1 Down, 1 To Go

Posted by Chris Lambert

First thing first... any leftover precip transitions over to snow this evening, and with temperatures dropping to and below freezing, icy spots on the roadway are a good possibility on untreated surfaces.  Driveways and sidewalks fall in that category as well.  There won't be a lot of snow, but an extra coating is enough to give us some travel woes, especially outside 128.  Also if you live where snow turned to a sponge and soaked up sleet and rain this afternoon... that slop freezes solid tonight.  Winds are still strong this evening, gusting 40-50mph along the North Shore until 9:00PM.  For the rest of us, gusts are around 25-35mph linger through the night.

We'll take a bit of a breather tomorrow with sunshine and temps in the lower to middle 30s.

Then our attention turns to another storm.  This one won't be as powerful in terms of sheer strength with wind, flooding rains and a foot of snow inland, but it will produce a blanket of white across the area.   Yes, I think this is a snow event for all (Cape/Islands close call). 

We'll track two separate systems across the country the next two days.  Energy from the northern branch of the jet stream, and a developing storm along the southern branch.  To get huge New England snowstorms... we need the two branches of the jet stream to merge and explode a storm south of us, and track just SE of Nantucket. 

So here comes the tricky part... the two branches do merge or "phase" but it looks like it's just late enough in the storms' progressive (too far east) for us to avoid a blockbuster.  However, the track of the low is in a good placement so even before the storm bombs out, snow moves in, and with the storm strengthening as it pulls away, whatever snow is left across SE Mass gets enhanced do to the strengthening low.  Overall I'm expecting a 2-4" event with 4-6" across SE Mass.  If the storm takes longer to strengthen, these numbers go down, if it's a more rapid intensification process, these numbers will go up.   Challenging to say the least. 

Snow will start around midday Saturday and taper off Saturday night.

Anyway, ski country did fantastic with this last round, and with fresh blasts of Canadian air dropping into New England, that snow isn't going anywhere.

Like A Waterfall

Posted by Pete Bouchard

If you were caught in those 'cloudbursts' today, you had more than you could handle in the rain department. Torrents fell in a short amount of time - what we deem 'flash flooding' in the weather biz. Since it happens suddenly, the National Weather Service has adopted the acronym TADD:

Bam! Pow!

Posted by Jeremy Reiner

Bam. Pow! Those were some nasty storms last evening with some towns in metrowest & the city itself blasted with locally heavy rain, hail, lightning and strong wind gusts. A cool front is the culprit and that front will linger across the region again today. That means another round of some scattered showers & t-storms likely.

Thunderous Start to Workweek

Posted by Pete Bouchard

Heat and a bit of humidity fed a strong - and sometimes severe - line of thunderstorms today. By the time the dinner hour rolled around (6pm-ish), the storms had consolidated into a line. Everyone got a drink of water and a big drop in temperatures - some falling nearly 20 degrees in minutes!

Rear-view Mirror

Posted by Jeremy Reiner

As we exit our recent soggy pattern we do so with one more weather system capable of producing scattered showers & t-storms. This cool front is a slow mover (aren't we all on Monday mornings?!) up in northern New England right now. This slow moving front will settle into our part of the world very late this afternoon bringing a chance of some scattered t-storms between 4-pm. Until then you have a great day with mostly sunny skies along with temperatures in the low 80s. For some, a bit on the humid side for much of the day.