A summer-like weather pattern begins today

The WBEN All Local. All Local. A daily look at what's happening in Buffalo, Western New York, and the world. I'm Susan Rose. I'm Brian Maserowski. It was a hot start for the Sabres last night in game five. Pass up on the upwing side. Sabers game the line. To the middle of the ice. Helens holds it. Turns. Slire, score! It's raining goals in Buffalo. And the Sabres take a three to two lead with 9.45 still to go here in the opening period. But they could not keep it rolling after the first. Battled for it. Canadians will tap it to the line. Pressure there by McLeod, the Montreal with the puck on the wall. Slavkovsky again, he's the one to pressure. Power does. Quick shot score. That quickly, Suzuki lets it rip from the near circle. And just like that, the Canadians now have a two-goal lead with 227 left in the second. It's 5-3. 6-3 ends up being the final score. Montreal beats Buffalo. They take a 3-2 series lead. Still no points from Alex Tuck this series. Lindy Ruff on what's happening to one of his top players. You know, I think you get in a series like this. And you're struggling a little bit. I think he's lost just a little bit of confidence, trying a little bit too hard to make that extra play. I think number one is the biggest thing is you've got to move your feet. Always move your feet. Get your feet moving. Whether it's through the neutral zone, whether it's your challenging at the blue line. And that line just hasn't been quite connected. And I think it all comes down to skating on pucks in the offensive zone. to a couple games in there in Boston in the first period the game six how well they moved inside the zone feet have to get moving If you'd have to get moving, something's got to get going for your top guys who have really been absent. The series, Sabres could really use it tomorrow night. Eight o'clock puck drop for Game 6. You know what? If they come through, all is forgiven. That's right. I mean, you just got to play big in the two biggest games, and that's what you're staring down right now. Possibly the two biggest games right here, games six and hopefully game seven on Monday. I'm a... I drove home last night and I'm thinking, you know what? I'm interested to see what this team, because we haven't seen it yet. I want to see what the team looks like on the brink of elimination. You know, I want to see what we get out of this team when they're, you know, one game away from possibly their season being older. I'm excited to see it tomorrow night. A desperation game. Yeah, you're right. Excited to see what that looks like. And of the last five road games, Sabres are four and one. They've been a great road team. They've been a great team all year long. And now it's the time to just you put it all out there for a couple games here to keep it moving. And if you win tomorrow night, then you come back here Monday and you treat it like a road game. Yeah. And it'll feel like a road game because it'll be 80 degrees. Easy to pretend you're somewhere else when it's 80 in Buffalo. Governor Hokel.

announced additional funding yesterday for the 514 Living Memorial during a remembrance ceremony on the fourth anniversary of the horrific mass shooting. I just got out the phone with my budget director. I said, I'm sitting here in Buffalo. It is a cold day. These people need a little extra help for this memorial that we're building, this living park. I said, can you help me find about $3 million more to get this done? And the answer was, you're the governor. And I said, yes, I am. $3 million more. Funding now totals approximately $11 million from very... sources, the memorial is expected to cost between $15 and $20 million. Well, the president has now wrapped up his trip to China for his summit with President Xi Jinping. During the trip, the president says they both discussed Iran. Both agreed Iran could never have a nuclear weapon. Trump also said China agreed to put in an order for 200 planes from Boeing. If more from Lionel Moyes. The president says China will also be buying American oil and soybeans, which China stopped buying last year during a trade dispute. Tech CEOs joining Trump on the trip with artificial intelligence, a major focus. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says China agreed to work together on AI safety. Lionel Moyes with the latest from Washington. Here in Western New York, Niagara's Fashion Outlet Mall, getting a break in taxes after seeing some hard financial times. WBEN's Jim Fink joins us with more. To Andrea Klazac, helping the struggling fashion outlet mall with a tax certainty package that is currently under review by the Niagara County IDA is something of a no-brainer. Klyzak, Niagara County IDA executive director, said the 10-year tax certainty package her agency has under consideration is all about survival for the mall. I think that we should also look at the mall as really the anchor of that corridor, you know, all the restaurants and all the businesses that surround it. Even with the decrease in stores, the mall remains one of Niagara County's largest employers. with some 800 people working at one of its stores or restaurants. It is also one of the county's largest producers of annual tax revenue, an estimated $514 million that is. And it has also created another 500-plus jobs through spin-off retailers and restaurants that either neighbor or near them all. It is under that financial umbrella that the NCIDA negotiated a 10-year tax certainty package that will see the mall's owners pay slightly more than $10 million in taxes over the next decade. This is Jim Fink for WBEN.com News. Jim, thank you while the weather turning just in time this weekend for the annual Porch Fest in the Elmwood Village. WBEN's Tom Puckett has what you need to know. Homeowners and businesses with porches are hosting bands for tomorrow's Porch Fest in the Elmwood Village. It is free to the community, and all you do is just walk around all day in the Elmwood Village and listen to all of this great free live music.

James the Hockey with the Elmwood Village Association says homeowners registered to welcome a band. He says the event has grown significantly. When I took it on back in 2021, the first summer coming out of COVID, we had 125 bands. Now in just five years' time, we have 230 bands, so we've almost doubled in five years. What can Porch Fest do for businesses' bottom lines? Hear about that online. Tom Puckett, WBEN.com News. All right, Tom. Great to see. Nice weather for that this weekend for Porch Fest. The Bills releasing their schedule last night for the upcoming season. And here are some of the takeaways. There will be seven primetime games, two holiday games on Thanksgiving. And on Christmas. It's the first ever home Thanksgiving game ever for the Bills and first Christmas day game in team history. The Thanksgiving game at 820 on Thanksgiving night, the Christmas Day game is a 430 game out in Denver. Seven Sunday one o'clock games. They get the bye week in week seven. and two home games in the months of December and January right now, which seems low. Interesting schedule? Yeah. I mean, obviously Thanksgiving and Christmas together. I mean, one of those games is, you know, the highlight of the schedule, the thing everyone's talking about to play on both days is, yeah, it's something else. Getting a lot of reaction, I would think. Yeah, I don't know if I feel like more negative than positive. I'm not a huge fan of it, but. You know, admittedly, it doesn't really impact me that much. I'm not going to the game on Thanksgiving, so. Right. So it doesn't impact you. And it's at the end of the day, right? The Christmas game, though, that's a Friday. Isn't that weird? We're playing on Friday? It is a little weird. You know, to have this Friday night. They've been pushing these. I mean, the Wednesday Christmas Day games last year or the year before. Right, that's true. They've been doing these. It doesn't really matter. They're determined to play on Christmas. They want to play every day of the week, okay? Let's put it that way. You know, bills and Broncos. I mean, hopefully the, you know, the positive here is if we get the shafts from a call in Denver again like we did in the playoffs. It's Christmas. You know, hey, can't be mad on Christmas, whatever. You can't brush it off easy. Hopefully. The exclusive WBEN 7 weather forecast calls for seasonal conditions for our Friday as temperatures rise into the lower 60s along with sunshine. We'll have more cloud cover into the night, mostly cloudy, and temperatures dropping into the upper 40s. On Saturday, highs are in the middle 70s. We do have a chance to have a shower or thunderstorm in the afternoon, and for Sunday, expect partly sunny skies and highs.

in the mid-70s with your exclusive WBEN 7 weather forecast on meteorologist Autumn Lewandowski. Meteorologist Andy Parker is on the Bison Automotive Liveline this morning to talk about the kickoff to summer warmth. And after yesterday, honestly, I think anything would be an improvement today, Andy. That was possibly the worst combination. The only thing that we didn't have were strong winds yesterday, but it was gray and wet the entire day. How are things turning around? Things are going to switch very quickly. What we're going to find is today, I think once you walk outside, you'll notice that a lot of those clouds are gone, the sun beginning to peak out. So we're going to see two things happen today. Number one, we're going to dry out. Number two, we're going to warm up. Temperatures will go back into the 60s. Now, I say warm up. The average daytime high this time of year is 67 degrees. We've had 10 days in May where we've been below normal. And we've only poked our head above normal a couple. So the first half of this month has been very cool and very wet. And what we're going to find today is that we finally get a dry afternoon with a very light breeze, a great combination. So a mild day, we've got light winds and some sunshine. The clouds will fill in a bit this afternoon, but all in all, this is going to be a really nice day. This is the pivot point or the turning point. From here on out, it goes up and up and up all the way into next week. If we're in the 60s today, I'm going to tell you we're going to be in the 70s on Saturday, 70s Sunday, and then we should get a pair of 80s on Monday and Tuesday. And I wish I could say that's the way it's going to roll out for the rest of the month. But it does look like we'll take a step backwards midweek next week, but the steps that we take backwards won't be nearly as far as the ones we took backward in the beginning of May. So I think we'll pull back from those 80s to the 60s. And then we won't see the 40s with a drizzly rain anytime in the near future. I think those... Those ones are behind us, but we will find a pattern that is definitely warmer in the second half of the month. The first half of May has been seven degrees below normal. That is a huge departure. Usually one or two is barely noticeable. You get the seven people know it's been a cool half of May. Kind of the opposite of what we did last year. Last May, we found the first half of the month. was very warm and the second half was cool and wet. So we've got the cool and the wet out of the way. Now let's look ahead to the warmth. Yeah. You mentioned that pullback. I actually don't think people mind that much because it is quite a difference to go from a day like yesterday to, you know, all of a sudden, 80 in just a few days.

It does not give you time to kind of, you got to prepare for that. I think a lot of people really love between 65 and 75 in the spring, everybody can get out and do what they want to do in those temperatures. Yeah, I think, Brian, when you say you fast forward, when you shift seasons from 40s to 80s, it's almost a bit of a shock to people. True. Andy, gardeners have been waiting patiently. Is it go time for planting or do you need to wait a little longer? Oh, my goodness. Gardners, baseball teams, you name it, everybody who's trying to get out and use any turf. But when we come to frost, we're getting to the end of where we typically would even see a frost outside of maybe some of the southern tier valleys. So looking ahead the next 10 days, there's nothing that indicates that we'll visit the 30s again. So I think we've gone through our May frost where we've had a couple of those. I think it's safe to get out. And if you have that tender vegetation, you are good to go. for the next 10 days, really out to the end of the month. And by the time we're to June, we really aren't dealing with frost threats. Yeah, you mentioned baseball there. I know our little league games have all been canceled so far. The practices have been canceled. The fields have been flooded. You know, it's hard to do anything out there. I mean, is it going to dry up? Are we going to get some stuff in this weekend? Are we going to be dry enough? All right. Here's the rain question. So today is the dry one. And then when we look at tomorrow, the morning is dry. I think we're going to see some scattered showers in the afternoon. Certainly not a washout because think about the daylight hours now. You go from in the 5 o'clock hour, it's starting to get bright and it stays light until in the well into the 8 o'clock hour. A good chunk of the day will be dry, but I think the afternoon is going to bring in. the chance for some scattered showers. Not an all-day thing, but it's going to be one where you may have to watch out for the splash and dash type of rain. Sunday looks good too, mainly dry and isolated shower inland, but most folks are going to get through Sunday on the dry side. Monday and Tuesday are going to have that kind of sultry, summery, humid feel where in the afternoon we'll find some isolated thunderstorms, but not any washouts. I think the next chance for a large-scale rain around here comes Wednesday, Thursday, like it's been in the last three or four weeks. Anybody with Wednesday- Thursday plans have gotten crushed. I think we're going to see another shot of substantial rain there. And then looking further ahead, I think as we enter the weekend, we may end up going in dry, but Sunday looks to be the day where we'd have the highest chance of what I'd call kind of a disruption rain. where it's not just a couple isolated showers here and there. So really we're targeting Saturday afternoon and then Wednesday and then Sunday. Those would be the big rain days there. There may be some other activity, but it won't be as significant. All right. Summer boating season, that's kind of kicking off too, but it's got to be pretty chilly on the lake. The Lake Erie was warmer than the air yesterday. Lake Erie's 50 degrees, which is above average for this time of year by a few degrees, and we only hit 47 for an air temperature yesterday. So, you know, but yes, it is rather cool when you hop in the lake. I don't think anybody's looking to do any swimming, but certainly the waves will be beautiful today. They'll be a little disturbed on Saturday, but Sunday's another day where the winds will be almost non-existent, only five-mile-an-hour winds.

Some really nice stretches of weather to get out and enjoy that early boating season. All right. Well, hey, got a lot to enjoy. Hopefully a long stretch of nice weather ahead for us, Sandy. That's what we're hoping for. I don't want to see a day like yesterday until, like, October. If then. It had an October feel to it. I'm with you. Let's close the book on those. Yeah. Well, Andy Parker joining us. Where can people find you, Andy? Hey, you can find anywhere on social media. Just type in my name, Andy Parker, Weather, and it'll pop right up. Great. Andy, we always appreciate it. Andy Parker, joining us live this morning here on WBEN. That's the WBEN, all local. All new episodes are made available each weekday morning, produced by the award-winning WBEN Newsroom.