The snow storm we’ve been talking about all week will finally arrive tonight. Here’s the timeline:
*Snow starts to fall around 2am. At this point it’s light snow but the intensity will pick up quickly and the patchy snow quickly becomes widespread
*By 4am snow fills in and picks up to moderate and heavy rates. It will continue like this for several hours (4am-8am). Snowfall rates could be around 1″ per hour. So those snowfall rates get you 4+” of snow right off the get go. This also means it’ll be snowing hard at times during the morning commute.
*By 10am a lot of us south of the Pike will see the sleet take over. This will cut back dramatically on snow totals. North of the Mass Pike the changeover to sleet seems minimal if at all. So snowfall accumulations will be much higher there.
*The steady and heavy snow or sleet for those south will last until about noon or 1pm. After that the snow becomes lighter and scattered snow showers versus steady persistent snow. So while the bulk of our accumulation is before noon, it’s not all of it. The light snow will persist for several hours which will lead to an additional inch or two between noon and 6pm.
Travel is the biggest concern with this storm — especially the morning commute. As the snow gets lighter in the afternoon, road crews along with that February sun should keep main roads wet.
Good news here is it’s not a multi arm storm. Snow and sleet and thus travel is our only concern. Wind will be breezy on the coast but only gusting to 30 mph. Tides are astronomically low so there is no coastal flooding risk either.
When everything is said and done (between 2am and 6pm) the snow map shakes out like this. As mentioned before, heavier amounts will be farther north with no changeover to sleet and where sleet becomes predominant, numbers will be less.
