Saguaro

There was something getting started in the Bridgton area yesterday afternoon. I was outside and heard a lot of thunder but only saw fair weather cumulus everywhere. Not sure if that was what eventually developed into something that went through your area. Yea I think at this point we can stick a fork in the chances for NE. It's just not looking promising. GFS has reverted back to that buzzsaw vortex look. That once impressive heat signal around the 17th looks to verify as a transient overnight warm sector at best. Not seeing much in the long range after that.

I've read your analysis for years, and having gone through many a lackluster warm season in ME before finally moving west, gained a lot of insight into the labradorian curse that plagues that part of NE. This year's June Sonoran heat event so far has come in a couple degrees below forecast highs, at least back in my part of AZ. 114 and 115 were initially expected, verifying at 112. Today's the last day of it in the Phoenix area for a while, though there might be another run later in the week. Past that point, there's some signs of the monsoon pattern starting up. I noticed that the GFS has started coming around as you hinted it might, there does appear to be some chances for summer warmth coming in around the 17th, albeit a one day deal instead of anything substantial. Past that point it offers some hope for some more regular chances for it, vs the shutout trough it depicted before.

Yea I'm not seeing it lately. Last week it had quite a few runs showing a solid pattern change to summer and reloading warmth, along with some impressively warm 850 temps over NE. Now it's gone back to the hallmark signature to summers of the 2010s: A struggle to get 850 temps higher than 10c, very transitory departures greater than that, and a seemingly fixed maritime trough that buzzsaws any heat domes attempting to make inroads past the great lakes. Maybe it will flip again, but during my years in NE I saw more than one summer where June unfolded this way and we ended up with May having the highest temperatures of the season. Interesting that there's no conventional explanation for this behavior, it happens a lot in NE as you've mentioned in past writeups. It really seems like there's an infinite capacity for new, unforeseen wrinkles to show up like this. I think last year around this time in June there was a similar SW heat event. I'm back in Maine now for a few weeks so I'll miss this one, but forecast shows up to 114. I think last year's was forecasted a bit higher in the Phoenix area but ended up verifying lower. Friday: Sunny and hot, with a high near 112. Friday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 84. Saturday: Sunny and hot, with a high near 114. Saturday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 84. Sunday: Sunny and hot, with a high near 112. Saturday looks to be the peak of it.

0Z GFS showed impressive 850 temps around mid month, and 12Z run still has them. I'm surprised the surface temps aren't higher.

Visible satellite shows much of ME once again socked in with the low level marine gloom today. It's finally eroding, though in IZG area that perfectly coincided with some popup storms, so that delayed things further. As of around 15 minutes ago it seems they finally broke out of it. It's amazing how difficult it becomes to get rid of this crud once a BD moves through, and how long it can take. Today is day 6.

Wow in a few weeks it'll probably be looking like the places around here

On the way here next week. I wonder how verification will go as we get closer. Monday: Sunny, with a high near 104. Monday Night: Clear, with a low around 78. Tuesday: Sunny, with a high near 106. Tuesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 80. Wednesday: Sunny, with a high near 108. Wednesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 80. Thursday: Sunny, with a high near 109. Thursday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 82. Friday: Sunny and hot, with a high near 111.

Even worse in IZG area. A mid level band of clouds stole monday away as well. This week has been a classic example of just how these things can rob several days of potential summer along with daylight during the precious few weeks of the year surrounding the solstice. The tendency for WPC and NWS to simply pretend these boundaries vanished was one of my pet peeves when I lived there. The satellite, wind obs, and temps all still show a definite contrast. That's about as classic a depiction one can get of the coastal plain being porked by these. I don't see it going away today either, especially in NNE where there's overrunning convection/higher clouds. I went through enough of these watching visibile satellite trends to know when the rest of the day was shot. As for the longer range, GFS says there might be a chance of summer making an attempt of showing up in about two weeks. Yesterday's 18Z run was miserable but the 0Z completely flipped around to show some solid heat working in. Today's 12Z walked that back significantly with another backdoor showing up on the 14th, but still offered more hope than yesterday's 18Z run.

From my years of observations, more often than not, there always seemed to be a new unaccounted for wrinkle/fly in the ointment of things that would go wrong for realizing heat or convection in ME/eastern NE. I don't recall ever seeing "excessive -AO" being one of them. I still remember the summer of 2005 a day in July or August when there was going to be record breaking heat in Maine, much talk of triple digits, only to have an unforeseen, stout high cloud deck show up to put the kabosh on it. Probably the only time I experienced temps holding well into the 90s there despite an overcast sky. Lately I've noticed a distinct trend away from the unusual summer-reload type patterns the GFS had in its long range for NE periodically the past couple weeks. It's now reverted to its typical behavior seen in May/Junes past. Not what one likes to see on June 1 for sure, at least if you enjoy summer. Quite the contrast to initial depictions last week of 4 day heat, basically a 40-45 degree swing. Was 98 out here today safely away from the backdoor, and I'm happy I was here vs the IZG area, hours of slate gray 50s with intermittent sprinkles. One of those blackfly and mosquito days.

IZG never had a chance today. Much wasted potential with a high launchpad before the BD blasted through around 6am. Looking through the obs history, it had actually gotten up to 75 at that point. Around 9am, the gloom began materializing and by 10, ceilings had lowered to 2300 with solid overcast. Glad to be here vs there today with our SKC and 91/34. I expected to see much more stratus on satellite but at the moment it appears to be a thin band stretching from QC/ON border southeast to the coast between PSM and PWM. I'm not sure what the cause of that band is as it seems to be more upper level stuff given its movement. It looks like there is lower level moisture condensing in that vicinity as well. I imagine once the sun goes down all bets are off and there will be an explosion of low stratus. From my years of seeing these, they do seem to more often than not have momentum issues during the day. Many a time they'd barrel from CAR down to BGR and then stall somewhere between there and PWM midday. Overnight they'd resume, and make it to the NH/MA border by sunrise.

From all my years living in ME, we never got any kind of interesting convection from these. It will probably just be a wind shift to low ceiling, clammy miserymist. The NWS forecast in western ME is about as bad as it gets for Tuesday onwards if you're ready for summer. I did notice the 12Z GFS shows an interesting bermuda high pattern for late next week, but obviously that's too far away to be taken seriously right now. 18Z NAM shows it getting all the way to Philly on Wednesday, with the misery epicenter over MWN.

That's an apt analogy. It's certainly been a persistent trend on the models for a few days now. Knowing how these go, it would not surprise me to see SPC throw an enhanced or moderate risk right up to the edge of the summer side of it for a day or two next week while the other side rots away in the clammy gloom. GYX says the culprit is stubborn troughing in the maritimes running up against a block and retrograding. I've certainly seen the trend in the past where these end up barreling down to Philly or DC when initially they're forecast to halt in CNE. If that happens, ME and NH may at least get some sun out of it. We each have our own preferences, but I'd much prefer sun and heat with convection potential to low ceiling 40s on the eve of met summer.

That is one brutal backdoor next week for ME and NH on the GFS. Completely snubs a potential four day heat event. I'll be heading back that way the second week of June so I've been keeping an eye on the pattern evolution.

Yea, that's almost impossible to happen. The two most recent incursions this month show why. It's hard enough just getting a warm front to progress past the CT-Merrimack river valley areas, and even in the cases when said front has supposedly moved to northern ME/QC on WPC surface maps, there is this persistent, annoying tendency where the airmass is still contaminated to some degree, enough to significantly hinder max temps and dewpoints, along with any interesting convection.

I remember that May was only second to May 2005 in terms of absolute misery in western ME. But later that summer was one for the ages. IZG notched an impressive 10 or 11 day streak of 90+ highs in August that year. Today turned out to be another such day, albeit a tie. IZG 93, out here in Phoenix area also 93. It doesn't look like they ever included Cumberland in the watch area. Not sure if it was marine influence or other reasons, but the SVR stuff stayed well inland today.

Interesting. IZG looks to have finally overcome the marine air and managed a high of 93 so far. That's actually warmer than it is here in the Phoenix area so far today. Around 12:30, their wind finally switched to S and SW vs the SE, E, and NE it was all morning. SPC issued watches and left out the fishtail of cumberland county, I guess that marine layer will still ruin storm chances again today.

It was drawn on the surface analysis this afternoon, along with being mentioned briefly in some SPC discussions. It not only kept the heat out but kept the svr away. As others have mentioned, it backed in yesterday and for all intents and purposes was a backdoor. Thursday evening the forecasts were for low to mid 90s today in Bridgton/Fryeburg area, but IZG was only able to muster 84.

Definitely has that look on the visible. You can see that crap banking up against the spine of the apps in ME. There's even "reverse clearing" moving in from offshore. It's a day to drive rt 26 from Bethel to Errol and see the contrast. Last weekend the same kind of thing happened with that backdoor dropping in and then slamming the door on any interesting convection the next couple days for eastern NNE as per the usual script.

I learned to never put much faith into dry patterns persisting into drought in NNE, there is always this kind of surprise soaker which will come along to halt them eventually. It does appear there was a backdoor of sorts that dropped down from northern ME yesterday and, according to the maps, throughout the afternoon was snaking from just west of Montreal, winding through central VT/NH, and leaving just York county ME in the warm sector as it trailed off the coast. That cutoff circulation from last weekend did a full clockwise loop and went through ME today if the satellite was any indication. LG makes inverter window units as well but they have the traditional design and aren't U shaped. They are much quieter for sure. I had one during the tail end of my time in ME. Hopefully one day someone will be able to make 6k BTU inverter window units. The mini-split units are great, unfortunately the prices to get them installed in the US are ridiculous when you compare to Europe and Asia. I got a multi-head Mitsubishi put in last year before prices went completely insane. One in the garage and one in the bedroom with option to add a third down the road. It saves more to use than the central, plus it's nice to have a backup in case the central goes out, summer in AZ doesn't joke around. I remember that day well. Back then I lived in a small town called Ridgefield just south of Danbury in CT. The previous evening I had TWC on and they were tracking it getting started in the great lakes and going through Ontario. Then it turned into a monster once it got into NY state, flattening thousands of trees in the Adirondacks. It made me pull an all nighter thinking it would be a historic event once it reached my area. In actuality it was a dud by that time, a threatening looking sky, few drops of rain and gusts of wind. Then it cleared on out like a Texas dry line storm and the ensuing day was one for the ages. That was the infamous DXR hits 103 day, and during my time in CT I never remembered any other summer afternoon which felt as hot as that one did, and even if we may not have hit 103 we were easily near 100. The dewpoints didn't mix out despite the heat. Looking at the archived surface maps from back then, it appears that derecho coaxed a backdoor looking boundary to move south and west, maybe earlier than forecast. The following day was noticeably cooler and drier.

High ended up being 84 here in the Phoenix area today. IZG/Fryeburg hit 85. Not often that happens. Tomorrow onwards the heat is returning here, back to the 90s then 100-105 into next week.

IZG got up to 85, and Montreal hit 90. It's currently 80 here around 2pm so those may eclipse the Phoenix area today.

I still remember how warm it got in March 2012, well into the 80s if I remember right. It was full dead winter landscape and foliage which made it look unsettling. Oddly enough, a similar situation happens out here where we have our best chance to get the highest heat before the solstice. At that point, the westerlies have moved far enough north that we start getting moisture incursion from the gulf of Baja California and even the Gulf of Mexico depending on the pattern. With that comes the monsoon months of July, August, and September. The GFS runs since yesterday have unfortunately been cutting down those 850 temps in ME. It even shows a backdoor hitting on saturday now, and after that the ridge looks to get gutted by the remains of that stubborn cutoff associated with the terrible conditions in SNE today. Seems the ECMWF is showing much of the same.

Wow that looks like 10-day QPF maps here most of the time. The last time I can remember a rain-free stretch that long in Maine was the omega block "high over low" situation that lasted a good chunk of April back in 2013. Near the end of it, with all the dirt roads around dust clouds were being kicked up like the Dukes of Hazzard. Certainly not the typical April expectation, it was a welcomed respite. I can say that the heat which is building out here this go around is the highest of the season thus far. We've hit 97 today and expecting the first 100 of the year tomorrow. GFS 850 temps over ME next week show some rare 18-19Cs. Tough to get those into ME even in summer.

here's another

Yea I don't know what happened to it. One day the data just quit working and it never got fixed after that. One thing that still takes a bit to get used to here vs NE is how low the dewpoints can crash after a frontal passage. The other day when the ridge that had us in the 90s for a few days began migrating to the east coast, we had a frontal passage that took the dewpoint from low 40s to 5 below zero. It was startling how cold it felt, even though it was in the upper 60s, it was light jacket weather. I always figured that once you hit the 30s in dewpoints it was diminishing returns for how it affected the perception of warmth.