Freezing rain is currently falling across all of Western and Central Mass as of the time of this writing. This has led to the start of a buildup of ice on everything.
It looks like freezing rain will continue across the entire area for at least the next couple of hours with the freezing rain slowly changing to rain beginning around the 10-11 am time frame.
By midday or so, it is expected that many areas of Western and Central Mass will be just rain as temperatures will be just above freezing.
There are going to be exceptions and this is important. It appears that the Connecticut River Valley and the I-91 corridor will stay as freezing rain into at least the early part of the afternoon and in fact will probably end as freezing rain there late this afternoon.
Another area I am concerned about are the hills west and north of Worcester where the precipitation may stay as freezing rain throughout all of this afternoon. This includes, but is not limited to Holden, Rutland, Spencer, the Brookfields and Barre. Also areas along and north of Route 2 are very likely to remain as freezing rain throughout this afternoon. Across these areas, at least one quarter of an inch of ice accumulation is expected.
The precipitation will gradually come to an end this evening, but it may continue across the far upper Pioneer Valley of Western Mass and across areas north of Route 9 throughout tonight and not come to an end until just before sunrise on Sunday. The precipitation type looks to be both rain and freezing rain with a brief change back to snow just before it ends very late tonight.
PLEASE, BE CAREFUL, if you are out traveling on this Christmas Day. While major roads, such as the Mass Pike and Route 20 are well treated and just wet, it's those back roads and those side streets that are probably going to be quite icy. Also, parking lots, driveways, sidewalks are also likely to be very icy - so, be careful.
