Spring arrived at 12:15 p.m. EDT on Tuesday. Unfortunately, there is no sign of spring-like weather heading for Southern New England anytime soon. In fact, another Nor’easter is bearing down on the Mid-Atlantic and New England, and it’s likely to get snowy again on Wednesday, especially in the evening. It is yet another low-confidence forecast with a lot of model disagreement about how the storm will play out. I am still leaning to the low-end on the snow accumulation forecast. I do not expect much, if anything, to stick to pavement during the day on Wednesday. There is a better chance of a burst of snow that accumulates Wednesday evening before the snow tapers off late at night. But, the burst of snow in the evening comes with slightly milder temperatures, and unless it’s coming down heavily, it may not stick to pavement, either.
Making matters even trickier, we have been in an unseasonably cool weather pattern for the past several days and the ground is most likely colder than normal for this time of the year. However, the sun angle is still quite high, and I frankly don’t know whether the cold ground or high sun angle will win with any snow that falls tomorrow. I’m leaning towards the high sun angle sending enough radiation through the clouds to warm the pavement and keep it wet instead of snowy.
I will run a Live Blog on Wednesday with updates. For now, I expect a wintry mix at times that does not amount to much during the day. The best chance of a snow burst is between 6 p.m. and 2 a.m. with 1-4″ of snow accumulation on pavement possible. It’s more likely to stick at higher elevations away from the coast. It looks like snow will move out by early Thursday morning between 5-9 a.m., and the temperature will quickly rise through the 30s into the 40s on Thursday.
Long-Range Outlook
There is an outside chance of another storm late in the weekend or early next week. It looks like the storm will pass off the Mid-Atlantic coast well south of New England, but it may spin around and retrograde, bringing a rain/snow threat around Tuesday. It’s another highly uncertain forecast.
Even though there is a lot of uncertainty with each storm system, the overall pattern is quite likely to stay near or colder than normal through at least early April. It’s possible there will be more rain/snow decisions into next month, and there should not be any sustained warm-ups in the next few weeks.
