For This Afternoon: An area of high pressure will move to the east this afternoon. This means that skies this afternoon will be sunny with high temperatures near 25 Degrees.
Tonight: An Arctic cold front is expected to approach our area tonight.
Increasing amounts of clouds are expected tonight. It’s possible that some snow shower activity will begin to affect the area around dawn Friday morning. Low temperatures tonight will be near 20 Degrees.
Friday: That Arctic front will slowly sink southward across the area during Friday. I still think that we will see snow shower activity during the morning into the early afternoon hours of Friday. Any snow accumulations will be between a dusting and a half an inch. High temperatures Friday will be between 30 and 35Degrees.
A High Impact Winter Storm Is Expected From Late Friday Night Through Saturday & Into Saturday Night: I think it’s highly likely that an intense storm system tracking near Nantucket will bring heavy amounts of snow, considerable amounts of blowing and drifting snow and blizzard conditions at times across Central Mass beginning late Friday night and continuing through Saturday and into Saturday night. Western Mass looks to be impacted less due to the proximity of the storm track.
The last 24 hours have been a huge headache and a big time challenge when analyzing all of the data. The weather forecast guidance that I look at to make a forecast just cannot "agree" on a track and evolution of this storm. The guidance actually ranges from as little as a light to moderate snowfall across the entire area for a storm that completely misses us to as much as a storm that brings Western Mass a foot of snow and Central Mass upwards of 30 inches of snow for a storm that tracks very close to Nantucket.
The reason for this huge difference between the guidance has to do with how each model is handling the phasing of the northern and southern branches of the jet stream.
The model (GFS) that is forecasting a light to moderate snowfall keeps both jet stream branches separate, which causes our storm to head well east of the area. I do not think that this will occur and am discounting this model.
There are more model guidance members that are phasing the northern and southern branches of the jet stream causing explosive strengthening and a very intense storm that tracks very near Nantucket during Saturday. While I think this seems to be the more likely scenario, I'm not convinced yet that we'll up to 30 inches of snow in parts of Central Mass and think that the models that are forecasting this are too over amplified.
I think that over the next 24 hours or so, we should see all of the weather forecast guidance begin to hone in on a general consensus (I hope), so that by this time tomorrow, we should have a pretty concrete idea of what this storm will bring.
Here Are My Thoughts: I still think that much of Central Mass will see a high impact winter storm late Friday night through Saturday and into Saturday night. Western Mass, on the other hand, is probably going to miss out on the really heavy accumulations as I’m not totally convinced of a track close enough to Southern New England to produce a heavy snowfall over Western Mass.
At this point, I think that we’ll see snow develop across Western and Central Mass just after midnight or so on Friday night and then continue right through all day Saturday and through the first half of Saturday night.
The worst part of the storm looks to be from about late Saturday morning through all of Saturday afternoon into early Saturday evening. During this time, we may see heavy snow with snow rates of at least 1 to 2 inches per hour (especially over Central Mass), north winds gusting up to 30 to 40 mph at times, considerable amounts of blowing and drifting snow and blizzard conditions at times.
My Latest Snowfall Forecast Map On This Storm Is Attached To This Post.
It looks like the snow will finally come to an end just after midnight on Saturday night.
I continue to watch this storm extremely closely and will continue to have frequent updates as needed.
