AccuWeather Forecast for the New York area

NEW YORK (WABC) -- A cold front continues to march eastward Tuesday, pushing across the eastern Great Lakes and Ohio Valley on its way into the Northeast and mid Atlantic states. And the regional radar mosaic was showing two very impressive clusters of showers with embedded heavier thunderstorms.

These seemed to be aligned with Pennsylvania's northern and southern borders. In other words, some of the hardest rainfall was occurring on its border with western New York State to the north, and Maryland and West Virginia to the south.

We need to be prepared for heavy rainfall today as these radar echoes move into areas east of the Appalachians. So the screaming message that we really want to get across today is that the potential for flooding will be much greater threat than any strong or damaging wind gusts associated with any thunderstorm.

The Storm Prediction Center does seem to agree with this assessment, because they have scaled back their slight risk area for severe weather today (or, as it pertains to wind gusts in excess of 58 mph and hail). That slight risk zone now looks much more like it did back on Sunday evening, or is confined mostly to the southern half of the Delmarva Peninsula.

The rationale for this change makes perfectly good sense: The day will be starting out fairly cloudy with some rain occurring at the outset. Therefore, the precipitation and cloud cover in general will be limiting factors on getting any sun, or the substantial daytime heating necessary to help fuel thunderstorms which can cause strong winds.

That being said, the uptick in activity which has been occurring since late last evening on the regional radar can all be attributed to an impulse of jet stream energy, which is still rotating around the base of a trough of low pressure, or dip in the jet stream located in the eastern third of the U.S.

There are various Flash Flood Watches that are being posted in the mid Atlantic states early today, and all of the special statements pretty much say the same thing: rainfall amounts between 1 and 2 inches are expected between now and late this afternoon, but in some of the harder downpours, local amounts up to 3 or 4 inches are not out of the question.

Temperatures today will be mostly in the upper 70s or the 80s, and we must keep in mind that in those places where the rain arrives the earliest, it will be very difficult for the mercury to climb out of the 70s this afternoon. About an hour's worth of sun at the right time of day could do it, but we simply aren't convinced that this will occur at this juncture.

As our cold front makes a clean sweep of the Eastern Region later this afternoon and this evening, all of the showers and thunderstorms will be ending from west to east. Although clouds overnight could linger and even patchy fog may form during the pre-dawn hours of tomorrow, it is a positive sign that tomorrow and Thursday will be much nicer days around here.

Just like yesterday, we'll still want to mention that tomorrow will be a bit on the breezy side, with north to northwest winds averaging 10-20 mph with some gusts up to 25 mph likely, but there should be lower humidity and most temperatures tomorrow, Thursday and Friday will be in the upper 70s to around 80 (even in the lower 80s on some thermometers).

Have a good day!!!

Meteorologist Bill Evans

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