Good afternoon folks, our major winter storm continues to come together and trends continue to indicate an all-snow event with a non-zero but very small chance for some brief sleet mix into southernmost towns in the 4 northern CT counties. This is a juicy storm with Pacific, Gulf and eventually Atlantic moisture that will dump either side of an inch of liquid precipitation (if it were rain) in the form of a light and fluffy snow.

The storm continues to looks to track south of New England somewhere near or between The Benchmark and MV / Nantucket islands, and stay on the weaker side though some guidance indicates a bit more oomph.

If that comes to pass, the pressure gradient between the high center to the north near northern Maine and our slowly deepening low to the south could tighten a bit and pop some 15-30mph wind gusts in the high terrain out of the northeast and cause some blowing and drifting of snow at night and into Monday.

As one of meteorological heroes, Tim Kelley, has said forever, wind is air moving from high pressure to low pressure and so if the low cranks a bit more, some more noticeable gusts are possible.

Snow starts late morning into early afternoon, and picks up and becomes heavy at times later afternoon through the evening. We’ll have to mind the potential dry slot with dry air punching in behind our storm.

If for some reason, that dry slot stays further south, we could see even higher snow totals with longer duration of moderate to heavy snow in the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning.

For now I’m sticking with 8-16″ across the region, as these storms tend to produce variable amounts with localized snow bands that produce heavy snow in one area, and lighter snow due to sinking air aside those heavier bands in other areas. Some folks will likely get into 14-20″ pockets, most likely in high terrain areas where snowfall and lift will be enhanced.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that the Warning is up, and I will update again this evening, have a great rest of your afternoon, Dave.