No? You don’t love when ice pellets pelt you from above? Or when ice glazes on surfaces preceded these icy ball bearings? Ahh, yes, now THAT is my definition of FUN! Let’s party! What’s that? Shut up, Dave, we’re sick of this?
Yeah, I am too.
Anyway, what looked a little more snowy yesterday is looking a little more icy this evening.
In other words, most of us in the WMass region will experience more sleet and freezing rain from this system than snow, unless you are north of the Rt. 2 corridor in MA, VT and NH, where more snow will fall before the storm ends early Friday evening.
Part of this appears to be due to the orientation of the precipitation axis being a bit more southwest to northeast vs. west-southwest to east-northeast.
This is important because as the low pressure system rides along the cold front and just south of New England, the warm nose of air a mile up will be able to gain a bit of a stronger foothold into the WMass region, and last deeper into Friday morning, the way it looks now.
TONIGHT THROUGH THURSDAY NIGHT
For tonight, our frontal boundary approaches the eastern Great Lakes while precipitation in the initial form of rain showers pushes into the Taconics, Litchfields, Berkshires and SVT around or after midnight.
There is the potential that some areas mix with snow, especially up in the southern Green Mountains where some light wet snow accumulations may fall overnight, with just rain/snow mix in the lower elevations of SVT and northwest MA. Otherwise, rain for the rest of us with lows in the 30s.
For Thursday, high pressure to our east will keep southerly flow and mild highs into the low to mid 40s with a good amount of rain tomorrow, likely between a quarter to a half inch of liquid rain or so expected.
By Thursday evening, the cold front will be pressing into eastern NY and VT, and will be flipping southern VT over to freezing rain and sleet, which will continue to spread east and south overnight into Friday morning when lows should bottom out into the low to upper 20s from north to south.
This will flip rain to a brief period of freezing rain, but mostly over to sleet well after midnight in WMass, but likely before dawn, or around dawn.
At the same time, by dawn, southern VT and southwest NH (especially northern halves of those regions) will be turning to accumulating wet snow.
So by early Friday morning, as of now, it looks like it will be snowing north of Rt. 2 corridor in MA, VT and NH, with sleet along and south of Rt. 2 into northern CT. There may be pockets of freezing rain as well that may create some ice glazes that underlie our sleety ice pellets – not good for travel.
In other words, the morning commute isn’t looking too hot to trot at the moment.
As colder air continues to work in aloft from northwest to southeast, we should all eventually flip to snow by late morning or early afternoon, especially north of the CT/MA state line.
AMOUNTS
I am starting to get a better sense of things, but will fine tune as we get closer.
For now it looks like a coating to 2″ from northern CT up to the Rt. 2 corridor in WMass and CMass, with 2-5″ along and north of the Rt. 2 corridor, including central Berkshire County.
I do think there will be a smaller section of 5-10″ of snow in northern Bennington County from about Manchester northward, and the same goes for northern Windham County and northernmost Cheshire County.
REMEMBER: Those accumulation numbers include sleet as well, meaning we could see between a half inch to an inch of sleet pellets on Friday morning before and after dawn that is included in those numbers – accumulations are snow and sleet combined.
After the storm pulls away late afternoon into the sunset, temps will continue to drop and land in the single digits to low teens by early Saturday morning, and there’s no big wind to dry up wet surfaces, so I still think everything is going to freeze, so clean up your ways with the means at your disposal.
Weekend is cold, sunny and fair.
Have a great night, and I will update in the morning, and also be on WRSI 93.9FM The River with Monte Belmonte to talk about the latest with the storm at some point after 7 or 8am during the morning show.
Sleep well…
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7:00AM-WED: WINTER STORM WATCHES HAVE BEEN HOISTED FOR THE ENTIRE SUB-REGIONS OF WMASS, CMASS, SVT AND SWNH FOR SNOW AND ICE THURSDAY NIGHT INTO FRIDAY AFTERNOON… SEVERAL INCHES OF SNOW POSSIBLE ALONG AND NORTH OF THE RT. 2 CORRIDOR WITH LESS ICE, LESS SNOW TO THE SOUTH WITH MORE ICE… SVT MAY SEE OVER HALF A FOOT OF SNOW WHICH MAY EXTEND DOWN INTO WESTERN FRANKLIN AND NORTHERN BERKSHIRE COUNTIES… SOME AREAS IN WMASS MAY SEE OVER HALF AN INCH OF SLEET BEFORE SWITCHING TO SNOW… FLASH FREEZE POSSIBLE LATE FRIDAY NIGHT AS ARCTIC AIR ARRIVES… COLD AND FAIR WEEKEND FOLLOWS, BUT WE WATCH A 2ND STORM FOR MONDAY WHICH MAY PASS OUT TO SEA…
Good morning denizens of the Land of the Golden West, if you’re reading this you’re alive, you’re up, you’re still here, pinch yourself because what a wondrous thing it is to be alive even when life sucks sometimes. If you’re here, you still have a chance to have a better go of it, and if things are good, hopefully it continues for you.
We have a nasty system coming in with all of the precip types because we’re New England, and this is how we do weather – everything is on the table. We’ve got rain Thursday transitioning to sleet and freezing rain (possibly heavy sleet into the pre-dawn hours of Friday), and then to wet snow on Friday morning with light to moderate accumulations expected from south to north. We get to follow all of that fun with a flash freeze Friday night, but before we dive into the details below, let’s check a note from our local and delicious sponsor, #TandemBagelCo, with a new location in West Springfield, MA.
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SUMMARY:
–Temps are starting off mild, in the mid 20s to low 30s this morning – a good jumping off point for highs reaching the upper 30s to low 40s
–Skies should be mostly cloudy, but some sunny breaks are expected at times
–For tonight, our storm system begins to track east-northeast along a frontal boundary positioned well to our northwest, which will eventually sag southeast through New England
–At the same time, high pressure continues to to track south of us, keeping the mild air flowing into the region on southerly winds
–However, as temps cool to near freezing for lows late tonight, some scattered showers will work into the WMass region as our system approaches
–These showers will either be in the form of rain or possibly freezing rain, so we can’t rule out a few isolated slick spots Thursday morning
–For Thursday, rain starts to fill into the region before noon, so we have a showery day on the way with highs in the upper 30s to low 40s, which will cause melting and slushy puddles (The Slushy Puddles will not be my new band name, in case you were wondering, as catchy as it isn’t)
–As this occurs, our multiple low pressure waves will be rippling along the cold front which will still be positioned to our northwest by Thursday afternoon, but getting closer
–Behind the front, and farther to the northwest in the Great Lakes region and Ontario bleeding east into Quebec, will be a powerful high pressure system, more powerful than the high to our south
–The northern high will win the battle, and eventually push the cold sub-freezing air at all levels southeast through New England by Friday night
–The transition of that process for Thursday night into Friday afternoon is where our meteorologically-based problems come in
–As showers continue into the first part of Thursday evening, sleet and snow will start to mix in over southern VT, especially northern Bennington County and northern Windham County
–It’s still not totally clear the rate at which 1. the cold air sweeps southeast through the WMass region, and 2. how long the mid-level warm nose of air about a mile aloft holds on, which would dictate how long our transition period of sleet is, before we flip to all snow sometime on Friday before it quits before sunset
–Right now, before 7am Friday it looks like we will be over to all snow along and north of the Rt. 2 corridor in WMass with sleet continuing south and east of there down into northern CT and in CMass
–Then we should transition to all snow by noon on Friday throughout the greater WMass region, before it quits by sunset Friday afternoon
–However, that transition through sleet and snow could happen faster if some colder trends continue
–The bottom line is that from northern CT north through MA and into SVT and SWNH, we are very likely to be seeing either freezing rain, sleet or snow during early Friday morning, so travel will be impacted
–As I mentioned previously, a general coating to 3″ from northern CT up to the Rt. 2 corridor seems reasonable at the moment, with 3-6″ of snow and sleet north of there, and with some areas in SVT or northern Cheshire County NH exceeding 6″, especially at higher elevation
–The Winter Storm Watches are up not so much for snow totals per se, but because the Friday morning commute is likely going to SUCK, so plan to give yourself extra time or if you can work at home remotely consider doing that
–The next problem is that temps will drop through the day on Friday, and will keep plummeting into the single digits by Saturday morning
–In other words, it’s hard to see how we avoid a flash freeze overnight, where all slush formations, puddles, and accumulations of sleet, ice and snow freeze SOLID
–I would suggest you plan on shaping up your paths and ways and walks not long after dinner so you don’t have a plethora of icy stalagmites to navigate over the weekend
–I say that, because despite fair and sunny conditions, it will be cold and sub-freezing with highs in the teens and 20s Saturday, and 20s Sunday, with lows in the single digits to teens
–Another storm is possible by Monday, but for now, I’m focused on this one
Have a great day, and I will update you with a more detailed report tonight!