Temperatures were bitter cold out there today, waking up to feels like temperatures as low as -20°. It was a cold start and a cold afternoon. Wind chills stayed sub zero all day with the actual air temperature in Boston only making it to 16° — our second coldest day of the winter.
Tonight is a cold night. While the wind will be a little less, the air temperatures will be a lot colder, so the feels like overnight won’t change much from last night/this morning. Wind chills tonight and tomorrow morning will fall back between -10 and -20° so the cold weather advisory will go back into effect tonight and Saturday morning.
Tomorrow is a cold day, like today. We’ll tack on a few degrees, but the overall feel is similar. Highs will struggle to make it to 20° tomorrow afternoon. The sun will be out tomorrow, but it will be deceiving.
Sunday is also cold, technically warmer, but I’m not sure I’d call it a “nice” day. To each their own, but I’d almost give my vote to Saturday as the nicer day. Cold is cold, and at least we’ll have the sun on Saturday. That coastal storm that buzzes us Sunday will give us a mostly cloudy sky and a breeze/wind that will just put a real bite into the air. The snow on Sunday is a few snow showers and not a big deal for MOST of us. The snow will be a bit steadier across far Southeastern Massachusetts and the Cape. Those are the areas closer to the off shore storm. For the same reasons, those areas will be windier on Sunday.
If you’ve been keeping up with the forecast and blogs the last few days, you know the struggle we’ve had forecasting this storm. Finally there’s been model consensus that the storm will track out to sea with only fringe impacts here. As I mentioned, for most of us it’s just a few Sunday snow showers with the steadier snow across the Cape. That’s where accumulations will be a bit more.
The wind will pick up too. For most of us it’s just a cold, gusty breeze. It will be a bit stronger on the Cape and South Shore, but still for the most part should be below damaging threshold. The one area to watch will be the Outer Cape and Island where some gusts could exceed 50 mph. Tides are astronomically high this weekend. That, along with the persistent and strong northeast wind, could lead to some minor coastal flooding. Nothing too concerning, though, mainly just shore roads and splash over — nothing we haven’t seen before.
The storm is quite the storm over the water. It will undergo bombogenesis, classifying it as a “bomb cyclone”. While the storm is powerful, creating intense waves, snow and strong wind, we are just getting the fringe effects of the storm — so just a fraction of what the storm could otherwise produce.
