No widespread storms threaten Northeast in first full week of April

There were no skies of gray as these horse grazed behind our house on Sunday morning. The area farms turned green with the warmup last week, and the grass resisted any return to dormancy during a weekend that started with a temperature of 19 degrees in Saturday morning.

The visible satellite picture shows largely storm-free weather across the United States.

Considering precipitation, on Sunday there were spotty showers across the Upper Great Lakes, some pockets of snow over the Rockies and some activity from Western Montana Washington.

The GFS six-hour forecast for 2 p.m. Sunday has pretty much the same idea. I would be quite nervous if that were not the case, since at the six-hour time stamp, any model's results should match reality.

The following map for Monday afternoon suggests that the shower zone from the Upper Great Lakes will expand somewhat and move southeastward.

By early afternoon on Tuesday, we see no sign of that first batch of shower activity, but we do see a new area of showers from the Upper Great Lakes to the Central Plains:

It looks like some of the showers that were on the Tuesday map will go across part of the Middle Atlantic states Tuesday night and Wednesday. It does not look like any of this rain reaches New York City or Boston.

If we look back at the maps from Tuesday and Wednesday, then glance at the map below for Thursday, it is apparent the storm system crossing the middle of the country is not moving eastward very quickly.

That same slow advance looks like it continues Friday and Saturday. At any given time, it looks like there will be areas of rainfall, but we don't see any solid mass of storminess.

On the Sunday map, it looks like the system from the west is weakening but not totally disappearing.

The outlook for this week should provide some comfort for those affected by recent flooding in the lower Mississippi Valley. While flooding rains were occurring there, it was dry in much of Central and South Florida... a situation that could change later next weekend if this forecast is right. However, from a week out, I wouldn't bank on that just yet.

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