Tropical storm warnings were in effect along parts of the Delaware coast, up and down the New Jersey coast, for New York City, and for all of Long Island Friday morning as Tropical Storm Fay swirled northward. The storm strengthened some and was packing 60-mph sustained winds and was moving at a forward speed of 12 mph as it closed in on New Jersey. By late morning, the center of the storm was about 40 miles south of Cape May, New Jersey, according to the National Hurricane Center.
As Fay lifts northward with its drenching downpours into Atlantic Canada this weekend, a period of temperate conditions with shower and thunderstorm activity is forecast to precede a surge of heat for the coming week.
While Fay will continue to cause urban and flash flood issues into Saturday over parts of eastern New York state and New England, its rainfall will help to quench the drought conditions that have been building thus far this summer in the region.
“In addition to Fay’s moisture, which will avoid the central Appalachians and eastern Great Lakes area, a non-tropical storm system from the Midwest will pivot into the Northeast this weekend to early next week,” said AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson.
Most of this new rainfall, on the order of 0.75 of an inch to 1.50 inches, is forecast to fall on the eastern part of the Ohio Valley, western slopes of the Appalachians and part of the eastern Great Lakes region. Local rainfall amounts can approach 3 inches, which could be enough to trigger isolated urban and small stream flash flooding.
Areas such as much of Virginia, Maryland and perhaps parts of central Pennsylvania and New York state that dodged Fay’s rainfall may be largely missed by this additional rain as well.
As this feature from the Midwest swings in, a slight southward dip in the jet stream will tend to cap daytime temperatures to close to seasonable levels. Highs in most locations will be in the 70s and 80s F from this weekend through Tuesday of the coming week.
Following the temperate conditions in the Northeast early next week, some of the heat making headlines over the Southwest is expected to lunge eastward later next week.
“While the heat for late next week does not look to be quite as extreme as feared from a few days ago, it is still going to get quite hot over a broad area of the Midwest and Northeast during the latter part of next week,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Bill Deger stated.
Widespread highs in the upper 80s to the middle 90s are anticipated during the second half of next week. There is the potential for temperatures to reach the highest levels of the summer so far in part of the Northeast.
