In some ways, New Englanders dealing with snow in April are like dogs celebrating their owners return from work: It happens every time, yet we always seemed shocked.

Dating back to the 1940s it has snowed at least a trace in Portland in April 91% of the years on record. Go up to Bangor and that number increases to 95%.

So our storm on Wednesday should come as no surprise; but that’s easy for me to say.

The genesis of our wintry precipitation is a very large coastal storm currently spinning up through the Mid-Atlantic. By pure track you’d think it would be too far away to impact Maine, but this storm is so spatially huge that it will clip us from hundreds of miles away.

 

Since the onset of precipitation will begin in the morning, it will be a hard fought battle between wet snow and just plain rain along the immediate coastline.

What you’ll find determines whether it’s rain or snow at any given time will be intensity. The stronger the precipitation is, the more it will mix to snow. That has to do with a process called evaporative cooling. But that’s nerd stuff and we don’t have time for it.

The morning commute will therefore be messy, but it’ll be hard to get snow to accumulate on the roadways near the coast just due to the heat held in asphalt. So more likely we will be looking at snow accumulating on decks, cars, and “grassy surfaces.”

By late morning it will get warmer at the lower levels and therefore push the rain line inland, ending our precipitation as rain.

So when it’s all said and done; this is what I’m thinking:

And by the afternoon, temperatures will drive to near 50. So that snow- buh bye.

Carson Out.

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