Wednesday Forecast

139 Comments

7:22AM

DAYS 1-5 (FEBRUARY 27-MARCH 3)
The only pure snow event of meteorological winter will occur on its final day (starting the day before, technically), as a wave of low pressure will run into plenty of cold air and produce a general light to borderline moderate snowfall from late this evening into Thursday. The snow event will be largely over by or during Thursday’s morning commute although some ocean-effect snow showers may linger along the Massachusetts coastline, where we are most likely to realize the higher end of my expected 2-5 inch range, while areas from the Merrimack Valley into southern NH, due to drier air, and areas close to the South Coast, due to a shorter-duration of snow, may be closer to the lower ends of the totals. It will take very little difference in melted precipitation to make a difference of an inch or two in total snowfall as this will be a fairly high snow to water ratio event anyway. Once again, it’s not so much about the exact amount of snow any given area will be seeing, but timing, with regards to impact, as the event will be occurring and wrapping up prior to and during a weekday morning commute. But at least without the mess of varying types of precipitation, rapid temperature changes, and wind, this will be a relatively easy event to manage. But no matter how simple the event, it’s always very smart to use caution when traveling. Please do so. The remainder of the forecast has a few adjustments, as it looks like the Friday disturbance will be fairly weak and barely carry enough moisture to produce a touch of rain and/or snow in southern areas. The dilemma, if you will, is how the weekend system will behave. All guidance has struggled with exactly what to do with this. My idea of a couple days ago of 2 nearly separate systems, one to the south, one to the north, may now be the most likely scenario, essentially resulting in a frontal passage here at the mid point of the weekend, with an episode of rain and/or snow showers. Precipitation type may be hard to know until shortly before the event due to marginal temperatures. So there is yet more fine-tuning to do with that one, which seems bound to be hard to figure out until virtually the last moment. Oh well!
Forecast details…
TODAY: Sunshine followed by increasing cloudiness. Highs 25-32. Wind light variable.
TONIGHT: Cloudy. Snow arrives west to east late evening and continues overnight. Lows 18-25. Wind light N to NE.
THURSDAY: Mostly cloudy start with lingering snow especially southeastern MA, total accumulation 2-5 inches with the lower end of the range most likely in southern NH and the Merrimack Valley of MA, and the higher end of the range most likely from Boston to Plymouth to Providence, and another area of lower end amounts possible closer to the South Coast including Cape Cod. Highs 28-35. Wind NE to N 5-15 MPH.
THURSDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy. Lows 18-25. Wind light N to NW.
FRIDAY: Variably cloudy. Risk of rain/snow showers favoring eastern CT, RI, and southeastern MA. Highs 35-42. Wind variable 5-15 MPH.
SATURDAY: Early sun then clouding up. PM rain or snow showers. Lows from the upper 20s to lower 30s. Highs in the 40s.
SUNDAY: Clouds and a risk of light mix/snow early, then partly sunny with isolated snow showers. Temperatures generally steady in 30s. Becoming windy.

DAYS 6-10 (MARCH 4-8)
Disturbance brings clouds and a risk of a few snow showers March 4. Dry and chilly March 5. Watching the March 6-8 period for one or two storm systems that may impact the region with rain/mix/snow.

DAYS 11-15 (MARCH 9-13)
A shot of cold air to start the period and then a moderating trend seems more likely with a minor precipitation event around mid period otherwise mainly dry.

139 thoughts on “Wednesday Forecast”

    1. Those are all good. 2-5 consensus and it makes sense. As previously noted, the difference between 2 and 3, or 3 and 4, or 4 and 5, will be just several hundreths of an inch of precipitation. Makes very little difference in impact here.

  2. Thanks TK !

    It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow morning.

    Our district, for the elementary schools, does a shortened day on Thursday’s to allow elementary teachers the planning time they need to teach their students all subjects.

    So, I feel like the 2 hr delay is off the table for Thursday, because if you did one, the elementary schools would go to school for about 2.5 hours, which isn’t practical.

    And, I have a feeling at 5:30am tomorrow, at least in Marshfield, it will still be snowing and we may have 3 or 4 inches accumulated by then.

    I hope there’s school tomorrow, but we’ll see what happens.

    1. Tom if the forecast holds & say we get 5 inches & it’s going to at least lets guess 5-6 am I highly doubt school will be held in my opinion . The priority will be the roads than the lots of the schools . My sons new school is very on top of delays or cancellations usually the night before

  4. Thanks Tk . I think tonight will be my fourth all nighter since the Sunday of Presidents’ Day weekend . The storms waited until I got back to work .

  9. TK, do you think there is much of a risk of rain mixing in to the Saturday precip up at Killington?
    Thanks.

  14. Thanks TK.

    9AM ob at Boston Logan: 16F, dew point -13F, altimeter 30.45″. I don’t see much reason to stray from my original prediction of 1-3″ for SNE, but 2-4″ is probably a safer play. As TK has said it’s a matter of maybe a tenth of an inch of QPF and I’m going to take the under. The Kuchera ratios look high to me. They’re ~18:1. I think lower, or else if they really are that high it will mean QPF is low.

    1. 5 inches would be nice.

      It looks like next week and beyond will brings us more incremental snow events.

      Boston will eventually beat NYC, DC, Seattle, Paris (well, that battle was won a while back as their spring is in full bloom), etc … in the aggregate snow department. I guess things even out in the end.

  21. It seems like everyone is in pretty much agreement on the snow ranges . Tk is there an outside chance that dry air could hold on even longer .

  23. So we go from worrying about a suppression storm next week to an inside cutter lol. That escalated quickly. I like the gfs now. Has a nice coastal storm.

  25. Boston Logan T/Td at this hour: 24/-11. RH 20%. Lucky the winds aren’t stronger, otherwise the fire weather threat would be quite high this afternoon after a couple of dry, windy days.

    1. WX what time do you think it hits Boston just curious . Feels better out there now compared to this morning

          1. With maximum snowfall rate at some point maybe 1/2 inch per hour. But that maximum rate will not last for the duration of the event. This is why I’m still comfortable with a 2-5 inch range.

            1. Indeed. Sending us home & need to be back at 8. Well since I get home at 5 & will need to leave at 7: 15 I’d say this sucks .

              1. Goes with the territory. My friend has worked several 12 to 18 hour shifts starting at 2AM this winter but he’s thankful it’s been an easier winter compared to many recent one at his work property. He works for a multi building business complex with around 20,000 parking spaces plus all the roads in and out as well as walkways and some steps to do. They cut back his crew too. Bleh!

  27. This thing may come in fairly late on the South Coast. People will be yelling “bust” all over the net. 😉

  28. Should have stuck with idea from a few days ago and never wavered from it on the weekend system, or systems, as it will turn out. 😉 One miss, one minor event. And at one point I had a funny feeling something bigger would happen. Just shows the type of pattern we have right now. It hasn’t really changed at all.

    1. Like I was saying here a few days ago – this winter seems to be following a specific beat that it doesn’t want to change up. Much like how last winter it wanted to bang the nor’easter drum and in 2015 it banged the snowpocalypse drum.

  29. Go For Snow – 12z CMC and Euro are also a sizable hit for Sunday night and Monday but Euro is a coastal hugger and warm with rain in SNE. Axis of heavy snow is way north in NNE and upstate NY. CMC puts a rain/snow line thru SNE but has heavy snow (foot plus) NE of a Boston to hartford line.

        1. It’s just adjusting. It’s not really a trend. That model doesn’t do a great job until right into an event for this type of precipitation.

  34. Hope everyone is well…

    There were a couple of postings of Blizzard of ’78 photos here in the recent weeks showing how deep the snow was 41 years ago.
    I finally found this one and have a free moment to post and share with you:

    https://imgur.com/RJUSJwJ

    That’s a hand-built snow bank at the end of the our Mansfield driveway.

      1. I am on the left with one of my younger brothers. We are holding our cats. I am holding “Mr. C.” and my bro has “The Judge.” Judge lived to be 20 and Mr. C was 19.5. Judge was named after “Here Comes the Judge” from Laugh-In!

    2. Split system goes by early to mid weekend, minor impact. Monday is up in the air at this point. Too many pieces to put together for a solid idea, but I’m leaning toward something that is similar to the one right before it.

      I didn’t get the impression that the TV mets were really focused on that period of time. They seemed focused on the event starting this evening.

    1. I’ve been watching the period March 4-8 for a while. Any of those days are fair game for something.

  38. The HRRR has consistently been showing the lowest totals, and remains my model of choice. I think most in SNE don’t exceed 3”.

  39. Had a lot of fun with my students today about no school tomorrow. One showed me an app that is calling for 8″ of snow for Middleborough tonight. I showed them TK’s and your comments on this blog as my evidence and waved to them as they left the classroom, saying “¡Hasta Mañana!” (“See you tomorrow!). We have quizzes in all three classes tomorrow. I told them to make sure they study! We’re in tomorrow!

  40. Nothing yet in the city, although I was out a bit ago and I felt something hit my face, but couldn’t even see it in the street light. It looks like it is closing in, shouldn’t be too
    long now.

  41. Radars simply are not impressive at all. Unless something gets cranking, this thing
    will under achieve even the modest figures bandied about.

    Not for nothing, but at this hour it is 23 here with a dew point of 8. The snow is
    still fighting a crap load of dry air. Good luck.

      1. There is a lot of low level dry air out there but look for the snow to expand from the south later this evening. A few inches is still very achievable in most locations.

  43. Spoke to a friend who lives in Providence. It’s snowing moderately there and looks to continue to do so for quite a while. They and southeastern Massachusetts may be in this `storm’s `bullseye.’ Boston, not so much.

  51. Light snow here in Coventry CT with only a light sugar coating so far. 17 degrees with a dew point of 13.

    There’s such a huge gap of nothing on the radar in NE PA and SE NY that I initially thought one of the radar stations might have been down. I’ll be surprised if we crack an inch here.

  53. Big hit with the Sunday night/Monday AM storm on the 18z GFS, FV3, and ICON.

    GFS has a general 4-8” while the ICON and FV3 have a widespread foot of snow.

    12z CMC also had 12-18” in the Hartford to Boston corridor and points NW.

    If models hold serve tomorrow, could be our best shot at widespread significant snow since the November storm.

    Models are oh so close with the midweek coastal storm threat as well….

  56. Moderate snow here now. Looks like radar is back filling in my area. I don’t think many will see 5” though. Our best shot at that may be Sunday night into Monday.

  57. Everything right on track at this point. And yes the “uneven beginning” is no surprise. The atmosphere does not saturate exactly the same rate everywhere.

  58. This is not a great time to get too excited about model forecast for a threat more than 3 days away. They are still utter crap out there.

          1. It’s stronger on the models, yes. But that doesn’t mean much at this point. And that’s the threat that people are talking about, yes.

    1. Out of nearly 90 delays / closing as of 1AM, only 2 of them are closings. The rest are delays. I don’t think anybody needed to close for this event.

      1. They said out of safety for students as remember they have kids from multiple towns & it’s the first closing of the winter . What time does Boston shut off

        1. It should be winding down around dawn but there may be one lingering band that hangs on until as late as 8.

          I know it’s for safety but I think they could have pulled it off fairly safely. That school and Salem public are the only 2 that have closed. Everything else is a delay. Well at least they haven’t missed any yet.

    2. Similar here in Marblehead. So quiet and white, no tire tracks or even footsteps. Why is silence so refreshing?

        1. Hello Oceanair. Next door to you in Swampscott and it is beautiful out there.

          Radar shows system collapsing toward the southeast.

          1. Hi Longshot. I saw an incredible ocean photo taken in Swampscott a few years ago. It was of sea smoke rising up around the fishing boats with the winter sun piercing the mist – I can still see it in my mind’s eye.

            Just heard the snowplows going by; must be a few inches out there.

    1. Who would send a fake email out about a cancellation? This ought to make the local news today…

  64. morning…still snowing.

    looks like about 3 inches, perhaps a tad more. will measure on the way out to work.

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