Weird Little Storm Creates Problems This Morning, Then Frost?

Snow falling before dawn today atop Mount Washington,
New Hampshire. It's getting to be that season, folks. 

For most of us, the weather early this Saturday morning is pretty benign. There's lots of clouds around and a few showers, especially in central and southern New York and New England.

But a few pockets are having weirdness, mostly because of a strange little compact storm moving through. It's heading southeastward from New York State into southern New England.

The storm, mostly in the upper levels of the atmosphere, is small in area but fairly mighty. There were thunderstorms in parts of New York State near the Great Lakes last night. Snow fell atop Mount Washington, and probably the high peaks of the Adirondacks.

There were reports of severe, damaging thunderstorms in southern Ontario.

It didn't rain at my house in St. Albans, Vermont, unfortunately, but a paltry few hundreds of a inch, barely wetting the ground, hit Burlington, ending a long 18 day stretch of rain-free weather.

The showers and storms were in southern New England this morning, too. One very weird piece was a nearly stationary, strong thunderstorm northeast of Boston, over the Lynn and Salem areas. While most of the showers and storms were moving northeastward, something was causing this storm to stay locked over these North Shore communities.

A flash flood warning and severe thunderstorm warning for the Lynn and Salem areas was in effect early today. The storm was even starting to rotate, a bit like a supercell at one point, although it didn't develop enough to create a tornado threat.

This was an intense storm, with 1.91 inches of rain in just 40 minutes. There were reports of cars stuck in high water as of 6:45 p.m. It's just a small area. Most of southern New England is just fine.

I don't know why the storm was nearly stationary.  And why one intense storm targeted a small area northeast of Boston while the rest of the region was relatively quiet. I'm sure there will be analysis eventually that I'll want to read. It's just odd.

Strong storms over Boston Harbor at dawn today. The storms
caused flash flooding in Lynn and other Massachusetts
communities. Photo by Mark Garfinkel/Picture Boston

This compact storm is bringing in a reenforcing shot of chilly air, and frost is going to be a problem tonight in some areas of New England. Talk about a contrast from the 90 degree heat just two days ago!

Freeze warnings are up for parts of the Adirondacks, the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, parts of northern New Hampshire and parts of western and northern Maine.

Frost advisories cover a much larger area, including much of northern New York, pretty much all of Vermont outside the Champlain Valley, much of New Hampshire, and much of New York away from the lakes and north of the mid-Hudson Valley.

All this is not at all odd for the very end of September, but again, after that extreme, unprecedented heat earlier this week, it's a shock to the system.

If you manage to keep your garden plants alive after tonight, we're going to gradually get into another spell of warmer than normal weather that will last at least through the week. It won't be anything like the past week. No more 90 degree weather for you, thank you.

But most of us by midweek will be up in the 70s which is at least 10 degrees warmer than normal. Several spots will flirt with 80 degrees.  A cold front is due at the end of the week, but there won't be all that much cold air behind the front, so endless summer continues. We just have to get through a weird, then possibly frosty interruption today and tonight.