First things first…A weak storm system will pass by to our south overnight. It looks less and less likely that this system will have a significant impact on our weather. A brief period of rain changing to snow is possible for the South Coast, the Cape and the Islands. Little to no accumulation is expected, and unless you are in that area in the middle of the night, you probably won’t notice it.
Now to the more interesting weather…the storm system coming mid-week. First, a lesson on storm systems. Usually there is a warm front and a cold front attached to an area of low pressure. That’s why we generally call them storm "systems" because there are several parts to the storm. The low pressure is the center and the wind and rain swirl counter-clockwise around it. The warm front is usually on the east side of the center and as you can probably guess, that’s the warmer side of the system. The west side is the cold side which is why the ocean storms are the ones that bring us the most snow. It now seems fairly certain that this next storm will pass well to our west, meaning we will be on the warm side.
The track hasn’t changed much since yesterday, but the timing has. It now appears that the leading edge of the precipitation will arrive early Wednesday, rather than later Wednesday. Temperatures will be in the upper 20s to low 30s Wednesday morning. That means the precipitation may begin as snow, sleet or freezing rain depending on exactly when it gets here and what area of New England you are talking about. The wintry precipitation, especially the freezing rain, is more likely north of the Pike and west of 495. Shortly after the precipitation begins, the warm front moves through and the warm-up begins! So any wintry precipitation will quickly change to all rain.
As the center of the storm moves closer, rain becomes steadier and more widespread by Wednesday night. The winds will also begin to pick up as we head into Thursday. A period of heavy rain and strong gusty winds becomes likely at some point during the first half of Thursday. This same type of storm system along this same type of track during the spring months would likely lead to strong to severe storms with damaging wind gusts and possibly an isolated tornado. Fortunately, at least in this case, its still February. So we aren’t expecting severe thunderstorms, but a rumble of thunder isn’t out of the question and there will definitely be some strong wind gusts.
It all comes to an end when the cold front swings through the area bringing cooler, drier weather to the area late Thursday. Right now it looks like that cooler, drier weather sticks around through the weekend. So, in other words, next weekend won’t be nearly as mild as the current one!