By James M. Arnold, Weather Specialist
Shrewsbury – This last?period of rain that ended about 9:00 this morning left an impressive 2.45 inches in my rain gage.? While the rest of the day will be pretty cold and raw with drizzle and a few scattered showers, the next rain shield will not arrive until about 6:00 this evening.? This one promises to bring less rain than the first one, but still will leave up to an additional inch of rain when it ends on Monday afternoon, bringing area storm totals to between 3 and 4 inches.? Parts of the south coast of Massachusetts will wind up with around 6 inches, and some flooding issues will persist in those locations.? This one may have a surprise in store for us though.? The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Weather Advisory for areas to the north and west of the Shrewsbury/Worcester area (see map below from NWS discussion page, area shown in purple is the advisory area) for rain mixing with and changing?to snow later tonight and continuing off and on throughout much of Monday.
I would not be surprised to see the changeover area slide to the southeast to points east of Route 495 and south of the Mass Pike by tomorrow morning. While this is likely to happen, there will not be any appreciable accumulation.?The?largest amounts will be on car tops and grassy areas, and most paved surfaces will remain mostly bare except in the higher ground areas to our north and west.
If one looks hard enough, there is a glimmer of hope out there.? One of the recent long range?runs of the?Climate Forecast System, Version Two, for the month of May from the WeatherBell site?is encouraging.? However, one needs to take most model outputs with a grain of salt, especially one going a month out, but it is nice to see there is some hope that May temperatures could actually be above normal!
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