Morning Madness!
Forget those other mediocre storms that do not deserve the hype. This is the real deal! I knew this baby was going to ring the bell last Sunday night. You know the dynamics are robust when there is lightning and thunder with the snow. Lifting power is immense this morning as bombogenesis is occurring. The center of the storm is south of Block Island and the pressures are falling very rapidly over southern New England. The center of the storm will likely pass over the Cape Cod Canal then over Provincetown to the Gulf of Maine. This enables enough warming for heavy rain on much of the Cape and the mix line of big wet snowflakes and raindrops will be advancing into coastal Plymouth County and possibly briefly into the Gloucester/Rockport area. Additionally, a narrow swath of sleet is expected somewhere near or east of the I-95 corridor from Providence to Boston. The northeasterly wind will occasionally gust past 45-50 mph along the coast and some hilltops and 15-35 mph elsewhere. It will be plastering everything with this wet, sloppy snow. The snow is a high density, pasty snow in eastern Massachusetts and this high water content with the wind is a cause for concern. Excess weight on trees will eventually cause downed branches, limbs and whole trees bringing down power lines. Be prepared for power outages. Farther west from Metrowest, the snow is fluffier so few outages are anticipated there. The great news for our coastal friends is that we have neap tides this week which means we have astronomically low high tides with only an 8.2 foot tide just before 5pm. There will be a couple feet added but this is below flood level in most areas as the seas become rough. Regarding total snow accumulations, I expect 12-18 inches in much of the area west of the I-95 corridor with lower amounts over southeastern MA down to 6-12 inches closer to the coastline with just a few inches close to the canal with Cape Cod getting backlash snows from midday on once the colder air wraps around the storm. Clearly, the meat of the storm is this morning but bands of backlash snows of varying intensity will continue though much of the afternoon.
Back to some sunshine tomorrow with a couple cold days to follow. I'll have more to say about the ensuing days when I've had an opportunity to digest that data. So I'll post a fresh update later this morning as time permits between all the television and radio weathercasts.
If you're lucky enough to have the day off and there are many of you, enjoy the storm but take it easy shoveling this very heavy wet snow.
Peace out.
