Good evening everybody, for those who saw my post on the topic of clickbait before this one, I do reserve the right to rant from time to time, though on annual basis, I keep it to a minimum. So, thanks for indulging me, as that topic gets my engine revved up a bit, in case you couldn’t tell! ;-)
For tonight, we’ll continue to see increasing clouds develop as tomorrow’s mostly-out-to-sea storm gets pushed to the Mid-Atlantic coastline, urged along by an upper low pressure system now tracking east out of the Texas panhandle.
Lows tonight will drop into the upper 20s for the most part, and temps early tomorrow morning aloft look to be cooling as the morning moves along. This should keep highs in the low to mid 30s for Monday as our storm tracks east-northeast, south of our region.
By mid to late morning, light snow should break out across much of the WMass region (including northern CT) from southwest to northeast through the noon hour and into the afternoon.
It appears that a coating to 2″ looks reasonable for accumulations tomorrow and despite earlier thinking a day or two ago, I don’t think there will be much rain involved, though can’t rule out some snow/rain mix in valley floor locations.
Any precipitation quits by evening as the storm keeps trucking out to sea, but in its wake two things will happen:
1. Our weak little system tomorrow will grow up to be a big boy storm bomb as it curves northeast and up into Newfoundland and the North Atlantic Ocean as it phases with an upper level low in southeast Canada.
2. That process will pull in the coldest air of the incoming Winter, as in pure Arctic air, that will last through Friday night and into the start of the weekend for a real-deal taste of the season that is almost upon us.
Monday night lows are going to dive into the low to mid 20s, but westerly winds will gust 20-30mph, so wind chills will be in the teens tomorrow night as skies clear out.
Tuesday is Winter, plain and simple. Mostly sunny, as high pressure nudges through, but cold, cold, cold, with highs in the upper 20s to near freezing in some spots, and a northwest wind that continues to gust up to 30mph at times. Bundle up!
Lows Tuesday night will plummet into the 10-15º range, maybe brushing the upper single digits in some high terrain locations, like the western hilltowns and Berkshires.
WEDNESDAY PM/THURSDAY AM STORM SETUP
On Wednesday, clouds will be increasing rapidly as our storm system turns east-northeast through the southern Ohio Valley and heads toward the Mid-Atlantic coastline, set to track somewhere north or south of The Benchmark, which is a point 85 miles south of Nantucket Island and due east of Asbury Park, NJ at 40ºN and 70ºW – a classic winter storm track point for big snowstorms in the I-95 corridor of far southern and far eastern New England (New Haven, Providence, Boston).
The storm’s ultimate track will be determined by A) how powerful Monday’s low becomes in the Canadian Maritimes, B) the strength and position of Arctic high pressure in Quebec Province, Canada, and the impact of high pressure to the east of the coastal low destined to become a Nor’easter impacting southern New England.
There’s no question it will snow. There is no mix line in the WMass region with this storm, the way I see things!
There will be plenty of dry air on the northern side of this system as it sucks in dry, cold Arctic air at the surface.
Given the above, the northern precip shield may be drying out, and so a sharp northern cutoff to snow totals is possible, which could lower amounts along and north of Rt. 2 corridor, and especially north of the MA/VT-NH line.
This is also going to be a weaker system, no bombogenesis with this one, and it should be fairly unimpeded (in other words, a pretty fast mover), so it won’t hang around for a long time.
FIRST THOUGHTS ON SNOW AMOUNTS
There are two main potentials with this system. It’s either going to track close to or over Nantucket, or it could track significantly south of there. I don’t think it runs over Martha’s Vineyard or Block Island, which means we stay all snow from northern CT up into WMass, SVT and SWNH.
If high pressure to our north minimizes southward suppression of our coastal Nor’easter, we could see something like 3-6″ from SVT/SWNH down to the MassPike in WMass/CMass, and 6-12″ along and south of the Pike, with a few foot-plus amounts possible in central/southern CT.
However, if this storm gets pushes more southerly due to explosive storm formation over Newfoundland which may help to strengthen our Quebec high pressure system, along with creating a flatter flow (i.e. west to east) in its wake, we would then see more like 1-3″ north and 3-6″ south.
TIMING
Snow moves in by Wednesday afternoon, with the brunt Wednesday night, and ends Thursday morning.
SUPER COLD
Remember, it will be very cold on Wednesday, with highs only in the mid 20s and lows in the teens, and the same goes for Thursday and Thursday night
WIND
Northeast winds will gust 20-30mph Wednesday night, so there will be some blowing of snow, given that this will be a dry, powdery type snow.
POST-STORM
It remains cold Friday and Saturday, but fair weather should return, before another chance at a wintry mix system Sunday/Monday time frame.
There is LOTS of storm activity in the Pacific Ocean, so we could be busy during the second half of December, weather-wise.
Ok, that does it for tonight’s report folks, you can click the graphics and read the captions for more detail, as I will edit those after I post.
That’s how it looks now, I do think the plows are coming out for some folks in our region, but we’re still 72-84 hours away, so this is just a first look at our winter storm potential.
Have a great night, and I will update again early tomorrow morning!