The Weather Is Golden...Feel of Indian Summer To Return
"Dominate! " That is how some football teams break their huddles. Just like 500 ton elephant being dropped from the sky, a Huge High pressure system is sliding in from Canada and will dominate our weather for the foreseeable future.
Early morning hours before sunrise will be cool before sunrise in the 20's and 30's with plenty of radiational cooling during the overnight hours. The days will be sun-filled with a gradual warm up ahead as our high sinks south and a warmer SW flow develops on the back side.
The weekend weather is all about wind direction and airmass. Northerly winds are directing cool air from Canada over the region today. Winds are gusty on the Cape & islands and will die down during the afternoon. Temps at 850 are near 0 C, so cool northerly winds with this kind of airmass will help to keep temps mostly in the 40's to near 50 even with 100% of the sun. Ocean effect cloudiness will be effecting the Cape and the islands into the afternoon.
Sunday will see high pressure sliding south of New England, with a warmer SW wind at the surface. Temps will begin to warm into the mid 50's by afternoon. A huge upper level ridge will remain in place on the eastern seaboard through the midweek. This is a pattern more typical of summer. High pressure parked off the coast will continue to wrap in persistent SW winds and temps will gradually rise to 10-15 degrees above normal. Though we had a few very warm days in the 80's in October, this will be a prolonged and significant warm up after not only a frost, but a major snowfall....so I think it is fair to say this will period of warmth through Wednesday will be Indian summer. From Tuesday-Wednesday, the column of air will be warming considerably, with 850 temps reaching 10-12C...which will allow temps to climb in to the 60's nearing 70. Beach weather returns! Plenty of sunshine through Wednesday.
Upper level ridging will be breaking down by Thursday, with a shortwave passing through and deep moisture will be directed into the northeast with SW winds aloft. Periodic showers by Thursday afternoon-night. A digging trough may tap into some tropical moisture and direct it up into the Northeast for a period of heavier rain by Friday.
Aurora Borealis Alert:
BIG SUNSPOT: Sunspot AR1339 has quieted since Nov. 3rd when it unleashed an X2-class solar flare. AR1339 is one of the largest sunspots in years. Nevertheless, it still poses a threat for powerful eruptions. The behemoth sunspot has a magnetic field that harbors energy for more X-flares. Eruptions this weekend could be Earth-directed as AR1339 turns toward our planet. If that occurs, there will be the Northern Lights illuminating the sky in the northern latitudes away from city lights.
Daylight Savings Ends: Fall Back 1 hr before going to bed. Sunset on Sunday 4:32 PM. Ouch.
If you would like to weigh in on what you think about Daylight Savings we have a discussion going on the CBS Boston Facebook page. Does it save energy? What is the point of it all? Let's hear what you think! Great story by David Wade on DST. http://boston.cbslocal.com/2011/11/02/does-daylight-saving-time-save-energy/
Close pass by Asteroid
A massive asteroid roughly the size of an aircraft carrier is barreling towards Earth, experts say, and will pass between the Earth and the Moon on Tuesday, November 8.
The wide, round, blacker-than-coal space rock called YU55 measures approximately 1,300-feet in diameter - about four football fields - and will come closer to the Earth than any asteroid of this size since 1976.
The good news... it's no homewrecker. The carefully monitored asteroid will not hit Earth or the moon, astronomers assure. And it won't mess with gravitational forces, either.
"Through our observations of the object, we know that there is NO chance of it impacting either the Earth or the moon," Scott Fisher, a program director of the NSF's Division of Astronomical Sciences said in an interview with ScienceNow.
At its closest point the asteroid will zoom past the blue planet at a distance of 201,700 miles on Tuesday at 6:28 pm. The average distance between the Earth and the moon is 238,854 miles.
