Friday February 18 2022 Forecast (8:30AM)

83 Comments

DAYS 1-5 (FEBRUARY 18-22)

We’re right at the end of our rain and wind event as I type this update just after 8:00 a.m. on Friday. If you are northwest of Boston (basically outside of I-95) and were outside or looking outside you saw a brief “car-wash” burst of rain and wind. There are actually a couple of these “line segments” moving through the area early this morning, and they represent the cold front. Even if you don’t see the heaviest rain with these, that front is coming through, and soon the rain threat will shut off from west to east, replaced by dry air, a sun/cloud mix, and a shifted but still gusty wind during today. Temperatures were at their maximum for the day in the upper 50s to lower 60s during the overnight hours and will be falling throughout the day today, but not drastically. However, by tonight we’ll end up well below freezing and any standing water that is not dried by today’s wind will freeze up. Keep that in mind if you have to venture out tonight and early Saturday. As for Saturday’s weather, a vigorous disturbance will be moving across the Northeast, and with colder air in place, that means the chance of snow showers here, except possibly rain shower activity closer to the South Coast. Right now I expect that we’ll see two batches of this activity, one in the midday to early afternoon hours, and another one later in the day. The second of these will likely be narrower but more potent, and may contain heavy snow squalls that white-out the visibility and drop a small snow accumulation in a short time, quickly making roads and walkways slick. Tomorrow night, we’ll have a genuine blast of cold and windy weather, setting up a cold start to Sunday. Although high pressure slipping to our south quickly on Sunday will allow the wind to shift to west and southwest and that combined with a good deal of higher angle sun will make it feel nicer by afternoon. This trend will continue with a legitimate warm-up for Presidents Day Monday, when many areas make a run at or exceed 50. However, our theme of quick changes continues, and the next low pressure area should be upon us with the threat of unsettled weather by Tuesday – with the early ideas on this being more of a rain threat than a frozen precipitation one. More fine tuning for that as we get closer to it.

TODAY: Clouds, rain showers, and rain squalls into mid morning west to east, then a sun/cloud mix. Temperatures fall to the 40s. Wind SW shifting to NW 15-25 MPH, higher gusts.

TONIGHT: Clearing. Lows 18-25. Wind NW 10-20 MPH, diminishing, shifting to W.

SATURDAY: Sun/cloud mix. Passing snow showers/squalls possible except rain or snow showers South Coast. Highs 30-37. Wind W10-20 MPH, higher gusts, shifting to NW.

SATURDAY NIGHT: Clearing. Lows 8-15. Wind NW 10-20 MPH, higher gusts, diminishing overnight. Wind chill below 0 at times.

SUNDAY: Mostly sunny. Highs 35-42. Wind W 5-15 MPH.

SUNDAY NIGHT: Mostly clear. Lows 22-29. Wind SW 5-15 MPH.

MONDAY (PRESIDENTS DAY): Partly sunny. Highs 46-53. Wind SW 10-20 MPH.

MONDAY NIGHT: Clouding over. Lows 32-39. Wind SE 5-15 MPH.

TUESDAY: Cloudy. Chance of rain. Highs 40-47. Wind E 5-15 MPH.

DAYS 6-10 (FEBRUARY 23-27)

A boundary will sit in our region for most of next week. One low pressure system departs early in the period with any rain/mix ending, then a second system around February 25 may have colder air to work with with a better chance of wintry precipitation or a variety. Temperatures trending colder.

DAYS 11-15 (FEBRUARY 28 – MARCH 4)

Pattern looks colder with additional wintry weather precipitation threats.

83 thoughts on “Friday February 18 2022 Forecast (8:30AM)”

  1. Good morning and thank you TK.
    Just got the car wash with a big gust of wind. Front coming on through. 🙂

    1. I took a nice time lapse video of mine. The rain wasn’t that heavy, but the time lapse video is cool. I’ll post a link to it in a bit.

  2. Thanks TK. A little over a half inch of rain here. Awesome forecast for last night and this past weekend too (and all of the time 🙂 )

    1. I saw this this morning. Hilarious. The guy needs to become a sports announcer. 😉

      Great job by pilot & crew on this landing.

      1. “Easy son, easy … are you sure, are you sure … go on then, drop it, go on then, drop it … nicely done.”

        Now, I feel perfectly comfortable watching this landing at Heathrow from the comfort of my living room. Different story next month if there’s yet another gale and I’m a passenger in one of those jets.

        I can imagine the conversation in March between the cockpit and air traffic control:

        “This is Delta 5984. We’re approaching LHR 11. We have a passenger on board who claims he’s a `weather nut’ and tells us to first review the landing skills of the Air Algiers pilot who landed his Airbus on February 18th at the height of Storm Eunice. Can you transmit the details of that flight’s approach and landing.”

        2. Very interesting indeed. Macs sister had so many stories for the first couple of decades of flying. She was strictly international at that point flying out of London. But after a while I think it just became part of her day. I will fly without hesitation, but it isn’t my favorite thing to do. Oddly, I had a dream last night about a plane having left engine problems. Not sure where that came from

  7. Thanks, TK

    Pretty wild here in Middleborough between 6-7 am. Lots of trees and wires down in town. Schools are open (we have a half-day teacher day), but Carver and Duxbury both had a two-hour delay.

    I had the scanner on and I believe I heard that some students removed a tree from the road, somewhere in the area, so that a bus could get through.

    I love the plane play-by-play. Just needed a ¡Gooooooooool!
    when the plane finally landed. 🙂

  8. They had to put a course hold on the men’s ski-cross seeding runs at the Winter Olympics Friday AM in Beijing, not because of temperature (although 7F with wind chill of -25F or lower is pretty harsh), but because the wind blew the finish line over. 😉

  9. Thanks TK.

    As long as the upcoming events into March will be mostly snow (or at least frozen) for Boston, I see no reason why Boston can’t win the snow race this winter season 2021-22. Of course, strength and type of precip of system(s) still TBD. 🙂

    BOS = 43.3”
    ORH = 37.9”

    +5.4”

  10. Boston has a shot to get close to if not a little bit above normal snowfall for the winter. Boston is also beating new York as they have 16.7 inches for the winter so far.

    1. NYC is done, for all practical purposes. Actually I thought they received somewhat more than that so far as I assumed they got clobbered from the late January blizzard as did Boston. How much did NY receive Jimmy? Now I’m curious.

      1. NYC is done? WAY too early to say that. Their normal for March is 5.0″ and April is 0.4″. March, 2019 they had 10.4″. March, 2018, they had 11.6″ (and April had another 5.5″). March, 2017 they had 9.7″. March, 2015 they had 18.6″.

        I also show them receiving a foot or more in 6 separate storms over the years that occurred after this date.

  12. Thanks TK

    We had that wall of rain driving into the front of the house around 8:00ish. It was crazy. Wind was not disappointing here. I suspect it was pretty much as advertised.

  14. Wind gusts of 73mph reported in the Netherlands already, as the storm just reached the country. Two deaths – both due to uprooted trees – have already been reported.

    Here’s a recent video of the roof of a soccer stadium being destroyed by the wind (mother nature is a beast): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NVxwS9Muu4

  18. Philip, this appeared in my FB feed today. I though you and others might be interested in how our wild critters help us. For just one example, coyotes are amazing at controlling rodents. Not that Boston has mice or rats of course

    https://imgur.com/a/SZupPDP

    1. I am amazed and somewhat shocked that coyotes and wolves mate with each other. Is this a new behavior?

      coyote + wolf = coywolf

      1. It’s been observed for at least a century, but I can pretty much guarantee you it started before we noticed it.

        1. It did exist but for the most part was denied. Just as bobcats have been reported in this area for years, but our local animal folks said …..nope, not happening.

      2. In the late 60s and 70s, I fished often around Rangeley, Maine. One of the lakes was Pamachenee. Fascinating story in its own right. It was owned by Brown Paper and used as a corporate retreat. Early 70s, Brown Paper broke the lane into parcels and sold them. You could not build …all you could do was fish. My then fiancée’s dad bought a parcel. Clearest and cleanest water I’ve ever seen. Salmon to die for.

        And as usual, I digress. Locals started then to report what they believed were coydogs. Nature folks denied they exist. Insert eye roll here.

        Most all eastern coyotes are coy wolves. They simply just keep finding a way to populate and survive. Absolutely fascinating creatures.

    1. Highest winds, elevated areas and areas closest to the South coast.
      46 mph at Logan was tops. Didn’t even make it to the High Wind warning criteria.

    2. About what I figured. Always a couple “above-and-beyond” somewhere, but if that was going to happen it was right where it was recorded.

  24. A few days ago, a major Atlantic storm named Dudley hit Ireland, the British Isles, and the low countries with gale to severe gale conditions. Today, the next named storm, Eunice, beat Dudley in terms of punch; sustained (hours long) severe to what is called “whole” gale conditions (on the Beaufort scale 9 to 10) across much of the Netherlands, with wind gusts over 80mph reported in many coastal places (the highest reported/confirmed wind gust in Holland was 88mph; in the UK it was 112mph). A few locales in Britain and the Wadden Islands in the Netherlands experienced what are called “violent storm” conditions (sustained, hours long Beaufort 11; next level up is 12, which would be a hurricane).

  29. Arrived a few hours ago here at my mothers in Amsterdam NY. Still a solid snow cover here and it is rock hard with a layer of ice on top. You could literally skate on it.

    Vicki that ice jam on the Mohawk you posted is not too far here…about 10 miles southeast in Schenectady. I remember this happening quite a bit while growing up here. That stockade area is notorious for ice jams and flooding.

    Fortunately the warmup here was only one day or the flooding could have been worse. Erie county in western NY was in the warm sector for two days. Couple that with heavy rain and snowmelt, and they are having their worst flooding in years.

  30. I am taking my son skiing to Whiteface tomorrow and I expect it to live up to its nickname “iceface” after all that rain and a flash freeze last night.

    Should get some natural snow during the day tomorrow though from the clipper and that’s one hell of a snow squall being modeled on the short range guidance when the cold front comes through. Will be interesting when that comes through the mountains with high winds and whiteout conditions. I’ll be sure to post an update and take some pictures!

  32. This afternoon is going to be like watching a line of thunderstorms in the summer time with these snow squalls and see what happens.

  33. With these snow squalls just like a summer thunderstorm it only last 10-20 minutes but if one is happening where you are briefly heavy snow gusty winds reduced visibility slippery travel.

  35. NWS discussion from earlier this morning:

    Cold front will move into the western zones during the early
    afternoon hours. Steep low- level lapse rates and sufficient
    low-level moisture will support snowfall along and behind the
    front. NAMNest model forecast soundings depict profiles
    favorable for snow squalls. Therefore as the front is moving
    through the region there could be a brief period heavy snowfall
    and strong winds resulting in low visibilities and dangerous
    travel. The front and any associated snow squalls will be moving
    to quickly to produce any significant accumulations, but a
    dusting to an inch or two will be possible for much of southern
    New England this afternoon. Expect highest accumulations over
    the higher elevations of western MA.

  36. I like etymology. Now that we’re getting snow squalls I was wondering about the origin of the word “squall.” Turns out it is likely of Scandinavian origin: For example, the Swedish word “skvala.”

  38. This is what the snow squalls look like now

    https://radblast.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/radar/WUNIDS_map?num=40&type=N1R&mapx=400&mapy=240&brand=wui&delay=15&frame=1&scale=1&transx=0&transy=0&severe=0&smooth=0&centerx=400&centery=240&station=TYX&rainsnow=0&lightning=0&noclutter=0&showlabels=1&showstorms=0&rand=27421391

    https://radblast.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/radar/WUNIDS_map?num=40&type=N1R&mapx=400&mapy=240&brand=wui&delay=15&frame=1&scale=1&transx=0&transy=0&severe=0&smooth=0&centerx=400&centery=240&station=BGM&rainsnow=0&lightning=0&noclutter=0&showlabels=1&showstorms=0&rand=27421391

    https://radblast.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/radar/WUNIDS_map?num=40&type=N1R&mapx=400&mapy=240&brand=wui&delay=15&frame=1&scale=1&transx=0&transy=0&severe=0&smooth=0&centerx=400&centery=240&station=ENX&rainsnow=0&lightning=0&noclutter=0&showlabels=1&showstorms=0&rand=27421392

    There’s a lot out there. I am wondering if model snow totals are underdone?

  41. From the NWS not too long ago

    Radar shows an area of light snows ahead
    of the snow squall, however given the dry air in place it might
    not be much more than flurries for the lower elevations. Thus
    it won`t impact travel. The snow squall on the other hand has
    the potential to quickly cause roads to get slippery. Although
    the snow will only last 20 minutes or so, a quick 1/2″ to 1″ of
    snow could accumulate. With quick drop of temperatures with the
    snow (thanks to wet-bulbing) and then cold air rushing in with
    the cold front, we may see roads temperatures also quickly fall
    to near or below freezing. Depending on how that flash freeze
    potential looks to be, we may end up issuing Snow Squall
    Warnings for parts of the area.

    Light snow ahead???? Look at those radar returns. That ain’t light snow!!!@(#&()!@&#()&!)(&#@()!&#()!@(#*!(@*#(!*@#(

    1. Check the surface obs. That is falling into a lot of dry air and will look more impressive on radar than it is. Big dewpoint depressions – eat up a lot of that snow as it falls. But what it will do is set-up the atmosphere for the squall line later.

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