June 2018: A Seasonable Start to Summer

 After coming off an unusually warm May, the first month of meteorological summer proved to be rather seasonable. However, much of the Northeast outside of Maryland and parts of southern Pennsylvania dealt with dry conditions. This unfortunately has transpired into a drought across central and northern New England, which is still persisting into July as we speak.

June stepped off on a warm note in the 80s and 90s but was interrupted by a cold front sweeping in on the morning of the 2nd. The air mass that followed brought cooler and less humid conditions, giving us a pleasant stretch of weather. In fact, many overnight lows fell comfortably into the 50s and even 40s across the interior. The front did stall across the Mid-Atlantic though, leading to a several day period of rainfall which totaled 1-3” for most.

After the rain lifted back through the rest of the Northeast on the 4th, we continued to experience temperatures that were 5 to 10 degrees below normal under high pressure. Even with a brief spike in warmth over the weekend of the 9th, temperatures once again fell back below normal and into the 70s. A nearby disturbance brought several heavy downpours up to 1”, especially between Philadelphia and Washington, DC. Following this, severe thunderstorms occurred early in the morning on the 13th that spawned an EF2 tornado in Wilkes-Barre, PA, causing damage to several stores and unfortunately injuring 6 people.

Quiet time then ensued until a squall line move through the region overnight on the 18th. This lead to a more widespread event with damaging winds that brought down trees (especially those weakened from a windy March) and powerlines from eastern PA through southern Maine. The third and fourth weeks of June were still unseasonably cool as some nights across New England continued to be on the chilly side. Hartford, CT even broke a record with a low of 47 degrees on the morning of the 26th. The last few days, though, began to feature more typical summer weather with humid and stormy afternoons. Some of these days such as the 27th and 28th had little flow in the atmosphere, and thus caused slow-moving storms to drop well over 1-2”of rainfall in localized spots. This resulted in flooding issues.

High pressure would eventually pull us back into calmer weather, but at the expense of a heat wave that continued into July. Temperatures on the last day of the month soared well into the 90s under oppressive levels of humidity!

Outside of the storms that briefly spawned tornadoes, June was a rather run-of-the-mill month with even some cool nights to spare. While the nation experienced its third warmest June on record, most of the Northeast was near or even below normal. Precipitation also painted a similar picture, with much of the region near normal and not sparing any for the ongoing drought in New England.