Very Serious Icing Threat Looms Midweek

The more things change, the more things stay the same!

This pattern won't quit. We have clearly been in the line of fire for storms during the past 5 weeks. And what's more, these storms have been all snow events with the exception of south eastern parts of the state. It is fairly rare for all big storms in the winter to remain all snow events, given our proximity to the ocean and of course the extremely volatile nature of the atmosphere! But of course, here we are, more than half of the winter done with and no less than 60 inches haven already fallen, with the promise of more this week.

This next one will certainly be big and its effects will be widespread across much of the country. Many areas, like Texas and Florida, will see the coldest temperatures of the winter with icy conditions.

As for us, we are looking at two storms that will affect us from Tuesday through Thursday.

The first storm will be moving out of the Great Lakes region late Monday night into Tuesday. As this quick hitting storm runs into the re enforced arctic air that we see on Monday, snow will break out over our area during the day on Tuesday. This first storm isn't strong but it will drop a good 2-5 inches of snow on us during daylight hours on Tuesday.

It may seem like there is not even two storms to the casual observer, given their close proximity, but after a short lived break on Tuesday night, a more potent storm will move into the area.

This one looks very strong and very complicated. I don't have a lot of time right now to get into the specifics but as of right now, it looks like we could be in for an extended period of ice and freezing rain on Wednesday. Not good.

Ice is the worst possible thing in a winter storm. Even just a small amount of it can shut a region down for days. Remember the ice storm in 2008 in central Mass?

Not sure of the dynamics yet but if we do get a shot of icing as expected, it will likely result in much worse conditions than any of the snow storms that we have gotten all winter. Boston hasn't seen an ice storm in quite some time. At least with snow, you can move it out of the way. Ice is not easy to remove at all.

I think this situation poses a real threat to us and it calls for close monitoring, again, more so than any snow we have gotten so far.

I will update more on this later.