Overnight Wednesday, November 5, 2025 Wind Event

[weatherwiz]

A potent shortwave trough will continue amplifying as it progresses across New England characterized by a narrow 130+ knot jet streak rounding the base of the trough. Amplifying trough with diffluent upper-level flow will help strengthen a west-to-east surface low across the Great Lakes region across northern New England while lifting a warm front from southwest to northeast across the region during the day and a cold front through during the evening. There are two potential hazards with this system:

1) Convective showers (which may or may not contain lightning) moving through during the evening ahead of the cold front. 

     - Forecast model guidance yields very weak surface based instability as dewpoints climb through the 40's under steepening lapse rates. Given the combination of increasing flow aloft and inverted V signatures on many forecast soundings, these showers will have potential to produce localized damaging wind gusts with evaporative cooling aiding in the transport of downward momentum. There is potential for convection to blossom, especially towards eastern Mass and Cape Cod in which there could be a small window for some more concentrated pockets of damaging wind gusts and perhaps even a brief tornado.

2) Behind the passage of the cold front, strong CAA ranks from the northwest as the low-level flow continues to significantly strengthen for several hours. Forecast model soundings yield very strong mixing up through 3-4K resulting in very steep low-level lapse rates. Given potential for 50+ knots of wind at 850mb and favorable thermal profile to tap into these winds, a several hour period of wind gusts in the 45-55 mph range are likely; including potential for some gusts upwards of 55-65 mph in the typical wind prone areas. Scattered power outages are likely due to the strong winds.

 

 

[WxWatcher007]

As you note, @weatherwiz, this is a different setup than our usual modeled wind events that fail. I'm very impressed by the level of mixing that's showing up across guidance, and obviously, a NW flow event is a far more common way for us to get big wind across the interior than relying on southerly flow. I could absolutely see max gusts late tomorrow/early Thursday ranging in the 50-65mph range depending on location. The saving grace for damage is that we are past peak with a lot of leaf drop. 

06z Euro

 

12z GFS

[SJonesWX]

please, I beg all of you to please stay safe during these trying times.

[dendrite]

Looks more like a SNE deal, but it’s too bad it doesn’t go through midday vs overnight. 

[WxWatcher007]

7 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Looks more like a SNE deal, but it’s too bad it doesn’t go through midday vs overnight. 

Yeah, then we'd really be talking about Kevin's grid collapse. 

[Snowcrazed71]

12 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Yeah, then we'd really be talking about Kevin's grid collapse. 

He'd get his wish!

[Torch Tiger]

Maybe ORH hits 60 or 65, but probably 20-30 g50 here.  nbd

[weatherwiz]

Waiting on the 18z HRRR bufkit but the 18z HRRR has a pretty solid line moving through which may or may not contain some thunder/lightning. There are some important notes about this to keep in mind:

1) Typically (probably often) we don't see much in the way of wind transported down to the surface within these lines in this kind of setup. There are several reasons for this, however, perhaps the most important is the air becomes too stable too quickly, inhibiting winds from mixing to the surface. 

2) The presence of any thunder/lightning (as we saw last night) increases the potential for strong winds to make it to the surface via downward momentum transfer and this indicates the presence of instability. The challenge tomorrow evening will be, will the weak instability we may have be just enough to aid in this process? 

3) In terms of the region as a whole, the winds will likely begin to increase significantly and quickly just behind the line. You'll have strong CAA advecting within the 1-3km level which is going to vastly increase your low-level lapse rate - this will be the catalyst for mixing down stronger winds. Also, there may be some evaporative cooling going on just behind the line (as we may still have some llvl moisture present) which will further help to initially mix down winds. 

4) There are always going to be very local mesoscale and microscale processes which will have a great impact locally. With this, we will likely see this either perform accordingly or maybe even slightly overperform within areas which are prone to higher wind events. Subsequently, there will be areas where the wind doesn't seem impressive at all. That has nothing to do with the setup, that is a product of microscale processes and local topography. (This is something that also can be applied to just about any weather event). 

But with many forecast soundings showing nearly a dry adiabatic profile up though 3-4k with a drying profile, we should mix sufficiently...but there could be some caveats such as if there happen to be any subtle just above sfc inversions. If this was coming during the day it would be difficult to find any concerns

[CoastalWx]

Feel like 18z runs backed down a bit. 

[moneypitmike]

7 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Feel like 18z runs backed down a bit. 

 

thread cancel.

[OrangeCTWX]

12 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Feel like 18z runs backed down a bit. 

Was thinking the same thing. 

[vortex95]

14 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Feel like 18z runs backed down a bit. 

The 18z HRRR looks almost identical synoptically.  The low is just as deep and comma head stout.

[CoastalWx]

25 minutes ago, vortex95 said:

The 18z HRRR looks almost identical synoptically.  The low is just as deep and comma head stout.

I know but things like orientation of the low when the LLJ swings by matter. 50-55 at 925 vs 65kts is bigly difference. 
 

Hopefully 00z is damaging. 

[CoastalWx]

18z GFS backed off too. Time to cancel.

[Torch Tiger]

6 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

18z GFS backed off too. Time to cancel.

pretty much the same as 12z? 

[Torch Tiger]

I'm not really seeing any big changes from 12z near the S shore

[ineedsnow]

8 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

18z GFS backed off too. Time to cancel.

She gone 

[Damage In Tolland]

Everything looks on track .

You can use last night as an example. It looked like a line of light showers and ended up severe with damage , hail, tornadoes and strong rise/fall couplet gusts behind . All systems go

[vortex95]

9 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

18z GFS backed off too. Time to cancel.

CoastalWx would be surprised what the event here yesterday turned into over Atlantic Canada.  Sting jet and all! 

This next storm does something similar, expect New England catches the RI phase, and the low ends up 968 mb almost in the same exact
position S of Newfoundland Thu aftn.  This shows how good a pattern it is -- it reloads on the fly!