By James Arnold, Weather Specialist
Snow has started most everywhere, and there is still a lot of uncertainty about total amounts. There will be a very sharp cutoff between areas that get up to a foot and areas that only see a few inches. Here is a link to the National Weather Service’s latest accumulation thoughts and you can see that in a very short distance there are major differences in total accumulations.
I think there will be a bit more than shown ~ perhaps 3 to 5 inches by the time it is all over in the greater Shrewsbury area, with a bit less to our east and a bit more, upwards of 6 to 10 inches in the higher ground communities to our north and west. Perhaps the biggest story here for this storm will be the wind later tonight and early tomorrow morning. With the passage of the storm center which will be a bit more inland than originally thought, west to northwest winds will increase overnight perhaps gusting to 55 mph over inland areas and perhaps as high as 65 mph along the coast, the Cape and the Islands. Where the heavy, wet snow clings to trees and wires there could be isolated power outages from tree damage taking power lines down.
Friday will see clearing and breezy conditions and Saturday will see a bit of nuisance snow on New Year’s Eve.
James M. Arnold is a Weather Specialist working with Shrewsbury Emergency Management Agency; town of Princeton; Worcester Emergency Commu