Sunshine and warm temperatures will make today an ideal beach day across southern Maine. If you are on vacation this week, it’s going to be a nice one overall. There are some changes ahead as heat and humidity drop, but I don’t expect much if any rainfall. There are still some low clouds along the coast as I write, but these will dissipate during the morning. The image below from before 10 a.m. shows the clouds along the coastline and clear skies inland.

Weather is making news all over the country this morning. The rainfall across the west coast and desert southwest has been super-historic. Many places from Los Angles to San Diego have received more rain in the past three days than they would typically see during their wettest month of the year, January. According to the Weather Channel, San Diego’s 1.70 inches of rainfall through 11 PM last night was more rain than had fallen in the past 101 Julys combined! That statistics is simply amazing.

In parts of western Maine and Vermont there was 2-5 inches of rain last evening and this caused some road closures and localized flooding. While certainly not record breaking, it was noteworthy during an active weather weekend. Lightning and hail also contributed to power outages in parts of York County. Some of the lightning seemed almost continuous last night.

Boston finally reached 90 degrees on Sunday, the first such occurrence of the year and the 5th latest point in the year it has happened since records started. It hasn’t been a warm summer at all and I although humidity levels did reach the oppressive mark the past couple of days, these periods of heat and humidity have been fleeting.

The humidity this morning is still quite high and uncomfortable. During the day the levels of moisture in the air will fall, but still remain noticeable. This lasts through tomorrow, before the truly dry air arrives on Wednesday.

There could be a shower or thunderstorm Tuesday night with the transition from the humid to the dry air mass, but I don’t expect severe weather to be an issue, nor will the storms be widespread. Actually, many of you won’t see anything at all.

The rest of the week looks great with sunshine and some clouds, low humidity and pleasant temperatures. As a matter of fact, highs may only reach the 70s by the end of the week and into the star of the upcoming weekend, below average once again.

I’ll use this one image (above) to illustrate the upcoming trend in temperature. This is from the GFS model and is a collection of predictions of temperature over the next two weeks. Notice the core of the cooler air arrives Saturday before we see a warming trend for the final 10 days of the month. The black line represents the average of all the predictions.

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