TABLE OF CONTENTS
* Daily Celestials (Sun/Moon Data)
* Sponsor Note
* Morning Discussion
* TIP: Scroll below for sections, or read all
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YOUR DAILY CELESTIALS
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STAR:
–OUR STAR RISES AT: 7:18am this morning
–OUR STAR WILL SET AT: 4:35pm this evening
–TOTAL DAYLIGHT TIME: 9 hours and 17 minutes
MOON:
–OUR MOON RISES AT: 11:31am this morning
–MOON RISE DIRECTION: East-Northeast
–OUR MOON WILL SET AT: 1:43am tomorrow morning
–MOON SET DIRECTION: West-Northwest
–MOON PHASE: Waxing Gibbous (55.8%)
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A NOTE FROM OUR SPONSOR
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Dave Hayes The Weather Nut is Sponsored by Individual Community Members, Patrons, and Tandem Bagel Company… No matter the weather, Tandem Bagel is always there for you at several valley locations to make your mornings brighter! With *New Pizza Bagels(!)*, along with bagels baked fresh daily (including Gluten-Free options), house-whipped cream cheese, coffee, and tons of lunch options, Tandem is the perfect quick stop for lunch, breakfast, or a coffee and bagel to go.
You can either 1) visit them in Easthampton, Northampton, Hadley, Florence, and/or West Springfield, 2) hire them to cater your next event, or 3) use their super-streamlined online ordering tool by visiting their website and clicking the “Catering” or “Order Online” links.
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YOUR MORNING DISCUSSION
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Good morning, folks, the endless blizzard bluster continues across the digital media-sphere with lots of exclamation points, big snow maps, dark blue colors over New England, and detailed analysis of model runs that at this point are unlikely to come to pass.
It’s exciting, it’s titillating, and in the end, unnecessary and ends up feeding the story that “weather people” just want to push fear and hype to get clicks and eyeballs, which is “unfortunate” since I can’t use the words I really want to at this moment.
Instead, we need to reasonably deal with what comes and what is presented in the atmospheric tea leaves, and this weekend’s storm continues to look like a miss to the south, but it’s 4 days away, and it’s too early to write it off, but for now I am not expecting anything more than a light snow impact too (more likely) no impact.
What IS going to impact us today is very gusty winds producing very blustery conditions set within a very cold start and anticipated cold day. Temps are currently in the single digits and teens with wind gusts up to 25mph or so at times, so it’s breezy in spots.
However, as a weak upper shortwave dives south-southeast into our region and the sun comes up, we’ll start mixing the boundary layer, which is the layer of air adjacent to Earth and that will help tap a stronger river of air moving through aloft called a low level jet streak.
This means we can expect northwest wind gusts of 30-45mph later this morning into the afternoon, with some gusts to 50mph possible, which could lead to some isolated power outages.
With highs under partly sunny skies only reaching the mid teens to mid 20s from north to south today (SVT/SWNH through WMass/CMass down into northern CT), wind chill readings will drop into the single digits above AND below zero at times, and possibly even colder in the peaks of southern VT or the high Berkshire peaks.
Speaking of the Berkshires and SVT, we should see a bit of upslope snow shower activity develop later this morning as that shortwave dives through, and some new dustings are possible, otherwise the rest of us are dry.
For tonight, skies should clear out and lows will drop into the single digits to teens, and with wind gusts of 20-30mph persisting, wind chills will go below zero at times for many.
BOTTOM LINE: #BundleUpPeeps
For Wednesday and Thursday, the forecast remains persistent as a pressure gradient remains with northwest wind gusts of 25-40mph both days, and 20-30mph both night with highs in the teens to low/mid 20s under mostly sunny skies, and lows in the single digits to teens with colder wind chills throughout.
By Friday into the weekend, we get a bit of higher pressure moving overhead, which will help moderate our temperatures and give rise to highs in the mid 20s to low/mid 30s Friday through Monday with generally fair weather expected.
The one potential fly in the icy ointment is Saturday night into Sunday morning when a storm of some strength will be near the eastern seaboard, but again for now, I believe it is too far south to produce a moderate to major impact in the greater WMass region, but will keep an eye on it and update you if compelling reasons develop to A) make the northern and southern streams phase together, and B) pull it more north toward New England.
Have a great day!
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”
― Joseph Campbell