First Call on Storm

We are about 20 hours away from the storm getting its act going in New England and I am puting out my first call on snowfall accumulations. As you can see, they are quite significant in western New England. Out in southern Vermont and much on central New York state, accumulations will likely be in the 8-16" range with higher amounts about 1500'. In extreme northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, there will probably be a heavy wet accumulation of 14-24" of snow with up to 30" in some of the highest peaks above 2000' to 2500'. Coming closer to the coast, SE, accumulations will dive to around 3-6" in western Massachusetts and much of southern New Hampshire with perhaps 1-3" north of Worcester and Springfield. Fitchburg may see a quick inch or two before even here it flips over to a heavy pounding rainfall with temperatures in the mid to upper 30's. A small portion in NW Rhode Island, their hills, may see up to an inch of wet snow as well that will likely be washed away.

The snow will not be the only player. The rain, the wind, and the coastal and urban flooding will be major stories in SNE. First the rain will fall heaviest tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow night through early Monday morning. All said and done, I am thinking that around 3-6" of rain is possible in the green shading where it stays mostly rain. Easternmost places will likely be closer to the 6" amount with SW CT likely closer to the 3-4" of rain, which could still cause some urban and basement flooding. Streams and rivers may also come out of their banks as we will have the heavy rainfall all at once and we will have runoff melting from the north get into the larger rivers that will worsen the flooding on some of our larger rivers. If this were to change to a mainly rain event for CNE and NNE, we could be talking about major river flooding, but I think we will put this problem to rest as they will add on to their snowpack. Coastal flooding could be very bad on the east facing beaches and if you are in a place that normally floods in strong Nor'Easters, I would make plans to have the pump ready, sandbags, and be prepared to evacuate if conditions warrant.

The wind will also be very bad during the height of this storm later tomorrow afternoon and night. Winds will gust to around 50 mph in inland areas of SNE during this timeframe and will be gusting to aroud 60-70 mph on the eastern beaches and highest hilltops like Blue Hill for example. This will likely bring down tree branches and possibly power lines, so scattered power outages will be likely during this timeframe which could make it a cold miserable night for many in the dark.

We may get in a dry slot for the Marathon on Monday with the storm stalling out in extreme southern SNE. This will likely bring all the heavy rains and snows to our north and northwest and give Boston a nice dry slot with easterly winds not nearly as gusty, only gusting to perhaps 30 mph from the east, which is bad, but not nearly as bad as 70 mph from the east that we will have Sunday night. The Marathon will likely feature cloudy skies with drizzle and temperatures starting the race around 38 in Hopkinton and ending the race around 43 in Boston.

This storm will sit and decay for much of next week with a chance of showers of both rain and snow in SNE with temperatures in the upper 30's to around 40. The same thing can be said for Wednesday before we finally start to shake out of this storm's grip and get some sun on Thursday with temperatures rebounding to around 50 and then we may see 60 again on Friday and possibly warmer thereafter. We'll see. So far its been a miserable spring.

More on the storm later.