The start of meteorological summer is here. It'll be starting off with nearly perfect weather, however, changes will be in store heading deeper into the month. Here's how June is generally looking to play out as it stands right now.
TEMPERATURES
June will be starting off with a building ridge for New England. This ridge will bring New England a very quiet and warm start to meteorological summer. While full summer-like conditions won't build this week, it will be slightly above average with mid 70s north (and along the coast) to mid 80s south dominating. A dry flow will keep humidity levels down to start off the month as well.
Heading toward the end of next week (June 6-7), things will start to change. A ridge-in-the-west-trough-in-the-east pattern should begin to take shape. This comes as an area of low pressure digs into the Great Lakes region. This system will likely struggle to push eastward next week amid a blocking pattern, delaying its arrival to the northeast until the end of the week.
The center of the trough looks to be centered more toward New England's west and south initially, as the trough tries to push eastward late in the week and into the weekend. This would lead to below average temperatures most likely across the Midwest and Great Lakes region with New England seeing a cooling trend, but not as much as the areas to our west.
This can be seen in the Climate Prediction Center's 8-14 day outlook (which currently covers June 8-14). It's worth noting that this is a rather blocked up pattern, which can be difficult to determine the evolution of in the long term. This mainly pertains to the timing of the closed low pressure system that will be tracking across the northern tier (seen north of Michigan in the graphic above). This system will likely send its fronts into New England late in the week, contributing to the cool down.
Heading toward the middle of June, a general eastward progression of the pattern is expected. That is to say that the (possibly weakening) trough will move through the northeast as the ridge in the west shifts more toward the center of the country.
GFS 500mb height anomaly heading into the middle of the month (June 14-16). You can see the (weaker) trough over the northeast with the ridge centered more toward the center of the country. You can also see a trough digging back into the west. The Euro-AIFS is generally slower with this progression as they show the trough remaining to New England's west in the middle of the month:
At this point, heading into late June, continued progress in the overall pattern may continue. The key to how June will end will hinge on the evolution of the blocking pattern. Should a slower progression of the pattern emerge (like the Euro), the warmest temperatures at the end of the month would be generally to the west of New England.
A quicker progression could allow a ridge to rebuild into the east at the end of the month. Looking four weeks ahead, this is very general and smaller scale factors that affect temperatures can't be predicted at this range.
Overall, we're thinking it will end up being a near average June that has a better chance to end up a bit on the warmer side relative to average, especially for northern New England. New England will see a warmer start to the month, and depending on things shake out, end to the month as well. There may be a cool down somewhere in the middle. All of this, we believe at this time, will produce near average temperatures as a whole.
PRECIPITATION
New England will start the month under high pressure, bringing dry and very quiet conditions for the first week of the month. That closed low over the northern United States will likely send its fronts toward New England at the end of this week and into next weekend.
Weather map for Friday (June 7):
This will present New England with its next chance of widespread precipitation. Depending on how the overall pattern plays out (which we went over in detail in the temperatures section), this could lead to a period of unsettled weather heading into week two of the month. After that will depend on the progression of the ridge across the country. The Climate Prediction Center does favor above average precipitation for the month.
LOOKING BACK
We predicted a rather up and down May temperature-wise for New England. In the end, there were both cooler and warmer times during the month. The warmer times generally won out, especially heading toward the second half of the month. We also mentioned that western New England would generally have the better chance to see more frequent warmer times than eastern New England, and that generally played out thanks to the cool ocean.
Boston daily temperatures (1st image) and Burlington daily temperatures (2nd image). You can see Burlington had longer and more frequent warmer times away from the cool Atlantic influence:
