Barometric Pressure Forecast for Waterville, Maine
Barometric pressure forecast for Waterville, Maine — inland on the Kennebec River, north of the coastal plain. See current barometric pressure and what it means for weather-sensitive people.
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Pressure and weather in Waterville
Waterville sits on the Kennebec in central Maine, roughly 50 kilometres inland from the Gulf of Maine and low enough in the river valley to collect cold air on clear nights. Its distance from the coast is the single most important fact about its weather. Coastal storms that arrive as rain in Portland often arrive here as snow or ice, because the ocean's moderating warmth does not reach this far up the valley in winter. The storms themselves are nor'easters, and they are the defining feature of the season from November through March. These systems form or redevelop along the boundary between cold continental air and the warm Gulf Stream offshore, and the strongest of them intensify explosively as they run up the coast, deepening by more than a hectopascal an hour for a full day. That is among the fastest sustained pressure change anywhere in the eastern United States, and it happens here several times most winters. The rest of the year is calmer, though autumn occasionally delivers the decayed remains of a tropical system tracking up the seaboard.
What this means for you
Nor'easters give Waterville some of the steepest pressure falls in the eastern United States, concentrated between November and March. For weather-sensitive people a barometric pressure forecast through those months is worth checking far more often than in summer.