One Storm To Rule Them All?

Posted by Pete Bouchard

"The board is set, the pieces are moving."

We're on the eve of what could be the biggest snowstorm in almost a decade.

We're drawing comparisons with the Blizzards of 2005 and 2003 (22.5" and 27.5" - greatest all time in Boston). Yes, that much snow will hammer the Commonwealth. Confidence is high, the models are jiving and you need to take this threat seriously.

With such a large, long duration storm, where do we get started? How about the timeline?

Startup: Early morning tomorrow. Pacing is intermittent and light. 2-4 by afternoon. There will likely be mixing - or even plain rain - along the South Shore much of SE Mass. including the Cape and Islands. This is where a lot of us will be standing around saying "what storm?"

Phase two of the storm will then engage after dark tomorrow evening. Heavy bands will erupt from our developing offshore nor'easter/blizzard and snowstorm "feeder bands" (these nor'easters are cousins of hurricanes...sharing some similar characteristics like wind and wave generation) will start wrapping back over New England.

As snowfall rates increase beyond the point where plows can keep up, roads are likely to become impassable near or after midnight Friday night into early Saturday morning. If you attempt to travel, it is possible you may become stranded. Don't be that person.

Snow will continue - intense and unyielding - through Saturday morning and into the late morning hours. Thereafter, we can emerge and start cleanup.

Things we're working on:

Who gets three feet?!? Tough call. In storms like this, the convective (Huh? Think t-storms) nature makes it impossible to tackle ahead of the event. When we're in it, we'll know. Keep in mind folks, there may be multiple sweet spots or bullseyes. That happened in the Blizzard of 2005.

The REAL endgame of the storm. We'll leave it at Saturday afternoon, but the last flakes may not fly until Saturday EVENING.

Cape Cod snowfall. Always a moving target. Mix/rain early Friday will cut down on amounts, but we'll really make hay when the storm cranks on Friday afternoon/Saturday AM.

More later.

Pete

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.

We'll Take Average

Posted by Chris Lambert

Well, we had a lot of clouds this afternoon, but at least not a lot of rain.  Sure a few showers were out there, scattered about, but hopefully they didn't ruin any plans you had with dad.  Temps made it into the mid to upper 70s, which is close to the average for this time of year.  In fact, the whole 7-day forecast is within 5 degrees of average each and every day.  That means lots of upper 70s and lower 80s on the board.  Not bad being average this time of year, huh?

Happy Father's Day

Posted by Chris Lambert

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there, and to my dad as well.  So what's on tap for the day?  Golf, grilling, just hanging out? Whatever it is, all and all, it's still a pretty good day for dad weather-wise.  I wish I could say the Father's Day forecast exactly repeats Saturday, but we do have a few late afternoon showers to track.