The first part of the forecast was on track; generally light to moderate snow accumulated last night into early this morning. The rest of the day has been chilly and cloudy with pockets of freezing drizzle.
Unfortunately, it won’t warm up much tonight, so as another round of moisture moves in, areas of freezing rain are possible.

Freezing rain will continue into Wednesday morning in some spots away from the coastline. There could be some delays inland and treatments will be necessary. Temperatures will be rising and rain will win out by late morning.

A southerly wind will gradually kick in, warming everyone up from the coast to the interior. We’ll have periods of rain through the afternoon, but the height of the rain and wind will be from a squall line that arrives Wednesday evening and night.

The question isn’t whether there will be power outages; it’s how many. These high-end “will it mix down or not” type of wind events are always a bit tricky to forecast (even though we’ve seen them a lot in recent years.) It’s really just a three or four hour period in the evening and overnight when these strong gusts will be possible.

One concern is the direction of the wind: from the south, which historically leaves us more vulnerable to damage.

In western Maine and New Hampshire, the wind will not be as strong, but even there outages are possible. Gusts will ramp up closer to the coastline and in southern/central Maine. The highest gusts are likely to be on the Midcoast, around Penobscot Bay and into Downeast Maine, where peak gusts of 60 to 70 mph are possible. Wind gusts of this magnitude, clearly, will result in fairly widespread power outages.

Some of these outages may last several days if this forecast pans out.

Understandably, we have heard from many of you affected by last year’s devastating December floods. No two storms are the same. There are a couple of differences in our favor this time: The snowpack in the mountains isn’t expected to melt completely, because it’s cold ahead of this storm. River levels going into the storm are also lower. It’s also a faster-moving storm.

Either way, it will be tough to avoid some flooding, especially of smaller rivers and streams.

All of the state is in a flood watch, for flash flooding, ice jam flooding, and river/stream flooding. Most of this flooding will likely occur at night, so be extra cautious if traveling and heed any warnings.