On this week's episode, I go over the 4th of July flooding that suddenly struck southern New England, particularly the Hartford and Providence areas. I also recap a rather bleak June and look ahead at what to expect in July.
Prefer to read? You can read about the Independence Day floods here. You can also read New England's July weather outlook here. A written version of June's recap can be found below the video.
June is now over. To say it was rainy is an understatement for New England. Some areas of New England have seen more rain than others this past month. Western areas have generally been drier while eastern areas generally bore the brunt of the rainy conditions. Maine, naturally being the furthest east, it was quite brutal for much of the month.
22 of 30 days in June saw rain in Portland. 20 days were below average temperature wise. The whole month averaged just over 3 degrees below average. Portland did not set any kind of rain records this month, in fact 2019 was actually rainer. Of course, other communities across the state and region saw much more rain than Portland. Large swaths of the state have seen between 5 and 10 inches of rain in June.
Boston experienced their second cloudiest June on record, Boston averages overcast skies about 35% of the time in June, 2023 was overcast well over 50% of the time. The city saw 16 days below average, with 6 days in a row in late June failing to make it to 70 degrees.
Days of heavy downpours took their toll across the region. Just last week, we went over flash flooding across the region. Nearly a half foot of rain fell in Andover Maine and Alexandria New Hampshire during that one storm alone. There were multiple storms that dropped several inches of rain across the region over the course of the month.
June 17 saw six inches of rain fall in Newport Newport New Hampshire. There was just day after day of covering flash flood warnings. This is thanks to an extremely persistent and unseasonable blocking pattern.
We’ve talked about this pattern for a while on New England storm center, it’s basically thanks to a blocking high in the North Atlantic keeping New England in a trough. This allows constant cutoff lows to meander over New England. Much of June saw an Omega Block, this block has officially broken down, but as long as that blocking high sits in the north atlantic, this overall pattern will continue. This has allowed the pattern to carry over into July. As discussed before, New England saw some of its worst flash flooding this season on the fourth of July.
So, we do have a brief warmup to full summer heat coming in for the rest of this week. The entire region, actually, will soar well into the 80s with some low 90s possible. No one is getting left out of this warm up this time, unlike the brief warm up in the middle of June that was contained to northern Maine and Vermont.
Humidity will remain elevated, so it will feel very hot out there. Boston, by the way, has not officially hit 90 this year. We still have a few weeks to go to get to the all time latest first 90 in the city, which is July 30. Boston will get very close over the next few days. Will they get there? It’s honestly a tossup whether the city tops out at 90 or 89 or 88. This past week will likely be very indicative of how July plays out, at least the first half.
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