Thursday, 4:30 PM
Sea breeze keeps Boston 25 degrees cooler while others swelter
(John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)
A sea breeze on Tuesday kept the temperature near the coast under 70 degrees and shrouded the Summer Street Bridge in a thick fog. The temperature is expected to climb today into the low 80s.
By Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff
A steamy heat has smothered much of the East Coast this week in a haze of soaring temperatures and sticky humidity.
It hit 91 degrees Tuesday in Manhattan’s Central Park. Temperatures topped 95 degrees in Hartford. Forty miles south of Boston, even Taunton sweltered in 94-degree air.
The Hub, however, stayed a remarkable 25 degrees cooler than its inland suburbs. The temperature never crept up past 69 degrees in the city on Tuesday.
"You and everybody else about 5 miles inland from the coast were the lucky ones," said Alan Dunham, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton. "That is unless you like heat, and then you had to go outside Route 128."
A steady wind blowing due east off the water acted as natural air conditioning for Boston and other cities and towns directly on the coast. With a water temperature in Boston at 63 degrees, the chilly air kept the scorching temperatures at bay.
During some intense heat waves, the warm air trumps the sea breeze because of wind and meteorological pressure. “You’ve got to have a enough wind to overcome that sea breeze,” Dunham said. That didn’t happen on Tuesday, when the hot air over land rose and brought in cool air from over the ocean.
Today temperatures are expected to be higher in Boston and should reach into the low 80s, Dunham said. The wind has shifted to the south and the southeast and will continue to bring some cooler air off the Atlantic. While the Hub warms, inland cities and towns will be cooler as heavy cloud cover obscures the sun.
A cold front is expected to rumble east this afternoon and bring a wave of intense thunderstorms that will last through the night. After some showers Thursday morning, the air should be much drier for the next few days with temperatures in the upper 70s and low 80s.