If you are on campus today (as we hope you are!) be sure to stop on by the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences tent. We are right next to the NASA tent so we are easy to spot. We will have lots of cool experiments and demonstrations to show and tons of AOSC students around to answer all of your questions!
Unfortunately for the second year in a row, the weather on Maryland Day is less than ideal. We have been stuck in a dreary weather pattern for several days now, with a persistent easterly flow keeping us cool and cloudy.
Much of the same today. Our pesky stalled out frontal boundary has shifted further south overnight, but will begin meandering back towards the north today. Luckily, we will be far enough away from the front to keep us dry for pretty much all of Saturday.
Surface weather map at 8am 4/30
Nevertheless, we are stuck in the muck as they say. Clouds won’t break today and the satellite image you see below will be a carbon copy of the satellite imagery from this afternoon. Cool and cloudy.
Visible satellite and station plots mid-Atlantic 4/30
Perhaps the only saving grace today might be the slight bump we see in the temperature department. Model guidance (including our very own Terp WRF) suggests that much of the area should reach at least 60 degrees by this afternoon.
Terp WRF 5pm temperatures
However, we here at UMD Weather remain a bit skeptical that temps will warm that much given the thick cloud cover and easterly wind. But perhaps we start to see a spike in temps as the cold front currently located over the Carolinas pushes back to the north this afternoon.
In any case, we don’t need sunny skies to have a great Maryland Day!