May 2026 Obs/Discussion

[Typhoon Tip]

29 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

Good agreement now 

Finally ... a chart that agrees with your sentiment from earlier - nice !

[Typhoon Tip]

4 hours ago, dendrite said:

Worried about another frost/freeze the next two nights. It’ll be close. 

Man.. can't wait for this winter to finally be over -

[NoCORH4L]

https://www.masslive.com/news/2026/05/drought-conditions-in-mass-worsen-after-brief-improvement.html

 

Not great news going into the dry season. Many ponds and reservoirs still kinda low I've noticed. Except in Baldwinville and Otter River......

[Typhoon Tip]

Hopefully we can lay down 2 to 3" of basin coverage from that nor'easter on Thursday ...

[powderfreak]

Had light snow and graupel again today at 1,500ft.

Dew points in the low to mid-20s have been quite effective at evaporationally cooling the cores of the showers.

[vortex95]

3 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

I know when to get excited.  I definitely would not say ripping at S-.....but Ineedsnow will.  

I still think you should be more than happy Weymouth got two 20"+ "white gold" events in one season this past winter.  I bet that has not happened more than 10x in last 60-70 years in the immediate area.

Let me put it this way, nothing even remotely close like this happened in the 80s.  Scott used to get mad as a kid when he expected 4-8" fcst by WBZ on the "backlash" and he'd wake up next morning to sunny conditions!  "I WANTED NO 'SKEWL' !!!"

I had my share.  I recall on NOAA Wx Radio, NWS BOS would say "the storm failed to develop."  This was a fcst like 24 hr out.  Storms don't just "fail" like that in such short range.  It was the stupid LFM model turning flat waves into 980 mb S+ events!  It had so many problems w/ convective feedback.  The NGM out by 1985 largely took care of his problem, but Scott still called it the "NO GOOD MODEL!" 
 

[vortex95]

1 hour ago, NoCORH4L said:

https://www.masslive.com/news/2026/05/drought-conditions-in-mass-worsen-after-brief-improvement.html

 

Not great news going into the dry season. Many ponds and reservoirs still kinda low I've noticed. Except in Baldwinville and Otter River......

"Worse after brief improvement" from the article.  Yes, slight up and downs week-to-week. Why is this news?  It is always oscillating like this.  How is that any different than when it is wet and then "less wet" for a period?  Taking about it constantly does not make it physically any worse of better, but they don't care.  Anything to hype the negative.

Today is the 12th day in a row w/ measurable precip in New England.

12z ECMWF now showing up to 3.5" for the upcoming slow-moving storm.  All other global models show widespread 1-2" across the region.

The point is taking snapshot week-to-week is excessive in this case.  It's not like w/ are baking day after day w/ full sun and high evaporation rates.
 

[vortex95]

3 hours ago, powderfreak said:

The 3/4-1.5sm -SN is probably one of the more over-stated weather obs by all.

I mean, it can be 1”/hr though too with even decent snow growth at 3/4-1sm.  So sometimes hard to fault folks.

I will say if any of us started seeing 1.5sm vis -SN right now we’d say it was ripping out, lol.  When you haven’t seen snow in a while, a mile and a half is a steady snowfall.

If it is not 1/4SM VV001 +SNFZFG, Scott be like "MEH!" 

[Typhoon Tip]

5 hours ago, dendrite said:

Yeah that’s the goofus with overmixing issues. They did something to it 5-10 years ago where the mixing just went wildy superadiabatic a month or so either side of the solstice. The 110s were fun though. It does it every summer under the heat ridge in the Plains too…120s into the eastern Dakotas and Minny for a couple of days when in actuality it ends up 95/75 instead of 120/45.

00z euro definitely supported near 90° a day or two next week, but that’s pretty far our there in lalaland for us up here given our climo. 

The whole 2m philosophy needs a make-over.   It's abysmal.    That over mixing thing is a separate error to the under-sold high temps that happen in the actual heat wave.  

It's like errors in both directions are true.   weird.   It seems...  beyond the late short range the model mixing is over proficient...  but as it comes into shorter vision, the model corrects but then it just assigns the sfc sigma as 1000 mb level and calls that the 2m.  

There's a new error anyway, world over, having to do with this new phenomenon surrounding 'synergistic heat waves' - they exceed everything.  We've talked about this in the past...  There's been several between Iberian Penn as far N as London.   Australia.  Siberia...  the steppe country near the Urals over the hills into Moscow.  The Pacific NW...   "sort of" 2012 in the lower OV - it tried to get in here but was cut off by a corrective derecho that pretty much undermind the ridge for everyone.  

These are a different thing altogether where nothing gets them right because they are literally synergistically created - like emergent properties where the temp just runs away beyond all convection means of forecasting, machine to man.   I don't think there was very many this last year but it was a reasonably well-coupled cool ENSO mode so that maybe has some capping aspect.   But oh gee, guess what ...we're heading into super dong. 

[Chrisrotary12]

Wheel of rhea Thursday and Friday eh?

[Damage In Tolland]

Euro only has .25-.30 river East for Thursday . Congrats west of River . Stein east 

[Torch Tiger]

Yeah its thu night-Friday. Euro has 2-5" 

[kdxken]

Not a big fan of spring but damn if it can't be pretty. Something about the new leaves and lighting.