By James M. Arnold, Weather Specialist
Prepare for some of the coldest temperatures we have seen in a while. Both Saturday and Sunday will threaten all time cold records for the date and could come close or break the records for the lowest high temperatures for those dates. Wind chill temperatures will drop to dangerous levels both Sunday and Monday mornings and care should be taken to avoid any prolonged unprotected exposure to these conditions. However, this will be a relatively quick burst of arctic air as temperatures will begin to moderate on Monday, following an extremely cold early morning.
There are also indications that a storm will impact central Massachusetts about Tuesday. Current track guidance is all over the place, ranging from an inside runner tracking pretty far to our west to a coastal storm passing in the vicinity of the Benchmark. Right now it is too early to tell exactly where this disturbance will track, but it looks like we could be in for a snow or more likely a freezing rain event changing to rain at least in southern New England. How much can we expect? Given the depth of the cold coming in, there is at least the possibility of a period of freezing rain/ice storm prior to the changeover, as it will be hard to scour the cold air out of the deeper valleys.
Today we will see a continuation of partly to mostly cloudy conditions with scattered snow flurries with the threat of scattered snow squalls as well. These will be scattered around much like summer thunderstorms and most areas will not see any of this activity. Those isolated areas that do experience a squall could be on the receiving end of a very quick 2 or so inches of fluffy snow with briefly very limited visibility.
I have attached some graphics related to the cold and possible squally weather this afternoon.
James M. Arnold is a Weather Specialist working with Shrewsbury Emergency Management Agency; town of Princeton; Worcester Emergency Communications and Emergency Management Agency; Southborough Emergency Management Agency; town of Grafton and Wachusett Mountain Ski Area