clouds should lift on the sooner side.

As the sun comes out, temps will rise to around 70 in the north and a little shy of 90 in Southern NH. These warm temps along with some residual moisture following yesterday’s storms will provide fuel for another round of showers and storms this afternoon. These will initially pop up in the mountains midday before moving east during the afternoon. The most favorable environment for storms will be along the coastal plain, and the chance for damaging wind gusts will be higher here. Overall, today’s severe threat will be on the lower side but still worth paying attention to if you happen to be outside. Storms will exit to the east this evening with drier air filtering in from Canada.

As a quick aside, what happened to the storms yesterday that just never really showed up? Storms need warm air to thrive, and the warm air yesterday was locked up behind a warm front. That front was forecast to lift northward to around Waterville/Augusta, but got stuck around Portsmouth NH. As a result, most of the area ended up with showers that had a rumble or two of thunder but no severe weather (except for a couple cells down in southern NH). Warm fronts are known to struggle moving north through our area in the winter/spring, but they typically make more progress during the summer without snow to slow them down. My guess is that yesterday’s forecast error resulted from a little disturbance in the mid levels that reinforced the cool side of the front with showers. The rain-cooled outflow from those showers added cold air to the north side of the front which made it harder for the warm air to move forward, thus preventing storms from getting too strong outside of SW NH.

-Jack