As Expected, Winter Came Back To New England Riding Wild Wind Gusts

As expected, winter made a blast of a return to New England today, especially across the southern half of the region.

A large tree fell and caused damage amid
high winds and snow this morning in Massachusetts
Image via Twitter @universalhub  

It's now cold everywhere in New England, of course, but a potent storm riding along the Arctic cold front from west to east swept across southern New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

It doesn't look or feel like April out there, that's for sure!

Up to 8 inches of snow fell at Blue Hill Observatory in Milton, Mass. Burrillsville, Rhode Island got 7 inches, and the towns of Douglas and Monson in Massachusetts picked up 6.5 inches.

Northern New England largely escaped this snow, though flurries and snow showers are coming down in some of the mountains.

Wind is strong everywhere, with widespread gusts over 40 mph from Virginia to Maine.

The strong wind gusts felled lots of trees, with damage reported in the Washington DC metro area, and in much of southern New England.

Nearly 20,000 homes and businesses had no power in Massachusetts and 9,000 in Connecticut, NESN reported this morning.

Atop Mount Washington, New Hampshire the temperature late this morning was minus four with winds gusting to 72 mph. Atop Vermont's Mount Mansfield, it was five degrees above zero with a wind of "only" 45 mph.

High winds will continue across all of New England the rest of today.

A new, tightly wound storm will zip in from the west and northwest late tonight and Monday, and that will lay down another stripe of 2 to 5 inches of springtime snow across southern and central New England.

Northern New England is currently expected to largely avoid Monday's snow.

Punishing cold will continue through Tuesday. Overnight lows in the colder valleys of northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine will probably get into the single numbers tonight, tomorrow night, and maybe Tuesday night.

It'll temporarily, sort of, warm up Wednesday and Thursday with rain moving in.  By Friday, a complicated weather pattern is still expected to form over the Northeaat, and that will include a deep trough of low pressure.

That weird weather pattern might create another strong storm somewhere along or near or off the coast Friday.

It's still really hard to figure out exactly how this will play out for those of us who live here, but there is at least the chance of some heavy rain or heavy snow or some combination somewhere in New England, New York or southeastern Canada.

Stay tuned on that one. Another awful surge of frigid air will also probably come into New England by next Saturday, so spring is definitely on hiatus for awhile.

There are still some signs that we could warm up to near normal springtime temperatures in about 10 days, if you can wait that long.