Another May Front Brings Heavy Rain Potential

 The deeper we get into May, the weaker the fronts become in terms of bringing us cooler air. However, typically as they lose upper support, they stall over us creating a boundary will waves of heavy rains keep coming over the same tracks (training).  We all remember the 1st of the "hundred year floods" back on May 3rd 1978.  A slow moving cold front stall over the South Shore before drifting back over the North Shore the next day.  It resulted in rain totals of 15-20"+ causing extensive flooding of cars and homes. I'm not saying that will happen with this coming front on Thursday, but we need to pay attention for where the front stalls out.  WPC is giving rain totals over the North Shore in excess of 4-6"+ with generally 2-3" south of Lake P. (Orange-reds = greater than 5")

The upper pattern features a trough extending from central Canada back to off the Baja with a west to east flow over us.  That low south of California is cutoff from the main flow and won't reach us until Saturday. The upper part of the trough will bring us the cold front that will stall Thursday night through Saturday.  SPC does believe there is a severe weather risk, but they keep that area far to our north.  On top is today followed by Wednesday & Thursday.

The bottom view is valid for Thursday which lowers the severe risk but hints at where the frontal boundary will stall out.  It it's like the last front, it won't linger.  But look at the 70+ dew points to our west.

That is deep low level tropical moisture streaming out of the Gulf just waiting for a front and/or upper disturbance to provide the lift for heavy rains. Cloud cover is extensive to our west and we probably won't see much sunshine before Sunday.

We should have no problems on Wednesday with the rain threat increasing, especially Thursday PM into the weekend.  As my past posts have mentioned, it all about where (location) the boundary sets up. Tend to agree with the FOX 8 extended having a First Alert up for Friday & Saturday.

Combined with last week's soakers, our mini-drought should be over by Sunday.  Finally, I will have a new Podcast giving my views to the 2026 hurricane season on  Wednesday or Thursday.  To watch it, go to bobbreck.com and subscribe.  With the hurricane season just around the corner, if you want to know more than what the National Hurricane Center puts out, become a subscriber for $2/month.  That's one Powerball ticket.  Stay tuned!