It’s December, you expect it to be cold, but usually Mother Nature draws the line somewhere. This go around, you could argue that we’re crossing that line as near record cold pours in Thursday night and early Friday morning. Not only do we have bitter cold to talk about, but also powerful wind gusts. The strongest wind gusts move through a few hours either side of midnight tomorrow night, pushing 50-60mph. Unfortunately, downed tree branches/power lines are possible as the core of the cold gets set to move in.
We start tomorrow off seasonably cold and breezy with morning temps in the low to mid 20s, peaking around late morning. Then we fade back into the upper teens near sunset as winds gust 30-40mph. Those gusts increase to 50+mph at times in the evening as temps head back into the single digits and finish near 0 by 7am Friday. Boston likely finishes around 3, while Worcester is more like -3 early Friday morning, near record cold for the date (Boston record is 1, Worcester is -2). Factor in the wind, and wind chills push -15 to -25 early Friday morning.
While Friday starts off quite windy, it’ll finish with a subsiding wind as highs recover into the mid to upper teens. Temps trend to the lower 20s overnight as some snow breaks out predawn on Saturday. It’s hard to believe, but despite being so cold Friday, we’re talking a change to rain on Saturday as a southerly wind eventually drags temps to near 40 by mid to late afternoon. Before that chance occurs, we’ll likely see a solid 3-6hr period of snow that’ll be capable of creating quite a mess early Saturday. Right now it looks like the bulk of the snow falls between 5-11am with several inches likely inland and up to a couple inches close to the coast. Below is a snow map for Saturday… the fine tuning to come, but right now, this is what I’m thinking.
@clamberton7 – twitter