What the southwest breeze giveth the northwest breeze taketh away. That is the mild air of course. We hit 52 degrees this afternoon in Boston, marking back to back 50+ degree days for the weekend. It’s the first back to back 50 we’ve seen since the 4 day stretch of 50s on January 11-14th thaw.
In part, it was the southwest direction of the wind that helped import the milder air into New England, and now the northwest breeze tonight, will start importing in the colder air out of Canada. You’ll here a lot about a northerly component to the wind the next week or so as a much colder pattern resumes.
The clouds we had today are along and ahead of a front that’ll slide through overnight tonight. As another wave of moisture arrives on that front, a few scattered, light rain showers develop after midnight. As colder air continues to filter in overnight, those drops go to snow flakes, and along and south of the Mass Pike, a coating to an inch of snow is possible in the predawn hours Monday. Not every town will see the fresh coating, and highest chance to need to brush some slushy snow off the car in the morning is across interior SE Mass.
Cold weather gains it’s ground tomorrow on a gusty northwesterly breeze and highs struggling in the mid 30s. Those highs fall into the upper 20s by Tuesday.
So what about Wednesday? We’ll certainly have plenty of cold air in place to produce snow, now we just need the moisture. We’ll get some of that moisture from a storm rolling up and off the east coast as light snow should break out during the day. As of now, the center off the storm appears just a bit too far east for a full blown nor’easter for us. Also, the storm is a fast mover, which would limited how much snow we can get. So, at this point, I expect at least some light snow Wednesday, with up to few inches possible near the coast, especially SE Mass given the track. A more westward track would up these numbers, but we’ll leave it here for now. It seems so far this winter the trend has been to adjust amounts up with storms, so I don’t want to write this one off this far out.
The story through the week however will be the cold as temperatures run a good 10-15 degrees below the average for the time of year.
When we get into a deep cold pattern across the central and eastern United States in late February and early March, it can be an unstable one. We’ll have to closely monitor for storm chances coming up. Perhaps next Saturday is the next opportunity, followed by a bitter Arctic blast of air on Sunday.
As always, we’ll keep you updated on-air and online. Have a good week!
@clamberton7 on twitter