Tuesday Forecast

127 Comments

7:37AM

DAYS 1-5 (JANUARY 23-27)
The front that came down from the north early yesterday attempted to move back to the north and was met with a struggle due to stubborn cold air at the surface, which held temperatures near to below freezing in a good portion of central to northeastern MA and southern NH, resulting in freezing drizzle, some freezing rain, and icy conditions. The warm air finally wins out today though, preceded by fog in areas that are still cool, and accompanied by wet weather including some heavy rainfall. All of this clears the region west to east by tonight as a strong cold front from the west pushes through, and then the middle to late part of the week will be cold and dry before it moderates to start the weekend. Forecast details…
TODAY: Lingering icy areas central MA and southern NH early. Overcast through mid afternoon with areas of fog and drizzle through mid morning then numerous rain showers, some heavy including the chance of thunder, from late morning through mid afternoon except later afternoon Cape Cod as clouds break in areas to the west. Highs 52-60. Wind light E early then S increasing to 15-25 MPH with gusts above 30 MPH except above 40 MPH from the I-95 belt eastward.
TONIGHT: Clearing. Lows 33-40. Wind W 15-25 MPH with higher gusts.
WEDNESDAY: Sunny. Highs 35-42. Wind W 10-20 MPH with higher gusts.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Partly cloudy. Lows 15-22. Wind NW 5-15 MPH with higher gusts.
THURSDAY: Mostly sunny. Highs 28-35. Wind NW 10-20 MPH with higher gusts.
FRIDAY: Mostly sunny. Lows in the 10s. Highs from the upper 20s to lower 30s.
SATURDAY: Partly sunny. Lows in the 20s. Highs in the 40s.

DAYS 6-10 (JANUARY 28-FEBRUARY 1)
Mild and windy with a risk of rain showers January 28 into January 29 then windy and colder later January 29 into January 30 with drier weather. Continued dry and more tranquil but still chilly through January 31. A turn to milder February 1 may be accompanied by light precipitation.

DAYS 11-15 (FEBRUARY 2-6)
Mild and unsettled February 2 then drier and a little colder followed by a possible winter precipitation threat later in the period. Timing will be very uncertain this far out.

127 thoughts on “Tuesday Forecast”

  2. Thank you TK

    Sutton buses got high and middle school kids to school. Ice must have started to form when they went out for elementary???? Buses were having trouble getting up hills, etc. and we’re finally ordered to pull over where they were until the roads could be treated. Son and SIL leave at 4:30 and 6:00. No ice then.

    What would have caused ice to form on roads for later bus routes?

        1. It was in Sutton. But I’m hearing other towns told their buses to pull to the side of the road and stop. Daughter thought northbridge and upton possibly

    2. Perhaps there wasn’t enough precip/moisture on the roads to form significant ice , but with the arrival of the main precip shield, that really iced things up by the time the elementary routes were being run ??????

  4. Good morning and thank you TK.

    There must have been a final push South of that colder air.
    At midnight it was 39 at my house in JP and 34 at 7 AM.
    34 with my weather station, 33 with the car thermometer when I left
    for the office. I was surprised at that and I can only imagine what it was/is like just a few more miles inland.

    1. That makes sense. Worcester had a delay but it is at a higher elevation I think. Terrifying yo say the least

  6. Boy, the roads were an experience travelling from my home in Chelmsford to my office in Merrimack, NH. Secondary roads in MA were ice rinks, the highway was great. Once over the NH line on the same highway, road was scary. Secondary roads were great! Good times. Can’t wait until everything melts by the time I go home. Be safe out there!

    1. Yikes. Glad you are ok. Did you see school bus video I posted above. I can’t imagine the driver and the kids. I don’t know if there were injuries but it seemed to happen slow motion

      1. Half the kids on that bus probably aren’t even wearing belts . Scary and that puts delays & closings into perspective

        1. This was on other side of town. Daughter kept kids home. She wasn’t putting them on bus when they finally could run again and she didn’t want to drive with all three kids. I cannot imagine the parents of kids on that bus. I’m surprised the car stopped it.

  7. Even here in Wrentham we got down to 32 this morning with a couple slick spots. Very impressive that the cold has held on like this given that the preceding air mass really wasn’t that cold. Several hours of moderate to heavy rain incoming.

  8. posted this on the previous blog, but it was 27 in Groveland, MA this morning at 7:15 with a thick coating of ice on all untreated surfaces

  9. When I was trying to get to the train, at the Wilmington station, there was no salt. I slipped and fell.

  11. Just looking at radar overlaid with temperatures… I would imagine a very icy scene in interior north-central MA right now. Even the Framingham-Worcester corridor looks like they could be seeing freezing rain.

  12. The air doesn’t have to be all that cold. It just has to be cold enough. Very low level cold is the hardest thing to forecast around here.

    The glaze this morning where no precipitation was falling was caused by freezing fog.

  15. Oldest wanted to go to school so I rode along in case. I was surprised as we got closer to center of town that trees and bushes have a layer of ice

  16. Heavy rain here in Manchester, CT. No icing this am in northern CT but I was very surprised to wake up to temps still in the mid 30’s. Even as of 10am, it is still 35 in Hartford and Meriden, but now in the low 50’s in Bridgeport and New Haven. That’s a big temp difference over a very short distance. Looks like our spike to the mild 55-60 air today is going to be very short lived.

  23. 35.9 at my house in JP with 0.33 inch of RAIN so far and counting.

    I would have expected it to be at least in the 40s by now if not 50s.

  24. Warm frontal passage in marshfield. 44F to 53F in last 45 minutes, fog has lifted and there is a busy southerly wind.

  28. A forecast high of 50+ does NOT mean the entire day will be 50+. I still feel this is lost on many people.

  29. So true and something I’ve also wondered about with respect to average temperatures as it relates to climate change. For instance if It’s 50 degrees for 10 minutes today and we have a high temperature of 50 although the vast majority was spent in the 30’s is that looked at the same as a day where the high was also 50 but the average was in the 40’s? Anywho, CMC wants to snow before the month end, GFS does as well, but not quite as organized as the CMC is

  31. Some in town are calling for the superintendent to be fired because of the bus situation.

    This is ridiculous. Others are saying DPW stinks. I don’t get it. They are always great.

    Others want to do what worcester does and follow their lead.

    Was ice forecast down this far today?

    It is clear to see what these folks go through when making a decision to postpone or cancel

    1. I for one am I never going to post a criticism of a decision to cancel school again. After seeing that school bus in Sutton slide along the street into that car. In a sense, thankfully that parked car was there to stop the bus.

      When it comes to children, better safe than sorry! With this stupid 180-day rule makes decisions to cancel more difficult than it should be.

  33. When I got up this morning around 6:15, Logan was at 32 and only “inched” up from there since. I believe currently it is 36.

  36. JPD…The fact that Logan got as low as 32 I am somewhat surprised that your area didn’t get a lot lower than you reported. I don’t know how the cold even managed to get as far south as it did, but I would say the city dodged a bullet. That icing could have been here easily.

    1. I suspect because Logan is situated NE of my location and was 5 or 6 more miles closer to the colder air source.

  37. I have bus duty at 2:20pm, bus duty is once every 6 days in the schedule’s cycle. My last 2 or 3 bus duties have fallen on sunny, pleasant days. Not today, lol !!

  38. 12z EURO op run follows up yesterday’s 12z run with more consistency as far as building a large mass of frigid air in Canada. Being that day 10 is now 24 hrs further ahead than yesterday, the placement of the arctic air is further south in Canada and there looks like there is one heck of an arctic cold front in the Great Lakes region.

    1. Not looking forward to that. I have no problem with a few degrees below normal for highs but that bitter cold again for days on end like last time…UGH!

      I don’t know if I can handle 10+ days again! 🙁

  43. The NWS Winter Weather Advisory generally covered all the areas impacted by ice today. What cities and towns do with that information is up to them. They are trained about such situations, at least in theory. But instead of being a finger-pointing trigger, today’s situation should be a wake-up call to anyone who under-reacted. Most if not all credible weather sources indicated areas of icing for today. But many just saw the high temps and assumed since it was showing 50-something on their phone they were not impacted. Once again the inadequacies of weather apps and weather forecasts without added value is showcased loudly and clearly.

    1. I fell for this today. My stupid app projected 54 by 11am…it was like 32 ha. Now it doesn’t show 50’s at all for today. This morning it showed a high of 57.

      1. Model-driven. No meteorologist involved many times in these cases. And there is a widespread mentality that somehow the “predicted” high temp is going to be the temp from the moment the calendar flips to the date til the moment it ends. Weather doesn’t work like that. 😉

        1. Yup. The app is useless. It will show snow on a certain day…the next day that same day will now be sunny…then it goes back to snow by night…etc.

            1. Yes. I agree. There are times when I think something may have been better thought-out one way or another, but we must remember that we’re dealing with people that have to face angry groups of people regardless of decisions made, and have to put that aside to make the most informed decision they can, in a time reasonable enough for people impacted to alter their plans. It’s far easier to criticize those that make these decisions than to actually be the one making them.

    2. Last evening at 11PM, Eric painted the icing area pretty well. He may have missed by a few miles in places, but he did pretty well.

    3. Make sense although I would hope towns do not use weather apps

      What I do not understand is how the ice came on so quickly. There was none at 4:30 and none at 6:00 and middle and high school seemed to be ok. But the later elementary kids had trouble.

      I don’t know if added pressure from parents to not delay or cancel plays a part. There were some very unhappy parents after the last storm.

      I do know Sutton and other towns said they were treating. We saw no sign of it here. And the parking lot at elementary even after 10:00 was an ice rink.

      There was a preschool van accident on the way home at 11:00 in Sutton also.. A little girl in my younger grasndsons class, the driver and a monitor were sent to hospital.

      As you know, I find Sutton DPW to be very good. However, not today. The town has addressed the situation but it doesn’t seem to be truthful or as if it understands as a whole that today was a really horrible mistake.

  44. A tweet from earlier… this guy’s pretty good, and I agree with him.

    Tom Woods @RealSullivanWx

    While winter looks to make a return to the Eastern US in February, I have concerns over placement of NoAm PV center — well north of Hudson Bay — which could limit the amount of arctic air intrusion in lower 48. Not looking like a reprise of two week cold snap of two weeks ago.

    (My comments now)…
    I think any deep cold in February is going to meet resistance from a SE Ridge. The PV isn’t going to dive bomb us like it did earlier this winter, at least not in a sustained way. It’s also why I’m a little skeptical of cold and dry. I think we’ll see a fairly active storm track, but whether we get more snow or more mix events remains to be seen. This is especially true first week of February. Once the MJO arrives in phase 8 around 2/10 is when I think we have a window for deeper cold.

    1. I generally agree and had mentioned the SE ridge resistance, but the drier idea comes from the trough axis which may be east enough that when we get colder it’s WNW flow here and then when we moderate it’s split flow if there is Pacific moisture and lack-of-phase keeps systems south of here moreso than lifting in. Something to monitor.

  46. Apparently the video I posted early morning of the school bus is being shown on the weather channel, and in CT and ME news.

  47. I live in Sutton, and I usually walk my dog through the Peachtree Lane neighborhood. At 5 this morning, I went out, ten feet down the road, and went back because the road was impassable. This was long before the buses get on the road. At 630, when I left for work, the roads still had not been treated. For the DPW, School Superintendant, or Police Department to say this happened after the buses deployed, is inaccurate. I don’t lay any blame here, but I hope there is a review of their protocol to improve things in the future. My children got on the bus safely around 9 (70 minutes late).

    1. Hi Tim. Exactly. They were not treated. If they were, it was spotty. We always have proactive treating even in my small corner of south Sutton. We did not have any freezing this am. But everyone should know that toward the center where the schools are is always colder.

  48. Was 38 here, a thick fog rolled in and it shot up to 45, then the fog vanished and the temp went down to 35. I can literally see the front in my neighborhood wavering around…

  51. Patriots will be wearing their road white uniforms even though they are technically the “home” team.

      1. I just heard about it on the evening news. They are 3-0 in the SB in white. What is interesting, though is that they won their first in their blue home uniforms.

  53. The students who were on that sliding school bus in Sutton will be interviewed tonight on WBZ-TV news at 11:00 p.m.

    Try and stay up if you are interested Vicki! 🙂

    1. Thank you, Philip. I am currently fighting pneumonia and didn’t sleep more than an hour last night so hopefully will be in bed early, but I will set it to record. I truly appreciate your letting me know

  55. At my house in Lunenburg, the high temperature today was just 31. The power was off several times. Everything is still coated in ice.

  56. I suppose it all averages out, but today would be the poster for
    advocating a change to the way the average daily temperature is calculated.

    Currently: High + Low Divided by 2.
    Proposed: 24 hourly temperatures divided by 24. (I believe they do it this way in Europe or at least the U. K.)

    The 24 hour method is far more real. The US is backwards sometimes.

  57. There is some positive news down the road for school cancellations.

    Some districts are already piloting this and I can see many districts doing this 10 to 15 years down the road.

    Teachers will leave a lesson online that students will be able to access at home. Along with that would be some class work to complete, much like what would be done during a regular school lesson. We’re not taking a paper lesson, but an interactive taped lesson. In turn, the cancelled school day would be counted,

    Yes, obviously tons of issues to iron out, such as would everyone have access and what would be done or expected for those who don’t.

    But, this is coming down the road and it will put the cancellation debate to rest.

    1. Interesting, Tom, and I think an excellent compromise.

      That was the adult in my speaking

      Now the kid in me says……pahleezzeee don’t make me work on a snow day. That’s half the fun of being a kid in winter.

    2. Yes I saw this awhile back Tom regarding the missed day . I just showed my wife & son the sliding bus . My son both takes the bus & sometimes gets driven. I asked him about seat belts & he said there was none, weird isn’t it .

      1. I feel like snow days a breaks. I loved snow days as i would go out and play, catch up on much needed sleep, catch up with homework. So no we do not need schools to invade even more time

  59. Vicki, I saw that you’re fighting pneumonia. Gosh, that’s not good. Do take care. Rob Bradford, who works at WEEI, was in the hospital this week with pneumonia. It’s a tough disease.

  60. I believe that Logan was in the mid-50’s for all of two hours (3-5 pm).

    54 – 3:00 pm
    55 – 4:00 pm
    40 – 5:00 pm

  61. Regarding the situation this morning…

    One thing that should be kept in mind is the “usual” things that happen in the geographic sub-areas of the state. Generally speaking, it is central and northern Worcester County that seem to get more affected by these CAD situations. Southern Worcester County towns would not necessarily have had their guard up going into this AM. A generalization, I agree, but everyone tries to subconsciously fit events into past patterns.

    That shouldn’t prevent paying close attention to any particular weather situation. For where I am, we are commonly affected by these CAD situations, and was having conversations with my ops folks yesterday at 3:30 pm about the possibility of an icing situation.

    Type of roadway treatment then comes into effect. We never use sand, only salt… except when we know there is going to be a prolonged ice event. In circumstances like today, the salt was just going to be washed away, but sand will stay and provide some grit for traction.

    And finally timing. The length of time for a route to be completed matters. If the route takes 2 hours to complete, but the buses roll only an hour in, there’s a very good chance the buses will be on untreated roads.

    Long story short, this is more of an art than a science at times, and we are all human. Certainly neither the DPW or the schools wanted this to happen. Learn and adapt, and hope it doesn’t happen again.

  62. We have one confused GFS in the longer range. Every run has a different scenario near the end. 😉

  63. I am becoming increasingly frustrated listening to news reports from yesterday’s bus incident in town. The superintendent continues to maintain that he spoke to the Highway department who said the roads would be fine by the time the buses got out there. He goes on to say that they began treating roads at 6am. I live in the area of town where the accident happened, and the roads were impassable before 5am. I have no doubt that he received bad information from Highway, because they dropped the ball first by going out too late. That being said, rather than shape his explanation to suit him, I wish he would say, “I made a mistake this morning by underestimating the situation, and I met with administrators from all departments involved to make sure this situation is prevented in the future.” He is only adding fuel to the fire by continuing his original story. I think it is a bit over the top to call for his resignation at this point, but if he does not accept responsibility for his decision, I may change my mind. I do think it is time for new leadership at the Highway department, though. They consistently drop the ball when it comes to winter weather.

    1. I absolutely agree, Tim. How will parents have any confidence in the future, knowing he is not being honest. He needs to do exactly what you have said.

      As far as highway, we just never see that it is bad. I do know that we see only part of a very large town with lots of windy roads. What we see if from our perspective; and if it is bad elsewhere, then I cannot question it since I’m not there.

      The folks in town are a bit over the top on the Sutton Site. The latest is to have someone blame the weather folks. It would be good if people united and simply spoke to the individual – the superintendent – who is the person who needs to address this.

    2. Tim, just drove with my daughter to take four year old to Sutton preschool. We made same trip yesterday and take all back roads…about a 10 minute drive. Roads had been noticeably treated with salt everywhere. Not so much yesterday. The line of cars was easily ten times longer than normal. Seems a lot of parent’s lost confidence. We also drove by area of Peach Tree. Those hills are scary. I’m surprised a bus could get up them. I’m not sure how you can adequately treat roads that steep and winding. That area is about as far north in Sutton as we are south and directly north of our house.

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