The active weather pattern continues across southern New England as we are dealing with yet another storm which is set to impact the region during the late morning on Tuesday and lasting into the late evening hours. While this storm does not look to be as major as significant as the past few systems we've had, this system does look to drop for plowable snows across the region. The timing of this system will also coincide with morning rush hour traffic, afternoon rush hour traffic, and evening rush hour traffic and with this the largest impacts from this system will be on travel and commute.
Our driver for the system tomorrow is currently this very strong piece of energy at 500mb (~18,000ft AGL) which is currently located out in the Ohio Valley region. This very potent piece of energy is associated with a weak area of surface low pressure and while the surface low may be weak, the strength of the energy is really driving this system. In fact, portions of IL/IA/MO have had some pretty impressive snowfall rates along with thundersnow! This energy is quickly moving through the fast moving mid-level jet stream and will be approaching our region tomorrow morning:
As stated above, this potent piece of energy is associated with an area of surface low pressure and this surface low will track through New England tomorrow and as it does so we will begin to see snow break out. Also, as the surface low moves off the coast, it is actually expected to strengthen some. This will lead to a jackpot of higher totals across portions of interior northeastern MA, southeastern NH extending into coastal sections of ME:
While this is expected to be a quick hitting system with precipitation lasting anywhere between 6 to at most 10 hours, there will be some pretty intense lift associated with the system. What this will do is 1) lead to pretty intense precipitation (snowfall) rates and 2) For areas that may be a touch warm as far as surface temperatures go, this will help to offset that. Unfortunately for areas on the outer Cape, the degree of warmth towards the surface may yield to a changeover to rain:
With such intense lift around, we could be looking at snowfall rates approaching 2'' per hour and perhaps even as high as 2.5'' per hour at times tomorrow during peak intensity. While peak intensity may only be a few hours, this means snow will pile quickly.
Given what we looked at above, we are probably looking at two areas of higher snowfall amounts. One area being in the NW Hills of CT extending into the Berkshires and another area being the NE Hills of CT, the Worcester Hills, and interior NE MA into portions of NH and into coastal ME.
As stated above, the major impacts from this system will be the impacts on travel as some of the heaviest snowfall rates will be occurring during times of higher traffic activity, especially across eastern MA. Further west into CT the snow should have slowed down by 4-5 PM so at this point in time the highest travel impacts will be occurring out across eastern MA and back into portions of RI.
Below is what I'm currently expecting in terms of snowfall accumulations:
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