Powerful storm might be remembered it's wind, not it's snow

A strong ocean storm has moved off shore of the mid-Atlantic tonight and won't move much in the next 12-24 hours.  Normally, a storm center located so far south wouldn't have much of an affect on us. However, this particular storm will grow quickly and become quite expansive in its physical size, in a manner very similar to the maturation of Sandy this past October.

Speaking of Sandy, this current storm will mark the 3rd major ocean storm in 4 months (including Sandy and the Feb '13 blizzard). Amazingly enough, this storm may actually cause worse coastal damage for southern New England than Sandy caused.  And that is no small fact. Wind and coastal flooding figure to be the lead story for this one.

As the storm sits and spins in a stationary manner on Thursday, winds from the east and north east will continue to batter the region. Beginning tonight, we can expect a full 48 hours of wind gusts in the 40-55mph range. This type of wind event will cause scattered power outages and perhaps even worse, will really turn up the waters of the Atlantic. Waves of 15-25 feet will build offshore, pushing a lot of water towards east facing beaches. Thursday night and Friday morning's tide cycles seem to be the ones of concern.

Significant flood damage is likely to occur in some areas, altering beach shapes up and down the coast.

The precipitation forecast is less significant but much trickier. All day long today, we've seen a jump back and forth between rain, sleet, ice pellets and snow. A lot more of that is in our future. The issue will be the east wind. Any wind directly off the warm water this time of year will keep the surface temps above freezing for most of the storm, especially during the daytime. This will be a long duration event that won't completely rap up until Friday afternoon and figures to dump most of its snow overnight on Thursday.

Here is the breakdown: Most of the light snow falling tonight should change to another rain/snow mix for much of tomorrow. There are some areas that will drop below 32 degrees overnight, which means a dusting of snow might await come the morning. Tomorrow will be similar to today, but the precipitation will be much more consistent versus scattered. When it falls hard, snow will come down but it won't stick to the above freezing roads.Higher elevations outside of 495 may stay cold enough for some accumulating snow during the day, but not Boston.

Thursday night into Friday morning is when most of us will see our accumulating snow.  With the storm stalled to our south, a small upper level feature will move in from the NW, giving the ocean storm a little kick in the butt. Colder air will be in place and a heavy wet snow should fall for everyone, except Cape Cod. The winds won't be dying down, so the combination of wind and heavy snow will mean even more power outages for Friday. Here is a good breakdown of expected snowfall totals.Not a blockbuster by any means in terms of snowfall. But I think we will remember this storm for its wind and severe coastal flooding.