Happy New Year and welcome to the latest Live Blog. A large snowstorm will affect millions in the Northeast Thursday into Friday. It’s a tricky forecast for Southern New England which sits on the edge of a moderate or major event. Check this page often for live blog updates from Right Weather meteorologist Fred Campagna. Feel free to ask questions in the comment section near the bottom of the page.
Interesting. A couple of days ago the Euro had the major storm while the NAM/GFS did not. Now its flipped.
Is this considered to be a Nor’ Easter..?
Where does the GFS stand? Channel 8 in CT upped their totals based on the overnight NAM runs before the new ones came out and said the GFS was more in line with the NAM than the Euro? And I don’t envy you Fred, seems like the models are all over the place on this one
by the looks of all the models we wont really know til the storm forms is what im gathering. I am so glad i became a pro member could have used this site years ago. Keep up the hard work fred.
Josh,
There are a lot of things we know before the storm forms. In this case, what we don’t know is whether there will be 6 or 12″ of snow in your backyard. The level of expectation with a forecast is quite high because of improved accuracy of forecasts in recent years. If you look at the big picture, we’ve been telling you about a potentially big snowstorm with very cold temperatures and strong winds since the weekend. At that point, the energy for the storm was in the jet stream over the Pacific ocean. It’s pretty remarkable when you think about it. As for the snow totals with this storm, we may not know until during the storm who will get hit the hardest and who will be spared heavy snow, but, it’s safe to say everyone in SNE will have something to shovel Friday morning.
Fred,
I’ve seen here and a few other places talking about slight shifts make all the difference. How slight of a shift does it take to make up a 50 mile difference?
HI Matthew, I want to answer your question, but I’m not sure that I follow what you’re asking. Are you asking if 50 miles is a slight shift or a big shift at this point in the forecast?
The question was more along the lines of, will it literally take a 50 mile shift at the center or the storm or more like a couple mile shift at the center to see a big difference in the totals.
Got it. It will take a 50 mile shift in the center of the storm to push everything farther inland. In the grand scheme of things, 50 miles is not a huge shift in a big storm’s track.
What are the chances of that shift? 50/50? More/less?
Do we have a timeline for Thursday? When will the commute get really messy?
Both commutes look a little snowy, but ok because we’re not expecting significant snow until Thursday night. See the timeline in the Live Blog.
Just curious if there is a rough estimate of how much behind the Providence metro area timeline the Boston metro area might be? Happy New Year from a new subscriber in the Boston area 🙂
Hi Fred,
Do you think there will be any school delays or early releases tomorrow?
Hi Fred,
As usual my Pro membership pays off…been following you all week on this one. I have been worried when I saw the low LOW temps near the end and following the storm. My concern is power outages…I know 25mph is not crazy strong winds but how do you think we will hold out in RI keeping the power on through the long run of this? Thanks for your hard work!
Eve
When you are this close to a storm happening, do you see major shifts in storm track and snow amounts or is it more tweaking and zeroing in on certain areas?
Still holding to the 7-11″ range for the night?
Yes.
Any other new models coming in tonight?
Plenty. We feel pretty good about our current forecast, though.
0700 EST Woonsocket Snowfall is 0.4 in.