HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!
A robust cold front is expected to push into the eastern Great Lakes later tonight and then move across our area during Friday morning. This front is likely to bring rain showers ahead of it later tonight and Friday morning that’ll change to snow across much of Western and Central Mass during Friday afternoon.
Widespread rain showers are expected to overspread Western Mass around midnight tonight and then will overspread Central Mass just after midnight tonight. Widespread rain showers are expected to continue through all of Friday morning and then things may get more “interesting” for Friday afternoon once that strong cold front moves through.
It appears that rain on the backside of the front will change to snow first across the Berkshires, the hilltowns of Western Mass and across the Worcester Hills by about mid-afternoon with a changeover to snow potentially occurring across most of, if not all of Western and Central Mass by very late Friday afternoon and early Friday evening. The exception to the changeover from rain to snow may be in the Connecticut River Valley where the precipitation may remain as all rain until the very end Friday evening.
All snow is expected to come to an end well after midnight Friday night with a sunny, but cold Saturday and Sunday expected.
Our forecast snow accumulation map for Friday afternoon and Friday evening can be found below:
Beyond this, I’m still keeping a close eye on the possibility for some snow from later Sunday night into Monday. It still looks like an area of low pressure will strengthen as it heads northeastward from Long Island on Sunday night past the Cape and into the Gulf of Maine by Monday morning. A combination of the energy, forcing and moisture from the low pressure system and temperatures in the 30s could lead to some accumulating snow across Western and Central Mass late Sunday night into Monday. As always, the track and strength of the low pressure system will be very important in determining snowfall amounts and how far north and west the snow-rain line pushes into Southern New England. This is something that probably wont be able to be pinned down for another couple of days. For now, I think that there’s enough confidence to forecast some snow to begin falling across the area well after midnight on Sunday night with the snow continuing through Monday morning before it comes to an end during Monday afternoon. It’s still WAY too early to even start talking about exact snowfall amounts, but I do think that the most likely outcome is for about a 1 to 3 inch snowfall across all of Western and Central Mass. With that said, there’s certainly a real possibility that there could be more than this, but at this point, I think a heavy snowfall seems like a very low chance event. I am keeping a very close eye on both the snowfall for Friday afternoon and Friday evening and the snowfall for late Sunday night into Monday and will update you as needed.