Good morning folks, it is frrrrrrrrrrgid out there this morning, with temps ranging from -12º to 5º degrees, and wind chills down to the 20s below zero with current gusts to 30mph and a peak gust overnight of 43mph at Peru, MA in the Berkshires. Going forward, I expect a breezy day especially earlier on with highs only in the single digits to maybe low teens under mostly sunny skies with wind chills down near 0º at times, maybe below zero briefly.

In other words, it’s wicked cold out!!

Tonight, temps will crash to either side of 0º, but as strong, Arctic high pressure builds overhead and heads toward the crown of Maine for later Sunday, winds will calm down as clouds thicken up.

On Sunday our primary low pressure system will be tracking east-northeast through the Ohio Valley and will weaken as it pushes into northern Virginia, and a secondary low pressure system forms off of the Delaware coastline, set to track east-northeast to south of Nantucket by late Sunday night.

As this happens, a copious amount of moisture will slam into an Arctic cold dome of air in place throughout the greater western MA region by Sunday morning, causing intense lift / rising air and generation of a massive snow shield.

This snow shield will evaporate over our heads for a time Sunday morning, a phenomenon called “virga”, but the snow shield will win out with vim AND vigor, and snow will reach the ground by 10am to 1pm from south to north (northern CT to SVT/SWNH, through WMass/CMass).

Snow will stick IMMEDIATELY and start to pile up quickly, especially by mid to late afternoon when the heavier snowfall starts arriving into the region.

Snowfall rates of 1-2” per hour are possible during this storm, especially between 4pm to Midnight when the heaviest snow should fall, prior to a dry slot punching through overhead about 2-3 miles up.

The snow will be a fluffy, lighter consistency, and I would not be surprised to see some localized snow bands produce over 2” per hour, especially in the Worcester Hills and parts of central MA closer to the coastline. Another area for heavier snow would be the east-slopes of the Berkshires, southern Greens, and western hilltowns.

With low pressure to our south and strong cold high pressure to our northeast, an easterly wind will develop, and while wind won’t be a huge component of this storm, we should see breezy conditions at times with gusts 15-25mph during the storm.

This will cause some blowing and drifting of snow, and I am concerned that parts of the high terrain in CMass as well as parts of the eastern Berkshires, southern Greens and northwest CT Litchfield Hills may see east-northeasterly gusts of up to 30-40mph for a time, which could cause brief blizzard conditions in those areas.

I do not think outages will be much of a concern, but if gusts hit 40mph in the high terrain, you can always get an isolated outage at those speeds.

The heaviest snow should shut off just after midnight with that dry slot, and then through Monday we’ll see periods of light snow as the upper low and primary surface low drift east and are pulled through our region by the overall west-southwesterly flow, with additional light accumulations for Monday.

Overall, I think this storm produces a widespread 10-18” of snow, with a small concern for sleet mixing into far southern parts of northeast CT (Tolland and Windham Counties, maybe far southern Hartford county), and a small concern for western Bennington County VT which with some downsloping off the Greens may see a bit less snow.

Those aforementioned areas may end up with 8-12”, and some more sub-10” amounts are possible in any subsident zones aside local heavy snow bands.

On the flip side, some localized heavy snow bands may push some folks up towards 2 feet of snow in isolated areas, and the best chance of that is CMass south of the Rt. 2 corridor, the way it looks now.

After our periods of light snow Monday morning into the afternoon and evening our storm winds down, delivering probably the most widespread major snowfall in several years (the hilltown dump of 1-4 feet in 2023 was more localized, but massively impressive and memorable).

Fair weather will arrive for Tuesday with cold high pressure, sunshine and highs in the teens to low 20s and lows in the single digits with a low chance for more snow late week.

I will keep checking trends and update you later this afternoon regarding our impending first widespread major snowstorm of this season, and if you have iPhone or iPad please download my new mobile app, and you can also support my work and/or vote for me in the Best Of Advocate poll, all at the links below, thank you, Dave.

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