The title is a bit mis-leading. Potential is not the right word. I have all the confidence that it is going to snow here in New England beginning during the middle of the day on Friday, lasting into at least the morning hours on Saturday.
You've probably heard a lot of different stories or forecasts over the last 24 hours. You might have seen some people post pictures of one forecast model that was forecasting as much as 84 inches of snow in Northern MA, that's 7 feet of snow for those who don't care to do the math. Is this likely or even possible in a 24 hour period, no, not really. That was the result of an errant math equation gone haywire. Not uncommon from computer guidance models.
Everyone needs to remember that meteorology is NOT an exact science and likely will never be. It relies too heavily on physics, which has some aspects that are just estimations.
Anyway, enough of the science lesson. Let's get to it!
Here is what I see happening:
Clouds will start to thicken up overnight Thursday night into Friday morning. During this time, the storm will have begun its transition to a coastal low. At the upper level of the atmosphere, conditions will be setting up for this low pressure to develop very rapidly. You may hear the term "bombogenesis" thrown around by TV Meteorologists. This essentially means quickly dropping surface pressure over a short period of time. A sign of a strong storm.
As the storm gets closer, the atmosphere will start to moisten across all levels. How quickly this happens will impact how early the snow starts. One proprietary model made by the company I work for, WSI, has this happening quite early. Not sure I believe this just yet, as it has light, ocean effect snow start around 8 AM across Northeastern Massachusetts. This will be very similar to the snow that Southern New England had on Super Bowl Sunday. It basically snowed for what seemed like forever, but never amounted to much. This will merely be a nuisance for several hours before the real action gets going.
By late afternoon, for the sake of giving a time, say 4 PM, much of Massachusetts will be underneath the northern fringe of the snow bands from this storm. This will quickly spread northward over the next few hours so that by 8 PM it will be snowing in much of New England, with a few inches already on the ground in MA. The storm really starts to ramp up from here. If you watch the late evening news and see reports from the NYC area that nearly a foot of snow is already on the ground, you know for sure it's coming.
After midnight, snowfall rates across Central MA, Northeastern MA into Southern New Hampshire could be on the order of 3-4 inches PER HOUR. The biggest question will be, where does the band of very heavy snow set up and how long does it stay there? Right now, nearly all the forecast models are expecting the low pressure center to "pause" off the coast of Cape Cod for 6-12 hours. During this time, it will just be spinning Easterly winds into New England off the ocean, enhancing the snow band by feeding more moisture into. A great scenario for a lot of snow. Personally, I expect this band will set up across Southeastern to South central NH, from Rochester, westward to Manchester-Nashua, then southwestward through Northeastern and North central MA down to Northeastern CT. Basically just outside of I-495. I believe this is where the highest snow totals will occur.
Alright, I don't want to get into too much more detail, especially since a slight shift in track or that the storm doesn't pause for several hours will greatly impact storm totals. Since you are probably thinking, OK, so what are we going to see, here it goes. Look for a general 15-30 inches of snow with isolated spots possibly getting up to 36". I'm trying to span nearly all of Southern and Central New England when I give this range.
The snow should start to taper off on Saturday afternoon and then the clean up can begin. The good news is that it will likely be in the mid to upper 40s by Monday. :-)
I'll have more tomorrow. Thanks for reading!
-Jon K.
No comments:
Post a Comment