A Blast Of Arctic Air Is Expected This Weekend Across Western & Central Mass; In Addition To This, Snow Is Quite Possible On Sunday Into Monday – How Much Snow Accumulates Remains To Be Determined

For Tonight: An area of high pressure is expected to control the weather throughout tonight.

The combination of clear skies, diminishing winds and fresh snowpack means that temperatures will likely bottom out to between 2 and 7 Degrees. Winds will be West at 10 to 15 mph before midnight and West at 5 to 10 mph after midnight.

Wednesday Through Thursday: Milder temperatures are expected on Wednesday and especially Thursday before the Arctic express invades the region by Friday night and Saturday.

Wednesday looks to start out sunny, however, varying amounts of clouds can be expected during the afternoon. High temperatures will be between 30 and 35 Degrees. Winds will be Southwest at 10 to 20 mph.

A frontal system is expected to push through the area during Wednesday evening. This front will bring a round of scattered snow showers throughout Wednesday evening. These snow showers will have the potential to produce a dusting to perhaps an inch of snow accumulation. Low temperatures Wednesday night will be near 25 Degrees. Winds will be Southwest at 10 to 20 mph with gusts to 30 mph.

Thursday looks partly sunny with high temperatures around 40 Degrees. Winds will be West at 10 to 20 mph with gusts to 30 mph.

Friday: An Arctic cold front is expected to push through the region during Friday afternoon and Friday evening. It appears that this front will be a “dry frontal passage” and because of this, little or no snow shower activity is expected with its passage. What this front will do is usher in the coldest air seen so far this season for this weekend.

Skies throughout the day on Friday will be cloudy with high temperatures between 25 and 30 Degrees.

Friday Night: And here comes the Arctic express!! Friday night looks clear and very cold. Low temperatures will be between 5 below zero and 10 below zero. A gusty westerly wind is likely to drive wind chill temperatures down to around minus 25.

Very Cold Temperatures Are Expected This Weekend Thanks To An Arctic Airmass: A significant Arctic outbreak will impact all of Western and Central Mass throughout this weekend. This will lead to not only the coldest temperatures thus far this winter, but also some of the coldest temperatures in the last 2-3 years or so.

High temperatures Saturday will struggle to make it much above 10 Degrees. Wind chill temperatures on Saturday will be in the 10 to 20 below zero range in the morning and around 5 below zero in the afternoon.

Low temperatures Saturday night will be between 5 below zero and 10 below zero.

High temperatures on Sunday will be around 15 Degrees.

Snow Looks Quite Possible From Sunday Into Monday – How Big Of A Storm This Will Be Is Yet To Be Determined: It continues to look quite possible that a coastal storm may track close enough to our area to bring the entire area snow from Sunday into Monday. The big question is how close will this storm track to our area & this is important because it’ll determine how much snow accumulates across the region.

Looking at the weather forecast guidance reveals that models such as the GFS model is showing a suppressed storm track due to the strong Arctic air over us. This would lead to this storm tracking well south of our area leaving us with no snow at all.

Other weather forecast guidance such as the Canadian model and the European model has trended northward with its forecast storm track. Because of this, these models are now forecasting snow to occur from Sunday into Monday. Given the Arctic air mass over us, this would end up being a light and very powdery snow & would be able to add up quick. Because of this, these two models are forecasting upwards of a foot or more of snow accumulation due to the very low water content of the snow.

Here Are My Thoughts: I am not yet buying into the idea of major winter storm here in Western and Central Mass. The reason why is because the big Arctic high pressure system might be strong enough to suppress much of the moisture and snow with this storm just to our south.

Now, any snow that does make it into our area will be very light and fluffy and because of that it’ll have a low water content. This means that it will not take much moisture to produce a decent snowfall across our area.

For now, I’m thinking that we’ll see snow occur across the entire area beginning by about midday Sunday and then continuing throughout all of Sunday afternoon, Sunday night and Monday morning. The snow may end sometime around early Monday afternoon.

My thinking as of right now is for something like a 3 to 6 inch snowfall. Could we trend towards a much bigger snowfall for this storm? Absolutely & it is something that I’m going to be keeping extremely close tabs on in the coming days.

This storm is not only going to impact our area, but it’s going to be a large and sprawling winter storm that brings a full-blown ice storm to areas of the southern United States, including Dallas, Shreveport, Huntsville, Atlanta and Charlotte this weekend. This storm also has the potential to bring heavy amounts of snow to much of the Mid-Atlantic states, including Washington, DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia this weekend. This has the very real potential to be a very high impact winter storm for a large part of the Southern and Southeastern United States as well as across the Mid-Atlantic states. Major disruptions including travel being halted and widespread power outages are expected across these areas this weekend.