A Messy Winter Storm Is Expected During Friday Afternoon & Friday Night Across Western & Central Mass

A Messy Winter Storm Is Expected During Friday Afternoon & Friday Night: A warm front is expected to push northeastward into our area during the day on Friday. At the same time this is happening, an area of low pressure may form off of the New Jersey coast Friday afternoon & then track near the south coast of New England during Friday night. These two weather systems are expected to bring a messy winter storm that includes snow, sleet and freezing rain during Friday afternoon and Friday night leading to hazardous travel conditions.

Snow is expected to initially overspread the entire area between 11 am and 1 pm Friday. The snow looks to then mix with freezing rain and sleet across areas near and south of the Mass Pike by mid-afternoon while it continues to snow across areas north of the Mass Pike. The mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain looks to push as far north as about Route 2 by very late afternoon and early evening Friday. Areas north of Route 2 looks to remain as all snow right into Friday evening.

As we get into Friday night, it appears that the icy mixture of snow, sleet and freezing rain will change back to snow from north to south during the evening hours. Snow then looks to continue across all of Western and Central Mass during the after midnight hours.

All precipitation with this storm looks to come to an end by late Friday night.

My forecast snow total map can be found attached to this post.

The messy mixture of snow, sleet and freezing rain across much of the area will lead to hazardous travel conditions during Friday afternoon and Friday night. Those of you out and about during Friday afternoon and Friday night should plan on slow going & using extreme care.

Temperatures during Friday will be in the lower 30s. Low temperatures Friday night will be near 25 Degrees.

Winds on Friday will be East to Southeast at 5 to 10 mph. Winds on Friday night will be North to Northeast at 5 to 10 mph.

Saturday: Cloudy skies with scattered snow showers can be expected throughout the day on Saturday. High temperatures will be in the low 30s. Winds will be

Latest On The Possible Storm From Sunday Afternoon Through Monday: I continue to keep close tabs on the possibility that a nor’easter may affect our area in some way from Sunday afternoon through Monday. That being said, there remains a decent amount of uncertainty as to where this storm might track in relation to our area. It seems though that there are still three potential scenarios with this storm:

Scenario Number 1 which has a 50 percent chance of occurring: The low pressure system tracks to the south and east of Nantucket. This would lead to this being a glancing blow with something like a couple to perhaps a few inches of wind-blown snow from Sunday afternoon through Monday.

Scenario Number 2 which has a 30 percent chance of occurring: This would be the big snowstorm scenario where low pressure tracks very near, if not right over the Cape and Nantucket. In this scenario, it’d be a classic major snowstorm that dumps 1 to 2 feet of snow & is accompanied by a lot of wind across all of Western and Central Mass.

Scenario Number 3 which has a 20 percent chance of occurring is for the low pressure system to track completely out to sea leading to no snow at all across the entire area.

While it seems that the glancing blow scenario seems to be the scenario that has the slightly higher probability of occurring, it is still way too soon to completely rule out any of the scenarios. So, keep checking back for the latest updates with Sunday & Monday storm.