While yesterday was unbelievably pleasant, today is dreary. The skies are completely overcast here near Bridgeport, CT, and there was some rain earlier this morning.
The visible satellite imagery shows the heavy cloud cover. The clouds are in a large stratus shield with little upward development.
The infrared satellite imagery confirms this. Notice that the visible satellite imagery shows a large area of overcast skies, but there are only a few pockets of thicker clouds.
The water vapor satellite imagery shows an ongoing convective system over the Mississippi River Valley and highly variable and complex moisture flow over the continental United States. Notice the occluding high latitude cyclone over the Hudson Bay, and the moisture swirling into it.
The 12Z upper air sounding from near New York, NY, shows a damp morning profile, with a surface dewpoint of 61 F and low dewpoint depressions all the way from the surface until 475 mb. There was only 1 J/kg of Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE), and no significant CAPE expected today.
Only 23 kts of deep layer shear was present this morning. Low-level shear was high with 20 kts. (Notice that the “low” and “high” designations are relative to shear location).
I think the skies will begin to clear, starting in the southwestern corner of the state. The Hudson Bay system will continue occluding, and a cold front will move through Connecticut later today. With it, there will be clearer skies for this evening.
The weather will be changing from the pleasant day yesterday to clear skies tonight, to more showers later this week.
Thank you for reading my forecast.
The upper air soundings and mesoscale analysis plots are from the Storm Prediction Center website.
The forecasted upper air soundings are from TwisterData.com.
The surface observation and upper level charts are from Unisys Weather.
The satellite data is from NASA – MSFC
