Wednesday Forecast

108 Comments

6:21AM

DAYS 1-5 (FEBRUARY 13-17)
We made it through that event, with Boston basically doubling its seasonal snowfall, not that it was difficult to do. Snow/sleet totals generally verified as expected. What’s nice about post-storm this time, unlike the January messy event, is no flash freeze & arctic air. It’ll be on the mild side today as low pressure pulls away, the day starting damp then drying out overall, although a few rain/snow showers may occur in the hills northwest of Boston in the afternoon and isolated snow showers in similar areas in the evening. High pressure brings dry weather for Valentine’s Day Thursday. Low pressure will track between the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay in Canada on Friday, dragging its warm front through our area early in the day, followed by its cold front late in the day. A brief mix is possible with the warm front, and rain showers with the cold front. The weekend looks a little colder and we should see a wave of low pressure miss the region to the south early in the weekend. Another one, depending on speed, may approach the region by later in the weekend but the current leaning is for this to also aim south of the region. Will watch it, in case.
Forecast details…
TODAY: Cloudy with areas of drizzle and a few rain showers early, then partly sunny with a passing rain/snow shower possible north central MA and southern NH afternoon. Highs 39-46. Wind light N to NW early, then W 10-20 MPH.
TONIGHT: Partly cloudy. A passing snow shower possible north central MA and southwestern NH. Lows 23-30. Wind W 5-15 MPH.
THURSDAY: Mostly sunny. Highs 37-44. Wind W 5-15 MPH.
THURSDAY NIGHT: Increasing clouds. Lows 25-32. Wind light variable.
FRIDAY: Mostly cloudy. Brief mix possible favoring areas north and west of Boston morning. Rain showers possible west to east late-day. Highs 45-52. Wind light SE early, then SW 5-15 MPH.
SATURDAY: Mostly cloudy. Lows from the upper 20s to lower 30s. Highs from the upper 30s to lower 40s.
SUNDAY: Partly sunny. Lows in the 20s. Highs in the 30s.

DAYS 6-10 (FEBRUARY 18-22)
Will have to watch 2 waves of low pressure, one February 18, the other February 20. They both can end up passing south of the region but also have some risk of impacting the region. Early feeling is a miss on the first, and an impact from the second one. But the fact that available guidance has been abysmal beyond a few days on a routine basis doesn’t really change that much, and this forecast is based again on a feel for the overall pattern, but is still not a high confidence forecast by any stretch. Some of the more reliable large scale pattern guidance indicates a pattern that would not be too favorable for either of these to impact the region so can’t discount this possibility too.

DAYS 11-15 (FEBRUARY 23-27)
May have to watch yet another threat around the February 23-24 weekend. Quiet weather follows this potential threat.

108 thoughts on “Wednesday Forecast”

    1. It was topped with sleet, which melts slowly. Most of it will be gone by the end of today. The rest will vanish by Friday.

  4. Thanks, TK.

    All told, we got about 3-1/2 inches of snow. Don’t know how much sleet but it is slippery out. We could hear some good amounts of sleet last evening into the night.

    BYW – enjoyed the song Top Cat song in yesterday’s post. Loved that show. Thanks, Vicki!

  7. Thank you, TK

    Thank you also, rainshine. He’s our topkatt. What a great job forecasting

    TK. I noticed you said most will be gone by the end of the day. I’m hoping that’s true for the inch or so of slop on the driveway and walkway

    1. I agree with you Vicki. He is our topkatt. I still trust him more than the mets – no matter how good some of them are. I always check the blog to see what TK says.

  8. Thank you, K. Thanks also to so many of our bloggers, whose commentary and sharing of graphics are soooo helpful to this avid skier. 🙂

  11. Fridays event looks to me to just be a front moving through with rain and even snow showers. Monday does look interesting just quickly glancing at the models. Worried that instead of any major event we get two moderate events that add up. Ie two 3 to 6 inch type of events

    1. The Euro’s depiction of those events with the upper-level pattern makes me wonder if they’re not going to happen at all. However it could be the Euro over amplifying the pattern too.

      Pretty much every combination with those waves is still on the table as a possibility…

      Hit hit
      Hit miss
      Miss hit
      Miss miss
      Non existent (one or both)

      …

      As far as the Friday thing that’s look like one low through Canada for a while with another system so far offshore it’s completely separate

  12. Thanks TK
    I will take a moderate snowfall over the ice. Thankfully unlike the last ice event back on January 20th were going to get melting instead of everything staying frozen for a couple of days.

  15. Thanks TK!

    So I am tracking the efficacy of two apps again. One is Dark Sky which people swear by and the other is Wunderground which is far more popular. So the image on the left is what Dark Sky is already saying for Monday. Wundergrounds coverage for monday through wednesday on the right.

    https://i.imgur.com/mvpzF0P.jpg

    I’m going to be taking screenshots daily and posting them to see how they evolve. I’ve done this a few times in the past to show to friends that these apps this far out are usually way off base. I compare the apps to a “psychic” doing cold reads of a crowd. People only pay attention to the hits but disregard the many misses.

        1. I’ve been of the experience of the opposite on twitter. I’m more used to seeing people lambaste those in charge when a cancellation occurs. It’s not like rooting for a sports team. Additionally I have a friend who lives out there who said the roads were no bueno near them – I trust their judgement. This leads one more towards worcester being ill prepared for ice treatment with a need to improve in the future.

          1. If people don’t have a dog in the fight, they tend not to care, tweet.

            Its a shame that the city of Worcester is not capitalizing on “Improved Technology” to keep there city open during minor weather events.

            1. Fair enough. You should run for worcester county public office under a “I’m not soft” campaign lol

  17. I could see calling off school yesterday to be safe because even if you did early dismissal the buses would be bringing home the younger kids. Today I can’t see it with the snow ending at midnight. 2 hour delay should have been for today.

  18. Yes, its reasonable that the city of Worcester may have been able to get in one of the last 2 days, possibly as an early release or a late start. Of course, it is a larger city, with many hills and tends to have the coldest outcome of many storms, so perhaps that is a factor.

    With that said, why is it that the current generation is always viewed as “soft” when it comes to closings and cancellations? Now that we have improved communication via technology, is it possible that the closings and cancellations of the current day makes things safer for the current generation. Perhaps without these cancellations, (ah, we toughed it out back then, we did it !!), past generations were put in harms way.

    Also, one has to factor in that 30 to 45 years ago, the volume of cars on the read was so much less. I’m willing to bet the number of households with one stay at home parent to help someone get to school was much higher than it is now.

    Improved technology and making different decisions than in the past isn’t being “soft”. Perhaps if the current generation were to similarly name call our past generations, they could equally and annoyingly call us “stupid” for some of the choices we made.

    3. This is the most correct answer. People paint these comparisons as if it is an apples to apples thing with generations when it is not.

      – Worcester county alone has a quarter of a million more residents vs 1960 (100k more vs 1980)
      – Forecasting improvements
      – Risk analysis improvements (based on past evidence like those previous generations who had to deal with going in to their detriment)
      – communication improvements

      So many facets to consider. I too am always wary of people who use the soft terminology. Especially those who are into forecasting because I feel those people are science minded and should be able to make some learned approach to the decision for cancellation in an area.

    4. Tom, they received 4” and it ended by midnight.

      If the city cannot treat the roads and side walks in a 6 to 8 hour time frame then they should reavaluate their procedures to become more efficient at snow and ice removal.

      Most families have two working parents and should not have to be put in this situation.

      The families of Worcester deserved better.

      1. https://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KORH.html

        I am open to your opinion. Certainly, it wasn’t the largest storm and perhaps something can be learned from it.

        Looking at the ob history above, the snow may have ended by midnight, but freezing drizzle continued for a few to many hours beyond midnight (00:54 ob) and the temps remained at or slightly below freezing, so their road conditions may have not so easily been able to be treated.

          1. Is that .23 of ice accretion or did it rain .23″ with temps under 32?

            Sand would have been a quick fix.

          2. I’m north of Worcester and work in the city itself. In my town the kids had a 2 hour delay and a half day yesterday. The roads were horrible this morning as they were in Worcester and it was still freezing raining when I got into work. I got stuck a few times and I drive a pickup truck. The number of cars on the road in Worcester is apples to oranges as compared to surrounding towns. That is the difference amongst other factors.

  19. I spent a bit of time trying to find out more about Worcester and its school’s reasoning. There are a fair amount of parents who see this as reasonable for Worcester. Most towns have kids one mile and under walk. Worcester has kids two miles and under walk. Having been through Framingham schools for all of my kids and heard complaints about school cancellations, this is not a surprise. Worcester is larger and more populated than Framingham. Sidewalks are cleared and then many businesses will end up blocking them when they clear their establishments – and I know they are not supposed to and that would happen in a perfect world.

    As always, I think any school system knows its students and its city/town best. I will always admire erring on the side of caution when children are concerned.

    1. Are you in a smaller town? Towns surrounding Framingham always did. Until very recently, Framingham had only full days off. There had been some bus issues for kids that made it unsafe to have delayed openings and early releases.

  21. Couple of things re: Worcester. The city requires property owners to clear sidewalks, within 6 hours of the end of storms. Giving the timing of the end of precipitation, sidewalks would generally not be clear.

    It takes the City about 3 hours to salt/sand their arterial and collector routes. If they sand all roads, it takes at least another 3 to 4 hours to accomplish.

    The City could change its ordinances to require sidewalks to be cleared sooner. Or they could choose to invest further in outside forces to conduct sidewalk and sanding operations to reduce the time involved to cleanup after a storm.

    There is a reason for the decisions, and it makes sense when you know the reasons. Of course, what could be done to change the reasons for the decisions is certainly up for debate.

    1. Excellent information. And rather impossible to disagree with. I agree re your last comment. If some residents are not happy, a discussion with the powers that be would sure be reasonable.

  22. Dr S – it will be fun to track Dark Sky and Wunder. I have no idea what Dark Sky is so need to look into it. I’m printing your links to watch for myself. Thank you.

        1. They have an open API that multiple weather apps pay to use on a per call (how many thousands of requests) basis. They have their own stand alone app (called simply dark sky – one time paid app). The three major providers of weather via apps to the general public are accuweather, wunderground (who the weather channel owns) and dark sky. Just to provide additional context.

      2. Well darn….no wonder the name sounded familiar. Thanks JPD. I don’t pay any attention to what apps say re forecasts so does explain why I had no clue 🙂

    1. Thank you, JJ. I would say small towns are easier but then we were one of the few with a delay this morning and we have about 8000 folks. So I guess numbers don’t mean a whole lot.

  25. As far as Worcester’s decision making regarding cancelations/delays, I firmly believe in “better safe than sorry”. However, I am curious as to how they handle their snow and make-up days. Do they use vacation time/extend the school year to the end of June or apply for waivers to keep the original last day schedule intact?

      1. On one of the FB pages, Philip, a lot of parents were saying they need to do away with Feb vacation in Worcester. That presents a whole new set of problems. I’ve said here before that Framingham did that years ago and made one vacation week in March. The teachers objected, saying that Feb vacation in particular breaks the illness cycle so doing away with it would mean more kids out sick. They were right and Framingham eventually went back to Feb and April. As far as making it up….I don’t know what they do. However, their school calendar lists June 10 as last day knowing that there will be make up.

          1. No 🙂

            Learning is tough. We throw more and more seemingly at each next generation to learn at an earlier grade.

            Prepping as a teacher, grading, actually teaching and doing the job is exhausting. Those breaks are essential. 6 to 8 weeks max btwn vacations and then usually burnout sets in for both students and teachers, with the exception of autumn, after the long summer break. I couldn’t imagine going feb to June without a recharging break.

  27. Afternoon all. After a quick review of 12z data, no changes to thinking. Still don’t know how things shake out with that series of waves. The various guidance have their own “ideas” on what comes up and what doesn’t. And with the same large scale pattern this probably won’t become any easier to figure out in the next couple days. So we’ll just continue to keep a broad watch on those potential systems of concern.

    I am heading into Boston for a concert this evening, so the next you hear from me will probably be tomorrow’s update.

        1. Ah ha. Thanks. I looked at the venues and who was around. I remember that you mentioned you liked him
          and had his albums or at least one of them.

          Have fun and enjoy.

          1. Great song. He often forgets the lyrics to that one live but he refuses to use a cheat sheet. He’ll just curse a couple times until he finds his place. 😉

            I have all of his albums, and he has a lot of them. 🙂

  28. Just looked at the 12z models myself.

    12z GFS/CMC/ICON are all a hit with both the Monday and Wednesday systems.

    12z GFS is more robust with the Monday system (widespread 5-8″) while it delivers lighter amounts (1-3″/heaviest south) on Wednesday.

    12z CMC is the opposite delivering a light to moderate snowfall Monday (heaviest south) and a more widespread 5-8″ Wednesday (heaviest north). Follows that up with a third snow/mix event at the end of the week.

    12z Euro doesn’t like the Monday system (barely has a system at all and it is a miss way south). It does however deliver a moderate hit with the Wednesday system.

    Some definite watchers on the horizon and it looks promising for at least some snow. Going to be interesting to see how Mother Nature finds a way to screw us this time!

    1. Of course it is only Wednesday and a bit early to write off a Monday system, but I am NOT getting good vibes on that one. I’d keep my eye on Wednesday.

      We shall see. Looking forward to some more action, I hope anyway.

      1. GFS is suddenly very robust on Monday but not encouraging to see the Euro have basically nothing. While I’d love to get them both I would gladly sacrifice one to ensure a decent hit on the other!

  30. Ryan Hanrahan‏Verified account @ryanhanrahan · 1h1 hour ago

    Hard to believe but we’ve actually had 2 feet of snow so far this year in the Hartford area. A bit below average and a bit below what we had this year at this time. #nbcct

    https://twitter.com/ryanhanrahan/status/1095783667622916096

    I am sitting at 19″ on the year in Coventry which is way below normal for me. This year the farther N and W you are in CT and MA, the more normal winter you have had. It does indeed seem hard to believe that BDL is basically average for the year in snow and close to what they were last year at this time.

    1. Mark, don’t know if you saw my JP vs Logan snow post, but I am at
      14.5 inches here in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston (5-6 miles from Logan).
      While Logan is showing a paltry 4.7 inches on the year.

  32. Exciting (?) news in from NCEP late this afternoon: the FV3 GFS is scheduled to go operational on March 20.

    1. March 20, eh??? as is? Or VASTLY improved?
      No doubt as the piece of shit that it currently is. 😀 😀 😀

        1. Probably because of the piece of garbage, they rather it not be in the winter when everyone actually pays attention to model performance lol. We will get to complain about it next winter 😛

  34. Best shots Sunday night / early Monday may or may not just clip us & like I said above Tuesday night / Wednesday. Right back in it just did a 24 hr run with yesterday’s system it was tough moving as it was water logged

  37. Not going skiing this weekend, I will wait till next weekend when prices go back down. I am hopeful that at least one of the systems hit but have a bad feeling we are going to get screwed by suppression. One of the systems will give us at least something but I am not seeing how it will be major. some of the telloconnections also are not great but the MJO is best I have seen it it just seems like we can’t get them to come together.
    Telloconnections for next week
    AO: Positive
    EPO going to neutral
    PNA: Neutral/Negative
    MJO, 8???

    So not great, def don’t think any big storm is really possible but we could always get a surprise. If we could get all snow event and keep temps in the low 30s or lower I will be happy.

  39. Just home from parade meeting in Sutton center….driving was a bit interesting. Squall has passed but roads were wet in a lot of spots with a light cover of snow.

  43. Thats no bird, Biggest bird you probably have that walks is a turkey here in New England but their tracks are very distinct, They are very skinny with 3 ligements generally making around a 90 degree spread. I believe thats a fishercat track. Watch your animals. Of course If I could get a picture thats closer up that would help, it also could just be a bad smaller mammal track but I can guarantee thats no bird.

  44. Joshua, the JJ show was incredible. And he played that song. He didn’t stray too far from the album version either as he seemed to want to stay true to alot of the original arrangements since this tour celebrates 4 decades of music as well as a brand new album, which is OUTSTANDING.

Comments are closed.