4/3/12 How does it feel to be normal?

After several months of warm weather, April is trending now to be pretty much normal. There are no major cold spells seen, nor are there any major warm ups as well. 

Pretty much, temperatures holding in the 50s and maybe a 60.  If anything, the progression of the spring season is setting up as it should with New England, the last to get into the warmer weather, but just go several hundred miles south and warmer air tends to be in place.

This true color image from Modis from yesterday shows how spring is moving up from the south to the north. The green is picking up all vegetation including trees, grass and crops. In the northeast, and Canada, the trees are still budded and there are more trees than open grassy areas so it is still picking up the barren landscape. (I will post later today's cloudless image if available)

New England is cut off from the warming high to the south and is primarily under the influence of a cooler Canadian high pressure that will allow for cooler air to flow into the region. This air is not necessarily colder, it just keeping the overall temperatures near normal with colder nights and mild days. This pattern looks to hold on for the next two weeks.  Weak storms will move along the jet stream which will wobble back and forth to reinforce the cooler air with a day or two of warmer weather possible. Meanwhile, Spring and warmth remain to the just to the south.

With this all stated, temperatures will still be slightly above normal, in the Boston area. The ocean will influence the air temperatures over much of coastal New England with inland areas reaching the 60s and immediate coastal locations will fail to reach 50.  This can be expected in such a pattern.

Inland areas will reach the 60s, where the coastal locations will be influenced by the ocean and be cooler today. Expect full sunshine.

Temperatures will be cooler along the Cape and the Coast during the week ahead.

4/1/12 Sunday's Weather - 80s Style!!!

An inspired thanks to Google Maps NES tribute maps, I thought it would be fun to make some weather graphics that were considered high tech in the mid to late 80's for today's blog.

Sun will give way to clouds and showers today, as an approaching weak storm system moves in from Canada later this afternoon. Expect showers to arrive around 5 PM.  Todays highs will be just around normal reaching near 50 in most locations.

Google Maps NES 1987 version of New England Map with todays high temperatures.

Clouds will increase this afternoon from the west. In the 80s, most satellite images received by TV stations were of low quality and only a few pixels. It could take up to 15 minutes to get this image and disk space was at a minimum to store this 2MB image.

Rain over New York will arrive in the Boston area around 5 PM.  If a TV station was lucky and had money in the 80s it could tap into the NWS Telephone line to access the radar sweep from the WSR 57 Radars.  Only 5 colors would be could be shown to indicate intensity. Most maps looked like this with 3 letter airport codes to indicate cities.  (NOTE: the snow colors did not arrive until the later 90s as seen on this de-hanced map) 

In the 80s, weather forecasts were considered to be most accurate out to 4 days. Some places started giving out a 5 day forecast, but this could be filled with A LOT of errors, so it was safer for the meteorologists to only give a 4 day forecast, and at that time, only high temperatures for the day were given.

Maps:  accuweather.com   intellicast. com and maps.google.com