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 next week.
Published Aug 25, 2023 10:40 AM EDT | Updated Aug 25, 2023 3:30 PM EDT
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 will make for a refreshing final weekend of August for millions after a cold front swings through the region on Friday. The cooler weather will also arrive across parts of the Midwest and Southeast, where some of the hottest weather of the summer has recently occurred.
A violent transition into a more comfortable air mass
Before the arrival of fall-like air, a transition must occur 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.
Hundreds of thousands were also still without power across Michigan and Ohio as of Friday morning, according to the power outage aggregator website poweroutage.us. Some outages may continue through the weekend 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 one tornado may have touched down in Michigan, according to damage reports. The National Weather Service forecast office in Detroit will survey damage to determine if any twisters occurred.
Several more states are at risk for severe weather to end the week and start the weekend from the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic, as the cooler air mass makes inroads farther south. The greatest risk for severe storms will come on Friday from southern Ohio and eastern Kentucky to northern North Carolina and southern Virginia.
"Frequent downpours and locally gusty winds appear to be the biggest risks from storms as they develop across the region," said AccuWeather Meteorologist Alyssa Glenny.
On Saturday, a smaller risk for strong storms exists, but the area at risk will shift farther south to include more of the Tennessee Valley and Southeast, including the cities of Nashville and Charlotte, where the storms will put a pause on temperatures rising to near the century mark.
A weekend that feels more like late September than late August
The last weekend of August, and thus meteorological summer, will be more reminiscent of the first few days of fall in the Northeast, per AccuWeather experts. 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 this weekend," said 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 for most by late in the weekend, 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 on Saturday and Sunday.
Unsettled weather will still be around early next 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 humidity in the Great Lakes and Northeast from Wednesday through Friday, potentially resulting in even cooler conditions than are ahead for this weekend.
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