Friday, March 23, 2007

UPDATED: Upgrading Snow Totals for SNE

UPDATED 9AM INFORMATION: Waking up this morning, I went to the NAM and GFS and both of them are looking more juicy for our area tonight. Also, snow advisories have been posted for southern and northern Worcester County and to the west and north. Southern Vermont is under a Heavy Snow Warning for accumulations of 5-10" above 1000'. The new NAM is quite bullish, painting much of SNE, mainly MA, in the .5" to .8" range. Taken verbatim, 5-8" is on the way for everyone, but since its almost April, it won't work out like that. Still, my new map is un upgrade for most areas. Have your camera ready for tomorrow morning. Everything is going to be caked with a few inches of snow and it will look amazing.

If anymore advisories or warnings get posted, I will update then, if not, this is my final call, barring some crazy turnaround with the computer models 18 hours out.
Friday, March 23rd Information Below....
Are you kidding me? A mini snowstorm is on the way and coming to our area tomorrow night. After seeing the past two days near 60 degrees, we will be cooling down bigtime tomorrow with highs in the 40's. A storm will ripple along the stalled front that goes along our area tonight and brings in cold air from the NE with a high pressure system filtering the cold air into our area to support the snow.

Timing: Snow arrives tomorrow night between 7PM to 10PM from west to east. It may start as a rain/snow mix in extreme southern New England and the Cape, but it will quickly transition to an all snow event for even these areas. Snow becomes moderate to perhaps heavy by midnight with snowfall rates approaching a 1/2" to 1" per hour. Visibilities may come under a quarter of a mile with the quarter sized flakes falling with temperatures around 32 at the surface, but just above us, temperatures in the clouds will be some 20 to 30 degrees colder.

Snow comes to an end early Sunday morning from NW to SE between 5AM and 9AM.

ACCUMULATIONS: Look to be light to moderate. Light snow accumulations will be for all of SNE with a general 1-4" snowfall, mainly 1-2", but a few "lucky" spots may see 3-4". The area in the brightest pink will see the moderate snow accumulations with snowfall accumulating between 3-5" widespread and a few high elevations in the Berkshires and southern Vermont, may see up to 6" of gloppy snowfall. This is where the plows may have to come out as they may get a couple inches of snow to accumulate on the streets, while areas that see under 4" will likely just need sand trucks to clear the roads because pavement temperatures are very warm now due to the warm March sun angle and the past few days being so warm.

Thats all for this mini surprise snow event. It will all be a distant memory by Monday when highs are back in the 50's and then 60's later. I want to WARN you that we may not be done with winter weather after next week's warmup. I am afraid to say that this may be another "tease" of spring as all signs are now indicating that the AO and NAO are going to absolutely tank by next weekend, which basically means we will be going into a DEEP FREEZE for early April standards. This means that highs will likely be in the upper 30's in the hills to mid 40's on the coast and if any storm comes around, it will be able to tap into the extreme cold just a few hundred feet in the air to deliver some late season snow. This is something we have been watching for a while and it could be coming to fruition to screw up our spring plans.

Thats spring in New England...what else is new?

1 comment:

E.H. Boston said...

00z NAM just came out and is really bullish with QPF for much of SNE and CNE now. May want to bump up snowfall totals for all of MA, VT, and NH...now looks like a decent shot at 4"+ in NW Mass and southern VT with close to 4-5" north of the Mass Pike.

South of the Pike, 2-3" still looks good with up to an inch on the SC.

Thats what the latest information is verbatim, will wait for the GFS, but this is getting interesting with a capital I.