I just stared at my computer screen for about 5 minutes trying to think of a positive way to spin the title for today's article. I considered:
"Fantastic Friday!"-happiness by ignoring the future
"Good spring cleaning weather!"-happiness by appealing to neat freaks
"Awful weekend but it's free donut day at Dunks!"-happiness via fatty deliciousness
In the end, I cannot tell a lie, (Well at least not on purpose, being wrong is different :-)) this weekend looks pretty gloomy.
Anyhow, enjoy the rest of today first as high pressure maintains control through the afternoon. Mostly sunny skies will continue and temperatures will reach the upper 60s to mid 70s in most spots. There will be an afternoon sea breeze, but that's about the only negative thing I can say about this Friday.
Clouds begin increasing tonight from southwest to northeast. The first half of the night will be mostly clear to partly cloudy, but after midnight southern Maine will end up overcast with that deck of clouds spreading northeastward by the early morning.
The vast majority of us will wake up to mostly cloudy skies tomorrow morning as a low pressure system approaches. (Far northern Maine may see a few peeks of sunshine early before the clouds roll in there too). There will be a few showers breaking out across western Maine and New Hampshire in the morning, but the heaviest rain will hold off until the afternoon. The delay is due to the dry air in place right now. Before precipitation can reach the ground the column of air leading up to the cloud must reach a certain saturation, so the drier the air starts the longer it takes for rain to hit the earth. Despite this slow down it will still be cloudy with an onshore flow, so sunshine is not going to be part of Saturday's equation.
Rain will really pick up in intensity on Saturday evening as the storm redevelops into a coastal low near Cape Cod (stop me if you've heard this before). Once that low gets cranking by midnight on Saturday look for heavy bands of rain to lash onshore over southern Maine. Rainfall rates could approach 1" an hour in spots through Sunday morning.
Eventually the axis of heaviest rain will shift to the Midocast by mid-morning and then progress further to Downeast Maine by Sunday afternoon. All and all Sunday certainly looks wetter and cloudier than Saturday, but neither day is good.
The storm stalls out on Monday and Tuesday so look for cloudy, cool, damp conditions through at least midweek. (The reason for this jammed up pattern is a Greenland Block. I've included a graphical explainer of this setup under "Event" graphic. Basically it's a high that bends the jetstream and doesn't allow for the usual progressive west to east movement of storms)
Big picture still looks really rough as we remain blocked up and troughed out through the entire week. That means a day like today is not likely for at least the next 7....
Which leads me to this: Hey, did you hear it's free donut day!