What a fantastic weekend (if you despise cold & snow) as temps both days were way above normal. I did find myself several times thinking to myself—it’s still only February, slow your roll JR. You can understand tho, I mean, after last winter with the record cold & snow , many have been hoping for a winter like this. In fact, if you look at meteorological winter, (December 1st until February 29th), Boston has seen 31 days where high temps reached at least 50—that’s a record for meteorological winter and with 8 days left, we’ll add another 50 degree day to that tally. We do have some wintry weather to go through first.
That wintry weather will be brief but it is a part of our next storm. This storm, like many others, will pass well west of New England and when that happens, warm air usually wins. The storm will also come at us in two stages, the first featuring the wintry weather. Stage one arrives late tomorrow afternoon and is with us through early Wednesday morning. This opening act will light so the wintry precipitation is very manageable. Light snow/flurries arrive around 4-5pm tomorrow and spend a few hours with us tomorrow evening before giving way to some rain & freezing rain well inland. As of now, it looks like a coating-1" is all the storm will muster before the raindrops arrive. Well inland (out near I-495 & west/north of there) the the raindrops will freeze on contact with the relatively colder ground–especially elevated surfaces–so some light icing is possible on top of that thin layer of snow. All this means some slick travel is likely late tomorrow evening into early Wednesday morning. At that time the air warms enough so the rest of the storm only features raindrops.
Rain is an issue late Wednesday evening through Thursday morning with most towns getting between 1-2" of rain by early Thursday morning. Wind will accompany this rain, at times gusting near 50mph early Thursday morning. Quite stormy. The most problematic commute from this storm won’t be from the snow tomorrow evening-Wednesday AM but rather the heavy rain & wind on Thursday morning. It’s a warm rain with temps starting Thursday in the 50s!
Quiet & mild weather take it from there on Friday.
~JR