Snow is breaking out across New England this afternoon and will quickly overspread the area this evening.  This is going to be a fast hitting but potent storm with 6-8 inches of new snow across south and central coastal areas.  There will be even more snow east of Rockland where 8-15 inches of new snow will fall overnight. Winter storm warnings are up for the areas in pink in the image above.  These are a likely to see 6 or more inches of snow.  West of the coast, less snow will fall so a winter weather advisory is posted.

Our storm is rapidly developing across the mid-Atlantic region and will become a very strong storm overnight before moving into eastern Canada Sunday.  The snow will come down at intense rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour overnight and into the early morning hours of Sunday. Travel will be difficult overnight and I advise not traveling unless it’s essential.  I know this impacts plans and it’s December and it does snow, but the snow will create near whiteout conditions tonight. Highway travel will be especially difficult.

The storm ends early Sunday and the sun will be breaking through the clouds in the afternoon.  Temperatures will be cold and wind chills into the teens.  This is not an arctic outbreak of air behind the system, that will occur after the 1st of the year.

Coastal areas will see the bulk of the snow from this system, but there will not be coastal flooding at the time of high tide due to the fast movement of the storm and the lack of any astronomical high tide this weekend.

January thaw
While I know some of you don’t want to think about a thaw in January, there are some signs of a warming trend during the second week of the month.  This would actually be fairly typical as we do often experience a break in the cold and snow in the first month of the year.  More on this as we get into 2013. 

Gardening This week’s video talks about soil compaction. If you have an area of your lawn that won’t grow grass very well or a tree that isn’t performing, the issue might be soil compaction. Take a look at this video and see how soil compaction can be fixed.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this blog or any others. Please follow me on Twitter at @growingwisdom and check out my latest videos at GrowingWisdom.com