A warm front continues to lift northward and temperatures are going up.
A few showers linger near the coast early, with patchy fog. In Maine, the wintry mix continue to change to rain and the showers hang around all day. Higher elevations in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont may get a couple inches of snow. A gusty southwest wind kicks in for everyone too, helping to elevate our temps despite the cloud cover. The wind is not expected to be damaging, about 30-40 mph by evening and mainly near the coast and Cape with around 25 mph gusts inland.
Highs reach the 50s to low 60s, approaching record territory. The records to beat in southern New England are 64 in Boston, 62 in Providence, 58 in Worcester and 60 in Hartford, all set on December 16, 1971.
Friday is a transition day as we see a gusty southwest then west wind and temps in the 50s, slowly cooling by evening to the 40s. As we continue to cool down more into Saturday, our next system heads in. This one still looks more wet than white in southern New England. There isn’t a lot of cold air prior, and the cold temps to support snow in the atmosphere are only around freezing for a short time near Boston. One parameter has only a 10% chance of 1 inch of snow or more in the Boston area. Even if we see around an inch Saturday, it will be washed away by rain.
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Some snow falls on the back edge of the low pressure system Sunday morning, so that sneaky feature could drop a little accumulation in some spots. The track is still up in the air at this point, so keep checking back for more details. We are confident that the mountains and interior New England will see a few to several inches of snow through the weekend. Sunday we dry off and temps are much cooler in the upper 30s for highs.
Next week our pattern shifts to consistently cooler. A system passes northeast of New England Monday into Tuesday. The models have backed off on a storm for us for now, but we can’t rule out at least a mix to move through even with a cold front.
Looking at Christmas Eve, there is a chance for a light wintry mix around the northeast, and some potential in Boston. We are keeping the hope that we may see some snowflakes around for Christmas.
