Hello everyone!

Today will feature a round of fairly widespread showers and thunderstorms as a cold front crosses the region from west to east. Before the front arrives, we’re seeing a few showers over northern parts of the region associated with remnants of last night’s storms over NY. These will continue moving east, and should depart far northeastern parts of the area in a couple hours. Behind that initial wave of showers, we’ll see partly to mostly sunny skies develop.

This sunshine is the key ingredient for severe thunderstorm formation this afternoon. Areas experiencing sunshine this morning (mostly the coastal plain) will see temps soar into the mid/upper 80s (away from the immediate coastline). That heat, combined with high humidity (it’ll feel pretty rotten out there this morning) will provide the fuel for thunderstorms to develop this afternoon.

Storms will first pop up in the mountains a little before noon today. Because there won’t be as much heat (fuel) in the mountains, with temps only topping out in the low/mid 70s, the storms initially won’t be very strong. There really isn’t much risk for severe weather (damaging winds/hail) until around 1-2 PM when storms move onto the coastal plain where more fuel is available. When this does happen, expect a line or two of fairly strong storms to develop. The main threats from storms today will be lightning, gusty winds, and possibly some small hail.

Storms will move offshore later in the afternoon as cooler and drier air begins pouring in from Canada on the back of a breezy NW wind. A few brief showers are possible in the early evening as that drier air takes a little while to actually get here.

-Jack