A high surf advisory remains posted this afternoon as a storm system continues to impact southern and central Maine.

Sometime in the middle of the night I awoke briefly to the sound of a tree coming down. Over the past several years, between Irene, Sandy and various winter storms, many of the dead or dying elm trees around the property have fallen. Last night’s crash was the result of the top of an elm coming down. Luckily the tree wasn’t very big and the Virginia creeper vine that had grown up around it, broke the impact a bit.

Strong winds, the result of a fairly sizeable pressure gradient are one of the notable aspects to this morning’s storm. The storm itself is unusual for late June, a time when our precipitation comes mostly from cold and warm fronts, not low pressure systems themselves.

The other part of the today’s weather system that’s noteworthy is the chilly air. Highs today, with a wind mostly off the water will stay in the upper 50s to lower 60s across Maine; this is 20 or so degrees below the long-term averages. There’s enough residual heat in the buildings, so you won’t need to put the furnace on, but it will feel cool if you are headed outside.

The main rain area continues to push northward and the weather will be more of a showery nature the rest of the day. I don’t expect a lot more accumulation of rainfall, most areas got around an inch, but some places have exceeded that by 50%. The loop below shows the main area of rain pushing north of Portland this afternoon.

The storm responsible for the wind, rain and cool weather is moving off the coastline, south of New England and will continue to up in to Canada this afternoon. Behind this system, drier and warmer air will arrive for Monday with more humidity by Tuesday and especially Wednesday.

During the middle of the week, a frontal system brings the chance of showers to the area along with some thunderstorms. Obviously, it’s too early to say if these are strong storms, widely scattered or more numerous. There will be sunshine mixed with the clouds even on days when showers are in the forecast. Put another way, I don’t see a day like today this week. The GFS model has several systems impacting Maine this week. None are very intense.

The 4th of July weekend is looking seasonable in terms of temperatures, but there is still a lot of uncertainty with the forecast. The models have everything from sunshine to showers during the weekend and therefore we will need to wait several more days to determine how the weather is going to be this weekend.

Summer systems, today’s storm aside, are usually quite weak and innocuous. The slightly change in track and strength of summer systems can add or remove the opportunity for showers.

Most of the forecasts you see or hear for the upcoming weekend are based on the collective solution of the ensemble forecast. The graph below is for temperatures over the next two weeks, using the ensembles.

Notice the wide range in possible readings. The black line is the average and tends to be what the forecast centers on, but with such a wide range, it important to keep in mind this can change a lot in the coming days.