Weather for New England and the Northeast

**Area Forecast Discussion**
National Weather Service Boston/Norton MA
**216 AM EDT Wed Jul 8 2026**

**WHAT HAS CHANGED**
The Small Craft Advisory for the outer waters has been extended until 8 pm this evening.

**KEY MESSAGES**

Dry and warm today with sea breezes possible along the east coast.

Becoming warmer with increasing humidity Thursday and Friday. Chance for showers and thunderstorms, mainly on Friday.

Much drier and cooler this upcoming weekend as a cooler airmass settles in.

**DISCUSSION**

**Key Message 1**
Dry and warm today with sea breezes possible along the east coast.

High pressure settles in for Wednesday with dry and clear conditions building across the entire service area by the afternoon. We could see some lingering patches of morning fog along the Cape and Islands due to trapped low level moisture near the ground. Expecting any fog to quickly burn off and mix out this morning as mid level relative humidity, which measures atmospheric moisture, falls to a very dry 5 to 10 percent.

Expect a dry and clear day with seasonable temperatures in the upper 70s and low 80s degrees. Winds will be light out of the north and northwest, allowing local sea breezes to develop along the east coast and cool the immediate shoreline.

**KEY MESSAGE 2**
Becoming warmer with increasing humidity Thursday and Friday. Chance for showers and thunderstorms, mainly on Friday.

Broad west-southwest atmospheric flow brings warmer and increasingly humid conditions Thursday and Friday. This warm and sticky airmass will combine with a weak weather disturbance arriving from the Ohio Valley to bring a risk for scattered showers and thunderstorms, mainly to portions of Southern New England later Thursday into Thursday night. Colorado State University machine learning probabilities still highlight the greatest chance for severe weather well to our south over the Mid Atlantic region.

Ensemble guidance, which combines multiple computer models to find the most likely weather outcome, continues to show a better potential for thunderstorms on Friday as a cold front moves into southern New England later in the day. The front moves into a moist, unstable airmass marked by muggy dew points in the upper 60s to low 70s degrees.

In terms of instability, the National Blend of Models shows a 40 to 60 percent chance for Convective Available Potential Energy, a key metric abbreviated as CAPE that measures the fuel available for thunderstorms, to reach values over 1000 Joules per kilogram across the interior. That said, the risk of severe weather is still quite low because poor lapse rates, which describe how fast the temperature cools with height in the middle atmosphere, will lead to tall, skinny CAPE profiles. Combined with deep layer wind shear, a measure of changing wind speed and direction with altitude, limiting storm wind energy to around 35 miles per hour, organized severe weather is unlikely.

There is higher confidence in warm, humid weather both days with afternoon highs in the mid 80s to lower 90s degrees. This will support a heat index, which is how hot it actually feels when combining heat and humidity, in the mid 90s to upper 90s degrees, likely falling just short of the thresholds needed for official heat advisories.

**KEY MESSAGE 3**
Much drier and cooler this upcoming weekend as a cooler airmass settles in.

For the weekend, the upper-level jet stream pattern at roughly 18,000 feet up transitions to one of cyclonic flow and troughing, meaning an elongated area of low pressure will dominate the region. This setup favors cooler temperatures in the low to mid 80s degrees and much lower humidity levels. The weekend appears highly favorable for outdoor plans with nice summer weather.

We will be on the western edge of a pretty impressive upper level ridge, a massive dome of high pressure measuring at an altitude of nearly 19,600 feet, building over the northern and central Plains and upper Midwest.
While we could have to keep an eye on possible storminess pivoting around the outer edge of this ridge, it looks as though the weekend ends up drier than not.