Blog Article
NFL, F1 and a Post-Tropical Low: Weekend Weather Guide
Post-Tropical Josephine buffets New England as Patriots fans gear up, while Austin's F1 weekend gets dry skies. Plus, the Southwest's wild October rolls on.
Patriots Tailgates, F1 in Austin, and a Post-Tropical Low Offshore: This Weekend's Weather Mashup
Alright folks, let's talk about what everybody's actually going to be doing this weekend, because the weather map has opinions about all of it.
Patriots fans are already trending online tonight, fussing over who's ruled out for Sunday's game against the Bears. Meanwhile, down in Austin, the Formula 1 paddock is setting up for the US Grand Prix. Two totally different crowds, two totally different vibes, and weirdly, two totally different weather stories playing out at the same time.
Josephine's Not Done With New England Just Yet
Here's the thing. What used to be Subtropical Storm Josephine just got reclassified this evening as a post-tropical cyclone, and get this, the National Hurricane Center says it might actually be stronger than advertised. Winds are holding at 65 mph, the pressure's down to 988 millibars, and it's hauling northeast at 17 mph, a couple hundred miles southeast of Nantucket as of this evening.
Cape Cod is sitting in what our impact model calls the "Action" tier tonight, meaning a 70 to 80 percent chance of 39+ mph winds, with the headline literally reading "storm winds could arrive any time now." That's happening tonight into early Friday. The good news for Sunday's football watchers around Foxborough is that Josephine is hauling tail out to sea, away from the Gulf of Maine and toward Nova Scotia, where Halifax to Yarmouth is looking at a 90%+ chance of tropical-storm-force gusts. By kickoff on Sunday, the center of this thing should be well offshore, but don't be shocked if the surf along the Massachusetts coast is still churned up and tailgate winds carry a little extra bite left over from this system's wake. Rip currents and rough surf are the lingering concern, not the wind field itself.
It's a tidy reminder that late October tropical systems don't need warm Caribbean water to cause trouble. Josephine formed from an area of low pressure that had been hanging offshore all week, feeding off the baroclinic energy of a cooling North Atlantic instead of warm water. That's a textbook extratropical transition, and it's exactly why the cloud pattern NHC described tonight "resembles that of a warm frontal band" instead of a classic hurricane eye.
Meanwhile, Austin Gets the Good Side of the Pattern
Now flip over to Texas. The F1 crowd rolling into Austin this weekend is catching a much calmer slice of the atmosphere. A broad area of dry high pressure is holding over a huge swath of the South and Mid-South right now, the same ridge that's giving places like the Ohio Valley, Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolina Upstate what our forecast team is calling the best weather of the week, crisp air, light wind, nearly cloud-free skies. Texas sits on the warm, dry edge of that same setup. Late October normally runs around 79 for a high and 58 for a low in nearby Dallas, so if Austin's tracking close to that range this weekend, that's right about where fall ought to be. No flags on the forecast for the Circuit of the Americas crowd. Pack sunscreen, not a poncho.
The Southwest Isn't Finished With Its Wild October
While two fan bases enjoy pretty different weekends, the real action this week is still out West, and it's not slowing down. After Tuesday's hail and tornado-warned storms across Arizona, SPC has a Slight Risk of severe storms again today stretching from Arizona into western New Mexico, with large hail and a tornado or two possible. WPC has a Moderate Risk of excessive rainfall over southwest Colorado and southern Utah today, the kind of setup that can retrigger the same burn-scar and flash-flood problems we saw play out at Zion National Park earlier this week, where hikers got stranded in Behunin Canyon. Friday shifts that severe and flash-flood threat into central and western New Mexico and the El Paso corridor. Add in critical fire weather building across northeast Wyoming and far western South Dakota on Friday, where winds could top 30 mph with temperatures pushing 80, and you've got a pattern that's been relentless basically all month. This October's already produced a Category 2 hurricane landfall in Florida, 24 inches of Montana snow, and twin tropical cyclones forming on the same day. The Southwest's turn in the barrel isn't over yet.
What It All Means For Your Weekend
So here's the simple version. If you're tailgating in New England for Patriots-Bears, watch the surf and hang onto your hat, Josephine's leaving a little chop behind even as she pulls away. If you're heading to Austin for the race, enjoy it, the sky's on your side. And if your weekend plans involve the Desert Southwest, from Phoenix to Albuquerque to the Four Corners, keep an eye on the sky and know that flash flooding has already proven it can turn a dry wash into a 13,000 cubic-feet-per-second river in an afternoon this month.
Weather doesn't care what's trending. But this week, it sure lined up with it.