Good evening folks, well the fog has persisted for much of the day and is still dense in spots, including Westfield, MA as of this writing. However, drier air with much lower dewpoints is working into eastern NY as I type and as that overwhelms the region, fog will dissipate tonight as wind picks up and mixes the lower atmosphere.

I keep living and learning with respect to the weather, and while I feel like I got the word out about the icing impacts for last night into this morning, I learned that even though cold air damming was not in place which allowed milder air to work in and flip us to plain rain, sometimes it doesn’t matter in the practical impact.

The fact remains that we had cold antecedent air and fresh wintry precipitation on the ground, to provide for a cold sub-freezing ground regardless of the change/rise in air temperature to above-freezing.

The conductivity (meaning how heat or cold gets affects cold or heat adjacent to a parcel or substance) of mild air above was not enough in places to overpower the liquid water sitting on top of the layer of frozen rain that glazed/adhered to/accreted on the ground.

This means that despite above-freezing temps, many of us saw continued slippery conditions and problems to contend with today, and I realized that when it comes to icing events, I will tend to err on the side of being conservative.

I had a friend that fell today, and I know others did too, and there were accidents.

I care about public safety, so when it comes to the worst winter precipitation type of all (freezing rain), I will tend to overstate the potential for slippery conditions, in order to err on the side of caution to help promote the well being of travelers, be it on wheels of any type or on foot.

Going forward, fog will dissipate later as colder and drier air works into the region.

Scattered showers of rain and snow will work into the Taconics and Berkshires and Litchfields, but may not make it much farther east than that. Some coatings are possible.

The main story will be the wind picking up tonight and especially Tuesday into Tuesday night.

We’ll see temps crash into the teens tonight, and while wind will evaporate some of the standing water from earlier rainfall, we’ll see black ice form so be careful late tonight and very early tomorrow morning!

Gusts to 40mph or so tonight will crank between 35-55mph tomorrow, reaching 60mph in parts of the western hilltowns, eastern Berkshires, and northern CMass highlands, so some isolated outages will result if gusts hit those speeds.

It will be cold and blustery tomorrow with highs only in the low to mid 20s and wind chills either side of 0º tomorrow morning will peak into the single digits to low teens tomorrow afternoon under partly sunny skies. A few Berkshire snow showers will be possible. Lows will drop into the teens with gusts to 40mph persisting which will prevent radiational cooling from maximizing and dropping temps further.

New Year’s Eve Day into the evening will feature another front and shortwave moving through with some snow showers or periods of light snow that may put down a coating to around an inch of fluffy snow, with cold sunshine expected for New Year’s Day.

I will update in the morning, have a great night and be careful out there re: icy surfaces!