By James M. Arnold, Weather Specialist
The storm currently on our doorstep will be pretty ugly across much of southern New England, and our area will be no exception. Precipitation will start as snow in all areas including the coastal plain, Cape Cod and the Islands, likely beginning shortly after dark tonight is western areas, around 6:00 to 7:00 time frame in the greater Shrewsbury area and likely around 8:00 along the coast. There will likely be a pretty good front end “thump” of snow in all areas, which will rapidly change to sleet, freezing rain then all rain along the coast. Accumulations in those areas will be held to an inch or so and that should all melt and wash away by Thursday morning as temperatures rise to nearly 50° over southeastern New England. The changeover will take longer to occur as one moves to the north and west – and snow accumulations will reflect this. Out to the Route 128 corridor up to 2 inches will fall; further west to the Route 495 corridor up to 3 inches is likely and still further to the west and north a general 3 to 5 inch accumulation is likely, with the highest amounts around the Route 2 corridor. Sleet and freezing rain will become the dominant precipitation in all areas after midnight (in the last areas to change) and this will continue until shortly after dawn on Thursday. It does not look like a tree damaging ice storm, although some weakened branches could come down with the remote possibility of limited power outages. Where even a little freezing rain does occur, it only takes a small amount of icing for slippery conditions to develop. Thursday will become partly cloudy and blustery but relatively mild, with temperatures reaching the mid 40s during the afternoon. Friday and the beginning of the weekend will be relatively tranquil before we deal with yet another one of these messy storm systems around Sunday, which looks like another combination of snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain once again.
In the “heads up” department, 7 to 10 days from now a major outbreak of cold air could develop and there could be a potent coastal storm moving up the coast along the leading edge of the cold air bringing plenty of snow. Keep in mind that this is so far out as to be an educated guess/pattern recognition observation at this point, but most of the pieces for this to happen are available and some of the guidance is trending in this direction.
Stay tuned!
James M. Arnold is a former Weather Specialist who worked with the 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
