Unsettled Times, Tropics Ignite- THREE Storms Active in Atlantic

SUNDAY- We were greeted with showers and storms to end off this weekend, one of the last ones of July. Severe storms cut across Boston and metrowest today with some wind damage and heavy rainfall. More storms moved through eastern Mass around midnight with frequent lightning and torrential heavy rains which prompted a Flood Advisory by the NWS. Some spots saw between 1" to as much of 3" locally. Tomorrow is going to be more of the same. Overall tomorrow is going to be another wet day and very humid as well. There will be dry periods, but on the overall picture, we will have bouts of heavy rain and thunderstorms. Again, some spots could stay mostly dry tomorrow but other spots could see another 1-2" of rainfall in heavy storms.

Tuesday we will dry out with a slight risk of an afternoon or evening thunderstorm before we get real wet around here on Wednesday and Thursday with heavy rains that could extent from Virginia to Maine and persist for a couple of days. Latest computer model guidance is suggesting that anywhere between 2-5" of rainfall is possible, heaviest in western New England. I don't think we will see this much rain, but a good widespread 1-2" soaking is possible out of this.

The tropics are active right now as well. We got Bertha that is still a strong Tropical Storm with winds around 60 mph. It is exiting stage right and heading towards Iceland. It is no threat to the US. Cristobal is looking healthy tonight after looking lackluster all day today. It has really blossomed nice convection tonight and winds are up to 50 mph. However, its not going to hit land and is already heading harmlessly out to sea. It is just a problem for shippers at this time.

The last one is Tropical Storm Dolly. She is formerly known as Invest 94 which developed this morning and is now in the western Carribean and heading towards the Yucatan. It's developing a northern LLC right now and will likely scrape the NE most point of the Yucatan which will do little to weaken this system. Once it heads into the GOM, it will set its eyes of extreme northern Mexico all the way up to Houston, TX. It will take about 2-3 days to travel westward over 80-85 degree water, which will no doubt fuel Dolly to a Hurricane by possibly this time tomorrow night. Currently, she has 50 mph winds, but could be nearing hurricane status by tomorrow night or Tuesday. We could easily be talking about a Cat 2 or major Cat 3 storm barreling across the GOM if this thing avoids weakening tomorrow. We have seen storms really explode in the GOM.

Did anyone say $170/barrel of crude oil (sweet)? CRAP!