 |
| It has come to this: An igloo in East Boston, Mass. Photo via Twitter @7News and @JimCantore. |
Boston is screwed.
So is much of the rest of New England. Especially the eastern half of the region.
It's not set in stone yet, but it's looking increasingly likely that eastern New England is going to get pounded by another severe snowstorm.
It'll come Saturday night and Sunday, and some areas will get a full blown blizzard with very heavy snow, and strong winds. This storm will also be the coldest of the series.
Let's break down the details in chronological order, starting today:
TODAY:
As expected, an Alberta Clipper is moving into the Northeast. There was patchy light snow across parts of the Great Lakes region, New York and New England.
None of this snow was particularly heavy, and for once, nobody in the United States is going to get a particularly heavy dump out of this one. Most areas will end up with one to four inches out of this by Friday.
The exceptions will be some of the lake effect zones around the Great Lakes, the high elevations in New York's Adirondacks, Vermont's Green Mountains, New Hampshire's White Mountains. Those areas could see something like three to seven inches of snow.
 |
| David Phelps took this photo of snowbanks with daffodils painted on them in Massachusetts. Somebody is trying to be optimistic. Photo via Twitter, @ericfisher. |
Good. More powder for the ski areas, but some people might not want to take to the slopes, given what's coming.
FRIDAY:
The floodgates will have opened for Arctic air Thursday night for the Northeast. The frigid air is already in place in the upper Midwest.
In the Northeast, temperatures will plunge to below zero in many areas by Friday morning. Worse, remember that Alberta Clipper that's coming through today? Like most of the storms in the past few weeks, it'll explode into a strong nor'easter off the New England coast.
For a change, Friday's nor'easter will be too far out to sea to dump all that much snow. Maybe two to four inches out on Cape Cod.
But the winds will be terrible, easily gusting past 30 mph in many areas, especially for the first half of Friday, and especially the more east you go.
Wind chills will plunge into the 15 to 40 below range in northern areas, and as low as 60 below on the mountain summits in the Adirondacks and northern New England. Not a good day to take advantage of the bit of new powder on the slopes.
SATURDAY
By early Saturday, winds will have largely died down in New England, but the cold air will be entrenched as dawn breaks. As the National Weather Service in Massachusetts forecast discussion put s it, "A cold-hearted start to Valentine's Day."
In northern New York and northern New England, people will wake up to readings in the teens below zero, with a few low 20s below. Southern New England will be in the single numbers either side of zero.
 |
| New England style outdoor furniture in Plymouth, Mass. Photo via Twitter, @ericfisher. |
Saturday afternoon will bring a "warm" spell. Yeah, temperatures will be way below normal, but better. Lots of teens, with single numbers up north. Winds will be light. Downright tropical.
Clouds will be coming in as the next strong disturbance races down toward New England frome the North Pole. Some snow will break out throughout New England Saturday afternoon and evening.
The Saturday snow won't be all that heavy
But then the real trouble begins.
SUNDAY:
Before I go on, I'll stress there is still some uncertainty to this. The blizzardy storm still might develop more to the east than expected, sparing New England another deep snow nightmare.
As of Thursday, though, the news seems grim. That disturbance from the North Pole will sweep rapidly due south, hitting western New York and Pennsylvania then making a sharp right turn toward the coast. This disturbance will drag with it the coldest air of this winter.
Worse, once the disturbance gets to and off the coast, somewhere near New York City, it will grow explosively into a huge nor'easter as it makes its way south of Cape Cod and eventually toward the Gulf of Maine.
As of Thursday, it looks like it will be close enough to the coast to dump a good foot of snow on eastern New England, with very, very strong winds. Especially on Cape Ann, Cape Cod and the Islands. The Boston area looks like it might be a mess, too.
If it plays out as expected, this would be a very dangerous storm, given the zero visibilty, the extremely cold temperatures, the strong winds. If this storm develops, stay indoors until it's over.
Maine could really get rocked by this storm. Not good, considering that the southeastern half of that state has gotten an incredible amount of snow this winter. (Bangor, Maine tied a record a few days ago for the deepest snow cover, which was 53 inches.)
I said "could" get hit, because even there, it's hard to say how far the heavy snow will advance inland from the coast.
As you go north and westward through New England and into New York the snow will get lighter and lighter on Sunday. There might not be any once you get into northern New York and just a dusting in northwest Vermont. Again, this could change.
What is more certain is the horrible, horrible cold on Sunday throughout the Northeast, including places outside the potentially heavy snow zone like northwestern Vermont and New York, outside the blizzard zone. Strong winds, gusting over 30 mph will pick up and blow the powdery snow that's already fallen.
In fact, there might be some almost ground blizzard conditions in open areas, like the Champlain Valley of Vermont and New York, open areas around Albany New York and the flatlands in Quebec south of Montreal. That means abrupt spells of zero visibility and deep drifts on roads in those areas.
Note: Trust me, I've seen the way the wind blows across southern Quebec. Sunday will NOT be the day for a road trip to Montreal.
The strong winds, the temperatures near or below zero during the day will create absolutely ridiculous wind chills. I'm sure 20 to 40 below chills will be widespread. If you're on a ski vacation to New York and New England, I'd give up the slopes Sunday and try again during the upcoming week.
The cold will plunge all the way down the East Coast Friday and this weekend, especially Sunday. It'll be bitter all the way to Florida, and I still worry about frost and freezes down that way toward Monday.
NEXT WEEK:
The cold, active pattern continues. It looks like another storm wants to sweep through New England mid-week. Early indications is this one might go a little inland, which would cause a mix and rain in eastern New England.
If that comes true, the rain would soak into the deep snow, making it much heavier and causing many more roof failures. There already have been a number of them because of the weight of the deep snow.
Under this scenario, more inland areas, like northern New York, Vermont and northern New Hampshire, would get quite a bit of snow out of this. Those areas have been on the fringes of most of the big storms that have been going through lately.
I'll caution you not to hang your hat on how I'm describing the midweek storm. Things could change dramatically. I know the track of the storm will be at least somewhat different than what's being described now. The computer forecasting models don't usually have a good handle on weather systems this far out.
The basic cold, stormy weather pattern continues to look like it will hold firm through the rest of February, probably at least partly into March, too.
Let's just try to get through this weekend without getting buried or succumbing to frostbite. Then we'll worry about subsequent weather.
No comments:
Post a Comment