Colder air moving in this weekend is setting the stage for our winter weather, just in time for the official start of spring on Sunday. Here’s the latest thinking as of Friday mid-day:
TIMING:
Snow begins, light at first, during the mid-day and afternoon hours on Sunday. If you have morning plans, you should be okay on the roads, with just mostly cloudy skies at that point. Waves of varying intensity snow will fall during the afternoon, possibly mixing with some sleet or rain, depending on storm track. The heaviest looks to be Sunday evening into the overnight hours. It’ll taper off by Monday morning, with the AM commute still in the range of time for possible problems. Gradual clearing by Monday afternoon.
IMPACT:
Roads will be fine during the morning hours, but during the afternoon conditions will slowly deteriorate. Many roads will just stay wet, seeing as the temperatures will be at or above freezing for much of this event. The major highways should be okay, as pre-treatment does a good job in situations like this. That being said, watch out for slushiness building up by the evening hours.
ACCUMULATION:
Accumulating snow in Connecticut is likely at this point, but the question everybody wants to know is exactly how much. Trust me, if I knew for sure this would be much easier! It’ll likely be in the low to moderate accumulation range, with a 2-6″ snowfall a good range for now. That range will change as we get more information in. If you’re wondering, I’m going with a blend of computer model data.
Some technical talk here: The GFS has been keeping us with lower totals the past few runs, in the coating to 2 inch range. Meanwhile, the ECMWF (Euro) had 8-16″ yesterday, and then shifted to 2-8″ for the 00Z run. One of our in-house computer models called the RPM has up to a foot of snow across the state.
