This powerful storm impacting southern New England will continue to bring heavy snow at times, strong gusts leading to blowing and drifting snow along with coastal flooding around the high tide cycles through tonight.
A Blizzard Warning remains in effect for eastern MA until midnight, with Winter Storm Warnings for Worcester Co and portions of southern NH.
We’ll continue to see pockets of snow bands sliding in with 1-3″ per hour snowfall rates through the afternoon (some isolated 2-4″ per hour snowfall rates cannot be ruled out) which will certainly bring down visibility and rapidly increase the snow on the ground, making it tough for the plows to stay on top of the road conditions. The snow starts to peel back in intensity around 7pm and will continue to lift out through 11pm.
If you’re wondering when the best time to shovel would be, you might want to tackle it in shifts.
As far as snow totals, we’re still on track for 1-2 feet of snow for most of eastern MA, with those totals dropping off the farther north and west you travel into Worcester County and into southern NH.
We’ve seen strong wind gusts this morning, with the South Shore and the Cape seeing gusts over 60 mph. Expect power disruption through the day if you have not already.
Another hazard is coastal flooding, and we’ve seen the battering surf right along the South Shore this morning, specifically Scituate around high tide. A Coastal Flood Warning remains in effect until 11am, and then a Coastal Flood Advisory goes into effect at 7pm for tonight’s high tide around 9pm.
When you’re factoring in the wind coupled up with the heavy snow, we’re looking at blizzard conditions. In order for this storm to be considered a blizzard, it would have to have falling snow, visibility at or less than 1/4 of a mile, and gusts over 35 mph for 3 consecutive hours.
