Weather next week
 

Okay, clearly, I am cursed. We are coming up on Saturday morning (:) yippie!) and I have looked at weather.com. I do not like what I am seeing - rain, every day :eek:?

So, Mike (on Black Cat), you are the resident weather expert/guru, is the Weather Channel all wet or are we indeed in a for a gloomy, wet, unappealling week? :confused:

nj2nh

Don't Worry
 

Not to butt in here,... But I wouldn't put too much faith in weather.com they never seem to get it right particularly on the lake. The lake seems to have it's own weather pattern anyway.

After looking at the National Weather Service web site for the Gilford area, I think it's going to be a beautiful weekend on the lake!! If it does rain, i'll park the boat and have cold one at the Lyons Den! :liplick:

Here's to sunny weather!

Dan

Feel free to butt in anytime!

I just went to weather.org. That the National Weather Service, right? Doesn't look too promising there, either.

However, as one forum member writes at the end of every one of his messages, a bad day at the lake is better than a good day anywhere else!

nj2nh

Weather or Not
 

NJ2NH, check here... http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick...2=-71.4072&e=0

It doesn't look that bad, and I can remember many times rain was predicted and the weather on the lake was beautiful!!

I'm going for it!!

Dan

This week has been relatively cool. Sunny in the mornings with clouds and occassional hit or miss passing showers rolling through. Not a crappy week by any stretch. This weekend, Sunday in particular, looks to be the end of this pattern. Look for the weather to improve gradually after that. That's my official forecast, whatever that's worth (not much!).

In my humble opinion....

SAT is the nicer of the two weekend days, SUN could very well be a washout especially second half of the day.

Next week starts the same as this week- relatively cool and unsettled. I think we turn the corner on WED and get back into more seasonable temps and fewer showers for the end of the week.

Real long range... we should flip the pattern to a hotter, more humid regime during the following week. Just in time for the 4th!

I'm right behind you!
 

Or to put it in terms more applicable to nj2nh and me, any day in NH is better than a day in NJ!

I'm headed up on Sun. for the week as well. This past week was looking bad according to the weather forecast, but my brother (gtxrider) lucked out. It was better than predicted. Beats working, that's for sure.

weather
 

Also check www.intellicast.com and www.wunderground.com

Safe travels! :)

GB

Another vote for Weather.gov
 

I became a fan of Weather.gov and the hourly weather graph based on someone else's recommendation on the forum. Some folks find it's too much information, but I love being able to see an hourly breakdown of what kind of weather we can expect, and the percentages. I've found that a predicted 30% chance of showers is as good as a forecast of 0% most of the time.

Check out http://forecast.weather.gov

And don't forget that if they say there is a 30% chance of showers, then there is a 70% chance of no rain at all.

Wet, then warm
 

We are currently in the winter-like pattern again, cool and unsettled. This same pattern in February resulted in 2 inches here, 6 inches there, until we had 43 inches of snow on the ground.

This time around, it's June so the freezing level is just too high - but we have had thunderstorms with hail, not because they've been vigorous enough to reach the icy heights, but because the icy heights really aren't that high right now.

This pattern will start to give way this weekend as a warm front approaches. When warm fronts approach, they have a hard time kicking the cold air out of the way because the cold is heavier. So it'll result in a long-duration wet event (just like February's bigger snows.)

Right now the timing on that long-duration event seems to be late Saturday through Monday sometime.

Once the front passes, it'll bring in the warm and more humid air. The coast will be the last to get it, because the ocean is still very cool at this time of year and it's been influencing the temps there all spring.

FORECAST REVIEWS:
When Kjbathe says a 30% chance of showers is as good as zero percent most of the time, that is correct. The 30% chance is applied to the entire forecast area and literally means that 30% of the forecast area will see showers. So, that also means 70% of the forecast area will see no showers at all. There's just no telling exactly where those showers will be located. It's a probability statement from math class. Remember Clint Eastwood's famous line about there being one shot, somewhere in his revolver: "Do you feel lucky, punk?"

Sometimes I think a child with a magnetic weathermap toy could out-forecast The Weather Channel. But it depends which forecaster you listen to. They have a few who are from around here, or who went to school here. They are: Jim Cantore, Heather Tesch, Bill Keneely, and I think Mark Mancuso. There may be a few others. When they talk about New England weather, they know what they're talking about. The rest of them.... not so much. TWC is good for other parts of the country, but New England weather is some of the least predictable and most localized in the world, so their "mass-produced forecast formula" doesn't do very well when applied to New England.

In general, WMUR-9 does a great job. Mike Haddad (weeknights) grew up in Byfield MA and studied meteorology at Lyndon State in VT. He's totally local. Their only drawbacks are the fact that they have an entire state to forecast, so they can't give full attention to any particular region.

I have found WCSH-6 (NBC) from Portland ME to be very good when it comes to weather. They do cover NH, but most of the time you have to pay attention so you can "adjust" their Portland forecast to figure out what it would mean for NH.

National Weather Service (www.nws.noaa.gov/er/gyx) does a good job from their local office in Gray Maine. Like most NWS offices, they tend to be conservative until the last minute.

Intellicast.com and Wunderground.com are really good internet-based services.

Finally, on the Winnipesaukee WeatherCenter site I post my own local forecast (when conditions warrant) along with self-updating forecasts for the lakes region written by NWS-Gray and Wunderground.com.

The WeatherCam site now has a link bar to the left of the weather data (underneath the image), which I added to make it useful as an internet start page by request of friends. The links open local/national/international news, sports, and weather sites in their own windows.

UMass - Lowell grad
 

Mike got his BS from UMass - Lowell, then went on to Penn State for his Masters.

There's a lot of Lyndon State grads forecasting in this area.One of them is Tim Kelly on NECN.I think NECN does the best forcasting in my broadcast area(Manchester).I'm not real big on Haddad or Judd or most of the Boston guys.
jmo.

Thank you for the correction - I got him mixed up with his former colleague Chris Thomas. I met them when they did a public event together a couple years ago and they were both telling me their backgrounds.

Yup, NECN is good too. I like Tim Kelly, and also Matt Noyes. I have found that NECN has the same limitation as Ch 9, that they're forecasting for a larger area and can't devote too much focus to any specific region.

I have heard that Don Kent still does Lakes Region forecasts via a radio studio in his Sanbornton home. Has anyone heard him lately? Last I heard, he was giving a forecast on an AM station around here. That was a few years ago.

Don Kent is the person that got me interested in weather when I was very young.He was and will always be my favorite meteorologist.Of course,you can't mention Don Kent without saying the name Jack Chase in my mind.How many years did they do the news together at channel 4.

Can it be true?
 

nj2nh, have a look at the latest 6-14 day outlooks from NOAA. They're going for warmer than normal through the period - actually hinting that the entire continental US may be above normal in the 8-14 day time frame.

I have found that these maps usually follow the GFS-MRF model's predictions closely, so when that model is having a bad week/month, so do these forecasts (usually.) I'm sure they're based on more than one model but the MRF seems to be a big slice of their pie.

Take em with a grain of salt, but at the moment it doesn't look like you're as cursed as you thought you were when you started this thread.

True That, Rattlesnake Girl!
 

I'm coming up for my annual visit to the lake with my family, and no matter what the weather is, it's always my #1 place to be, especially with good family and friends. In any event, the weather has got to be less oppressive than this stifling North Carolina heat!

Well, we're back from the lake now and I have to say it was the worst weather week we've ever had. I think it rained for some portion of each day except for Wednesday. We went up Mt. Washington that day, but it was freezing!

So, I am hoping August has more favorable weather patterns because this one is the pits.

nj2nh

Remember Don Kent's reports where he used a black slate chalkboard with the six New England states oulined on the black board in white lines. Using a piece of white chalk, and turning back & forth to the camera, he would talk & chalk, & talk & chalk about Boston and the region's weather. No computerized color graphics, but he reported and predicted pretty durn good !:coolsm:

Anyone else remember June 22-July 3, 1973, when it was rainy and foggy, and rainy and foggy, here in New Hampshire & Maine for like twelve days straight?:eek:

How about this comming Holiday Weekend?
 

So, how's the weather looking up there for this upcomming 4th of July Holiday weekend? I'm comming up Thurs - Mon. Hoping to see the Centre Harbor fireworks Friday nite! :D

NHKathy, So far it looks OK for the fourth. The story currently looks like this: Unsettled will continue most of the week as cold air keeps trying to intrude on the warm and humid air that's trying to do what it wants to do at this time of year: Take up residence. Thursday it looks like the warm and humid air will get a grip on the area, and then a cold front (currently forecast to be fast moving) comes through here with another round of thunderstorms on Thursday night, which means we'll be behind the front on Friday with cooler (75 ?) non-humid air and sunny. Pray the front keeps on moving and doesn't stall.

nj2nh, my condolences on your week here. Without knowing it, you did experience and point out the key point of this weather pattern (nationwide!) -- there has been abnormally cold air aloft (4,000 feet and up) for this time of year, as you discovered on Mt. Washington. The summertime air has yet to claim more than just the ground level this year (for more than a day or two, anyway.) This is what happens: The air near the ground gets warm, and becomes buoyant, like a chunk of styrofoam you're trying to hold on the lake bottom. With all that cold air above it, it's hard to hold it down. So it rises into the cold air where it condenses. It does the same thing as when you open the bathroom window after a hot shower on a cold winter morning, except on a larger scale. Water vapor, everywhere... big billowing clouds supported by strong updrafts that create turbulence ---> Lightning ---> hail ---> wind damage. And of course what goes up, must come down, so if a storm is generating a strong updraft you can bet it's got quite a downdraft on the other side, and that's where you'll find the downpour.

We should be thankful, however -- this weather pattern featuring lots of cold air invasion hasn't hit the northeast as hard as it could. It's the reason for those incredible floods in the midwest, and is also responsible for touching off those thunderstorms in California that sparked the wildfires. Yesterday I was meandering around a global weather-webcam site and looked at the cams for Jackson Hole Wyoming (Grand Teton National Park.) The Tetons were still snow covered, after having gotten some pretty good snows earlier this month.

It all came from the same thing you noticed on Mt. Washington: It's cold just above our heads.

FLL... I grew up watching those chalkboard drawings from Don Kent on WBZ-TV 4... great memories!

So CLA how much rain did we get in June. It had to make up for April and May

June 2008 rainfall
 

You're right. We had 5.19 inches of rain for June, making it wetter than April and May combined.

It was also the second wettest month in 2008 so far, after February's 6.11 inches, and was wetter than any month in 2007.

The daily, monthly, and yearly data is always on the WeatherCenter site, if you click on "more data" in the upper right corner.