One last day of pleasant weather is with us Friday as clouds increase ahead of the slow-moving storm chugging across the nation’s midsection and poised to move through New England this weekend.
In the interim, temperatures in the 40s Friday afternoon with very little wind will feel like a treat after the cold start earlier this week, even if the sun fades behind variable clouds. Temperatures won’t tumble Friday night, but will fall into the 20s and 30s. As an onshore wind begins overnight Friday night and moisture increases in the New England air, pockets of drizzle developing by early Saturday morning in southern New England may actually fall instead as flurries inland or perhaps an isolated pocket or two of freezing drizzle during the morning to midday.
From midday onward, temperatures in all of southern New England warm enough for raindrops to fall, and while the intensity won’t be much at first, scattered showers of rain will become more commonplace and a bit heavier and steadier as the afternoon wears on. By evening and night, steady rain falls with about an inch of rain total.
In northern New England, it’s a different story: developing Saturday flurries turn to scattered late day snow showers, then an evening and night mix of snow to sleet, freezing rain and, for some, raindrops. This results in an icy mess for the North Country on Saturday evening and night, with slick roads and perhaps even enough ice accretion on tree limbs and power lines to result in some pockets of power outages by dawn Sunday for the Great North Woods of New Hampshire and the Mahoosuc Region of Maine.
Because of the mix, total snow accumulation will be limited to one to three inches for most of northern New England, though lingering upslope snow – snow on the windward, westward side of the mountains Sunday – will add a bit more snow for as much as three to six inches in these favored communities. Otherwise, Sunday delivers a busy breeze of drier air allowing for breaks of sun between clouds and warmer-than-normal temperatures into the 40s.
Next week continues to look benign for late January in our exclusive First Alert 10-day forecast, with a chance of showers of rain and snow returning by next weekend, but right now even those aren’t looking too foreboding.
