Arctic Blasts Turning Into New England's Latest Big Weather Story

People in New England this weekend will be forgiven
for not knowing the difference between this scene
in Siberia and their own surroundings. Bitter cold,
lots of wind and some snow will continue.   

If any New Englander is sick of winter, I have a wee bit of good news for you.

At least for now, computer forecasting models are trending the Thursday/Friday storm a little more east and out to sea.

That reduces the chances of another huge dump of snow on already totally buried eastern New England.

There's more good news. Wait, no, there is no more good news. That's it. I was just trying to find some hope.

In the past week, much of the nation, except New England, was actually warm. Record breaking warm in many cases. Now the cold is expanding into other parts of the country. Getting more entrenched.

And about to get much worse in New England. Look, I said I have no further good news for the winter weary, so what can I do?

The forecast I outlined yesterday is still basically the same, with a few adjustments. That Alberta Clipper is still going to cross New England. That clipper will still drop a dusting to a few inches of snow in parts of the northeastern United States. The clipper will still redevelop as a huge nor'easter off the coast.

The Arctic floodgates are still going to open Thursday night, blasting the Northeast, and other parts of the country with bitter cold air.

European forecasting model for temperatures
relative to normal for around the middle and end of
February. The darker the blue the colder the projection.
Note the contrast between cold New England and warmth
near and just off the coast. That could turn into
a storm track that would dump more
snow on New England.  

As I noted, that nor'easter developing off the coast is progged to get going a little bit more to the east than original forecasts. That means maybe 1 to 4 inches of snow in the deeply buried zones of eastern Massachusetts.

That doesn't help, of course, but at least it's not another two foot dump coming. However, there will be a LOT of wind throughout New England. That means the snow that is on the ground will blow and drift a lot

Wind chills will be well below zero. All this will make frigid Barrow, Alaska seem like a tropical paradise compared to Boston and environs.

A strong disturbance blasting south from near the North Pole will introduce another, stronger shot of Arctic air into the northern Plains, Midwest and Northeast, especially New England over the weekend.

Once again, that disturbance will get to a point just off the northeast United States coast and become another monster nor'easter. Hard to say how close that one will come to the coast, but some snow is likely.

Since the Sunday disturbance was still over the high Arctic, there's very little data so far on it's strength and makeup and potential.

We'll have to wait a day to two to get more indications of whether New England will get blasted by another blizzard Sunday or Monday, or will largely escape.  We do know it will produce a lot of wind in the northeastern United States, so Sunday is going to be especially brutal in the wind chill department.

New England, and much of the rest of the United States east of the Rockies, won't escape the cold this weekend and most of next week. And probably the week after that. And probably the week after THAT.

There's also going to be a steady spray of weather disturbances or storms heading through or near New England pretty much every second or third day through the remainder of February. It's impossible to tell at this point which of these disturbances, if any, or all of them, will dump more big snows on New England, or just be annoying flurries.

It just means that New England is going to have to keep its guard up, and keep frantically clearing snow away for the rest of the month in case another storm arrives to smother the region.