Winter again?

2007-06-04 07:23:32.000 – Ken Rancourt,  Meteorologist

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Well, the forecasters were right-on with this one. We did see the sun, albeit for only about five hours in total yesterday – and not even many shadows at that. Sunday morning broke to a wonderful partial undercast, but we also had many high clouds filtering the sunshine. The higher clouds thickened quickly, and the top of the undercast flitted higher and lower teasing the summit with intermittent fog.

Today there is no choice in the forecast: we will get rain. The remnants of tropical depression Barry are working their way up the coast and they are keeping us wet and windy up here. A number of bands of precipitation will pass by today, but we are guessing (we are all weather guessers aren’t we?) that the center of what is left will actually pass to our west. That will keep us here in the north country in the easterly flow, and therefore give us continued precipitation throughout the day and into the early evening hours.

An interesting question is how strong will the temperature gradient be behind the cold front, which is now well to our west, when it passes Mount Washington? Some of the models that we look at drop our temperatures very close to the freezing level. Are we ready for winter again up here? Probably, but it will be pretty tough on the alpine flowers….

Ken Rancourt,  Meteorologist