humidity

Occasional Showers, Thunder Friday, Feels Sticky Through Saturday

Humidity will bring occasional showers and thunder until new air arrives late Saturday.

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Early morning showers and thunder Friday heralded the arrival of sticky air that will remain in New England until the passage of a cold front Saturday afternoon. 

For the time-being, clouds are stubborn Friday morning and midday, and won’t give way to sun in far Southern New England today. Communities farther north, though, will find sun burning through the clouds to bump temperatures into the 80s for a warm and sticky Friday afternoon. 

The chance of thunder rises not so much Friday afternoon, but rather Friday evening into the first part of the night as a disturbance aloft moves through the New England sky.  Fed by the humidity, these storms may actually take the unusual trend of continuing to expand and strengthen a bit even after sunset. This will eventually settle onto Cape Cod as a rain that will last there into early Saturday morning, while the rest of New England will find partial clearing particularly after midnight and some areas of fog. 

Saturday likely sees sunshine burning through the fog patches for another sticky and warm day – but change will be on the map in New England and moving south in the form of a well-defined cold front that marks a wind shift and the start of new air. 

Along the wind shift – the front edge to the new air – we’ll see some showers in the far North Country of New England on Saturday morning, sinking south through Northern New England during the morning and reaching the Maine coast by 2 p.m.

Southern New England meanwhile will see showers and embedded thunder with about 50% coverage moving from Manchester, New Hampshire, around noon to Cape Cod by 4 p.m. or so. 

Behind the cold front, a new, northerly wind will send the dewpoint temperature – the measure of the amount of moisture in the air – tumbling, and comfortable air will take over on a steady breeze Saturday evening for a comfortable night of sleeping Saturday night. 

The new air will be dry by nature, affording Sunday sunshine mixed with puffy, fair-weather cumulus clouds – a few of which may build just tall enough to drop a few isolated sprinkles Sunday afternoon, but nothing too impressive is expected. 

The comfortable air lingers through the start of next week, eventually giving way to returning warmth and humidity by week’s end with a building chance of showers and thunder toward the end of our exclusive First Alert 10-day forecast.

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