Significant Snowstorm to Impact southern New England Sunday, January 25, 2026

A strong Arctic cold front is currently moving across the deep South, mid-Atlantic, and Northeast, ushering in bitterly cold arctic temperatures well into the deep South and East Coast. As of this writing, a shortwave trough was digging across the western United States with a closed 500mb low nearing Baja, California increasing ascent across the deep South, resulting in rain showers blossoming in central Texas. As the Arctic front continues sliding south towards the Gulf Coast, colder air will drain into the mid-South with an abundance of Pacific moisture overriding this cold air and low pressure development. The result will be a high impact winter storm across the mid-South tonight into Sunday with a large area of heavy snow and wintry mix with a narrow area of significant icing. 

This abundance of moisture lifts east-northeast across the country Saturday night into Sunday, moving into a deep Arctic airmass. Low pressure is expected to rapidly intensity off the Virginia coast as it slides south of Long Island. 

As the surface low continues strengthening and an 850mb low develops within the Northeast (there are uncertainties as to where this exactly occurs), a strong easterly low-level develops across the region which will transport an abundance of moisture off the Atlantic into the cold, Arctic airmass across the region, resulting in rapidly developing precipitation with increasing intensity.

Strong warm air advection will help to promote intense 850mb frontogenesis late Sunday afternoon and into the overnight, this will result in a several hour period of very heavy snowfall to push southwest to northeast across the region.

In fact, vertically averaged 800-600mb frontogenesis from the 12z run of the NAM Friday morning indicates the potential for an extremely potent band of heavy snow to lift south to north across the region:

This would indicate the potential for snowfall rates to range between 1-2 inches per hour during the peak of the storm with rates potentially even closer to 2.5-3 inches per hour. With a deep cold air mass in place the dendritic snow growth zone is expected to be very deep and with sufficient lift throughout the dendritic snow growth zone snow will be very light and fluffy with ratios averaging around 14:1 to 15:1 and potentially even briefly as high as 20:1 during peak intensity! 

Storm Impacts:

• Light snow begins to break out from southwest to northeast across the region, beginning within southwest Connecticut by mid-Monday morning and northeast Massachusetts by early afternoon. 
• The heaviest snow occurs in a window from about 1 PM to 1 AM 
• starting earlier in southwestern areas and later in northeast areas with intensity winding down earlier in southwestern areas and later in northeastern areas
• Snowfall rates peaking between 1 to 2 inches per hour and perhaps even 2-2.5 inches per hour for brief periods.
• A continuing feed of shortwave energy, plus the left exit of an intense upper-level jet streak, combined with continued development of the storm as it lifts away from the region may result in a narrow band of heavy snow persisting across northeast Massachusetts well into Monday morning, thus leading to the area of highest amounts. 
• There is potential for some sleet to mix in along the southern coast, maybe even a bit inland, however, this is not expected to greatly influence potential snowfall totals, however, this is something which needs to be monitored.

Below are my thoughts: