Everyone in the northeast is tired of the rainy weekends and it turns out that the frequent rain is not a figment of our imagination. Some cities have endured rain on their Saturdays and/or Sundays for two consecutive months. Boston has received rain for eight straight weekends while Providence and New York City have been soaked for seven straight weekends. New Jersey also checks in with six straight weekends of rain. Furthermore, out of the 42 weekends this year, only 12 of them have been dry in New York City. It hasn’t been as bad in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. as they’ve received rain on about half of their weekends over the past two months. Still, it begs the question: Why has it been raining every weekend?
Science has the answer for you! According to The Washington Post, there’s a “persistent area” of high pressure over Canada, Greenland or the Arctic. “I call it an atmospheric traffic jam,” John Homenuk, a meteorologist for New York Metro Weather, said in a video. Meteorologists refer to this occurrence as a “blocking pattern” and it can often lead to storms coming through a specific area every 6-7 days at a time, which is exactly what the northeast is experiencing now. As for it taking place on the weekend, that’s just bad luck says Homenuk.
“It very easily could have been that this block set up slightly differently, and the storms were coming through on Wednesday,” he said. “But instead, it’s happening on Friday and Saturday, which really stinks.”
Weather forecasts for next weekend in New York City, Boston, Providence, and Washington D.C. all point to a weekend without rain, but we’ll just have to wait and see if that proves to be the case.