Just one day after severe flooding struck a pocket of central Massachusetts, more downpours and thunderstorms will be possible. This will come as an area of low pressure to our north drags its cold front across the region. Flood watches have been issued across New England for this next soaking.
The cold front is looking to run in a very west to east manor, so scattered showers and thunderstorms will break out first in western New England before sliding east throughout the day. These showers and storms will likely begin to fire up in the late morning before becoming more numerous into the afternoon and evening across New England.
Euro model showing showers in western New England in the late morning in the first image, and pushing eastward in the afternoon, as seen in the second image:
The cold front will likely push through most of New England by Wednesday night into Thursday morning. Rain will gradually die down after the passage of the front for all of New England except for eastern Maine by Wednesday night. Eastern Maine will likely see the most rain Wednesday night to Thursday morning as the cold front naturally passes through the area last.
The highest chance for torrential downpours will be where the scattered storms pop up in the afternoon. Unfortunately, this will likely to include the area that was slammed by flooding on Monday. The greatest chances for flash flooding and storm training (when multiple storms move over the same area) will be across interior southern New England as well as New Hampshire south of the White Mountains (and including the White Mountains).
With a tropical-like atmosphere remaining in place, the region is primed for some rather intense rainfall rates to break out. The storms will once again be scattered in nature, so rainfall rates will vary, like they did on Monday.
A widespread half an inch will be possible across New England with some communities shooting up to 2-3 inches depending on where the heaviest downpours set up. Normally, a half inch to an inch wouldn't be much of a problem, but some areas in Massachusetts and Rhode Island just can't handle any more rain at this time. The threshold for flash flooding is as low as 1 to 1.5 inches of rain in an hour or 2 to 3 inches in three hours for some communities, per the National Weather Service.
It needs to be noted that this is extremely unlikely to be a repeat of Monday. Everything has to line up perfectly for over nine inches of rain to fall, and everything lining up perfectly on Wednesday is extremely unlikely.
It also needs to be noted that flood watches could be expanded northward into the Lakes Region and White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Maine mountains should forecast rainfall amounts trend much higher in those areas.
One last note, this is when we were planning to post our Hurricane Lee update, but in light of Monday's event, Wednesday's storm can't be overlooked. We'll have a full update on Lee tomorrow morning.
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