Afternoon Update

My fear of the cold air hanging in longer than expected was certainly realized today. Temperatures as of 4 p.m. were still below freezing in Portland. Even in southern New England the mercury stayed much colder than expected west of Boston.

There is usually a better sign of cold air damming from the coast to the mountains, but today’s storms just never pulled the warm air in off the ocean as expected. That said, amounts of snow are still not impressive in spite of the lack of rain.

Snow reports from Tuesday. These will be updated later this evening by NOAA.

Ending This Evening

Look for the mixed back of precipitation to shut down from south to north between 8 p.m and 1 a.m.  You can see on the radar prediction below how things are forecast to progress overnight.

Snow, sleet and rain will end this evening with colder weather by morning.

This morning the lesson for drivers is that it only takes a little bit of frozen precipitation to make roads hazardous.

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Already in Portland roads are snow-covered.  We won’t have to worry about the snow continuing later this afternoon, but this morning both the air and the roads are cold enough to make travel tricky.

Areas of snow were pushing through Maine Tuesday morning.

The weather map this morning shows a classic cold-air damming pattern. In meteorology this means that the cold air drains down from the north and gets stuck against the Appalachian Mountains along the coastline. If you read my blog yesterday I put in a little caveat about seeing more snow along the coast if the damming pattern holds longer than expected. That’s indeed the case and coastal areas will see a couple  inches of snow rather than just the coating to an inch I expected yesterday.

Cold air is hanging tough along the coastline Tuesday morning.

Nevertheless, this is still not a big storm for the coastline: The warm air will win out. But I suggest you clean up whatever does accumulate today because it’s going to freeze rock-solid overnight and tomorrow morning.  There could also be some icing or glaze on top of the snow as the chance to rain occurs. 

Portland should not exceed 3 inches of snow, but there will be more west of the Turnpike.

A storm system moving out of the Ohio Valley into New England will redevelop into a large storm over the Canadian Maritimes tomorrow. The coastal conditions will rapidly evolve from this morning’s snow to milder air and rain this afternoon and then back to very cold air tomorrow Thursday and Friday.

Over inland areas, and especially in the mountains, the snow will last longer and therefore pile up. Some places could exceed 8 inches of snow – especially across ski country and up toward the Canadian border.

Once the storm passes, expect some stiff winds on Wednesday. Combined with frigid temperatures, wind chills will be in the single digits to perhaps near zero at times and the arctic flow is likely to last through the rest of the work week.

It will be very cold Wednesday afternoon across all of the region as arctic air takes over.

The northwesterly flow will also help keep any storm systems 2 hours south – meaning I’m not looking for another snowstorm at the end of the week. Obviously things can change, but at present it looks like we will miss any more precipitation the rest of the week.  The weekend also looks dry with temperatures getting back above freezing, especially by Sunday.


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