Close Call With Developing Ocean Storm

A rapidly deepening low pressure system will develop over the ocean tomorrow night, making a close pass at southern New England and leaving most of us with a few inches of snow by Sunday (with the potential for a lot more or nothing at all!)

As we speak, a cold front is touching off some precipitation stretching from North Carolina to New York is quickly moving to the east. Most of us are hovering around the freezing mark after our splendid day of 50 degree weather, but interior locations have cooled off faster and the rest of us will follow by early morning.

Early morning surface temps will have to be watched closely as light snow will be falling by 7/8AM. Eastern MA will see light accumulation out of this first piece of energy, with interior MA having the best chance of 2+ inches by the afternoon.

From there on, much of the action shifts to coastal MA, the South Shore and Cape Cod. Surface energy will become more focused around a developing ocean storm. This storm will deepen very quickly, bombing out in a similar fashion to our blizzard from last week. Luckily, it appears like this storm will develop too far offshore, but will still become so strong that bands of moderate to heavy snow will be thrown back our way. Maine and parts of eastern Canada are going to get crushed by this one.

This is the snowfall map that I tweeted out earlier and I still agree with it right now. Most of this snow will fall in the evening on Saturday and overnight. However, I have been saying this forecast has a high "bust" potential. As this storm is essentially developing in the upper atmosphere right over our heads, it is very hard to pin point exactly where the surface low pressure will be located come Saturday night.

The current thinking keeps this beast (potentially 950mb, which is stronger than last weeks blizzard) offshore. But the storm is not yet developed and until we begin to see this thing in person, all bets are not final. A slight shift to the west or the east of this storms development and we will be talking about big time changes to the above numbers

Stay tuned!