Taste of autumn to arrive in Northeast following deadly storms
Cooler, less humid conditions are ahead for the Great Lakes and Northeast to end August, giving a preview of what's to come before meteorological fall kicks off later this week.
Locally damaging thunderstorms will be possible in a section of the East into Friday night before the final weekend of meteorological summer.
The final weekend of meteorological summer will feel like fall in the Northeast, as a more refreshing air mass will build into the region in the wake of strong thunderstorms, say AccuWeather forecasters.
The thunderstorms ushering in the change in the weather pattern turned deadly on Thursday night, causing wind damage and knocking out power for more than 600,000 in the Midwest and upper Ohio Valley.
A noticeable change in temperature and humidity made for a refreshing end to the final weekend of August for millions after a cold front swung through the region on Friday. This shift to cooler weather will continue across parts of the Midwest and Northeast on Monday.
A violent transition into a more comfortable air mass
Before the arrival of fall-like air, a transition must occur to move out of the sultry summer air mass. With that change, there have been deadly thunderstorms.
According to MLive.com, at least five people were killed and several were injured from car crashes, trees falling onto homes and cars being flipped by strong winds in Michigan, as a line of severe thunderstorms rolled through on Thursday evening. Those storms survived all the way through northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania later at night, generating wind gusts up to 70 mph.
Over 80,000 customers were still without power across Michigan and Ohio by Monday morning, according to the power outage aggregator website poweroutage.us. Some outages may continue into the middle part of the week in the hardest-hit areas.
A tree is uprooted outside a home on Friday, Aug. 25, 2023, in Canton Township, Mich. A strong storm powered by winds of up to 75 mph (121 kph) in Michigan downed trees, tore roofs off buildings and left hundreds of thousands of customers without power. (AP Photo/Mike Householder)
At least eight tornadoes may have touched down in Michigan, according to damage reports. The National Weather Service has also confirmed 11 tornadoes in Ohio as well as another in Pennsylvania.
A weekend that feels more like late September than late August
The last weekend of August, and thus meteorological summer was more reminiscent of the first few days of fall in the Northeast, per AccuWeather experts, and that will continue into the early part of the week. Meteorological autumn begins on Friday, Sept. 1, weeks ahead of astronomical fall, which starts at 2:50 a.m. EDT on Saturday, Sept. 23.
"A cold front will provide a swath of relief from the heat for residents across the Great Lakes and interior Northeast into early this week," said AccuWeather Meteorologist Alyssa Glenny. "This will be followed by an expansive zone of high pressure."
Temperatures that had been rising well into the 80s and even 90s for the better part of the last few weeks will struggle to get out of the 70s on Monday, including in Boston and New York City. In parts of the interior Northeast, these temperatures are more typical for the end of September rather than the end of August.
Perhaps most importantly for comfort, the humidity will also take a nosedive behind the cold front, as drier air from Canada arrives.
The cooler, less humid weather will not come with full sunshine and dry conditions across the entire region, however. Some spotty showers and thunderstorms will be possible across the Northeast into Monday.
The active pattern will persist early this week in the form of more thundershowers, as temperatures and humidity start to climb again amid a southerly flow.
According to AccuWeather's team of long-range forecasters, another cold front will knock down the mercury and the humidity in the Great Lakes and the Northeast from Wednesday through Friday, potentially resulting in even cooler conditions than are ahead for this weekend.
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