We wake up this Monday morning to a quiet and seasonably cold day as temperatures hover in the low to mid 30s this afternoon with a decent deal of sunshine in the mix. Winds will be fairly light, allowing for a comfortable winter’s day. We’ll stay quiet and seasonable into tomorrow morning with temps fading back into the teens and lower 20s by tomorrow morning. While the morning commute Tuesday be fair just fine weather-wise, the evening commute will not.
Snow overspreads the area from west to east tomorrow between 1 and 3pm. By 3pm, much of the state will have steady snow falling, and those snow rates will quickly intensify in time for the evening commute. With snow falling nearly an 1″/hour during the evening commute, travel will be poor with reduced visibility and snow covered roads.
During the evening, snow transitions to sleet, freezing rain and rain. The quickest transition to a mix/rain is across southeast Mass, limiting snow totals there. Roads remain slick for much of the area overnight as sleet and freezing rain remains an issue across the interior.
While snow totals aren’t astronomically high, most of this falls tomorrow afternoon/evening and during the evening commute, so it will have a high impact on the roadways. I’m expecting 3-4″ in Boston before the changeover. A touch more north of town, a bit less south of the city. It’s always a somewhat challenging to pin the exact timing of the changeover in storms like this, so if the change to sleet is off by 1-2hrs, this totals would need to be adjusted by an inch or two. Anyhow, below is the map of the current thinking, and we’ll add sleet, freezing rain and rain on top of it. A mess anyway you cut it!
The best chance for a tenth or two tenths of an inch of freezing rain will be across the interior, in the purple shaded area. While that’s not enough for tree damage and power outages to be a widespread issue, it’ll be enough to through down a solid glaze.
The storm wraps up predawn Wednesday morning, so while we’ll start with residual slick roads, improvements should be quick through the morning. By the afternoon, temps are in the 40s, so drip, drip, drip goes the snow/ice.
Valentine’s Day looks solid. Near 40 and dry.
Have a good day.
https://twitter.com/clamberton7