By James M. Arnold, Weather Specialist
Region – The current storm is behaving as expected. There will be a short lull in precipitation until early to mid afternoon when it will begin to turn colder and the snow will pick up in intensity and continue until early this evening. Another 2 to 4 inches could fall on top of the nearly 6 inches already on the ground. This is the first shot in what could be a wild 10 to 15 day period of extremely cold and very stormy winter weather on our horizon.
Next up is a small “clipper” system diving to the southeast out of Alberta and Saskatchewan which looks innocent enough. It was looking like it would go harmlessly out to sea well to our south, but now there are some questions as to whether or not that will happen. The clipper will travel along the arctic front trailing behind the current storm and there are some signs that once over the Atlantic Ocean, it will intensify explosively. The European model (below) depicts the storm on Tuesday as a very intense gale center to the southeast of Cape Cod. Regardless of what this storm does, the one sure thing is that our weather will turn decidedly colder for a few days, moderate a bit for a couple of days then it is right back into more arctic air with a couple more chances of snow in that period. See the European model for cold and the North American Model (NAM) below for snow accumulation projections into the 28th. There are still too many moving parts to this situation to be able to definitively figure out what the clipper will do, but experience tells me not to rule it out at this time. The most likely scenario would see it intensify into a strong gale center and pass to the southeast of Cape Cod, possibly producing a fairly substantial snowfall along with strong winds and cold temperatures for the outer Cape and Nantucket. This would spare central Massachusetts from a major storm, but this is hardly certain right now. Stay tuned!
I will update this situation tomorrow and hopefully have a better idea of whether the clipper will impact central Massachusetts in any way.
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
