Deep Winter Cold and Snow threats Roll on

An energetic disturbance from central Canada rotating around James Bay upper level low will dive into the northern US and form a strong broad low pressure center over the Great Lakes early Saturday morning. A strong cold front trailing from low pressure will bring with it periods of light snow and snow squalls into Southern New England midday to late afternoon and evening from west to east during Saturday. Behind the front is a renewal of arctic air along with gusty northwest winds. Ahead of the front a south/southwest flow will develop and bring potential for wind gusts over 30 mph to perhaps as high as 45 mph for east and southeast shores. This will temporarily bring some *milder* air into extreme southeast SNE and would mean a mix of rain and perhaps wet flakes at the tail end late Saturday. 

 There are good signals that many areas in SNE could pick up a coating to 1" of snow from these snow showers/squalls with the potential of 1-4" over northwest Mass, the Berkshires and northwest CT. Not a huge amount of snow but will become a bit hazardous for travelers caught out in it in combination with the wind. This will create low visibility at times. Keep this in mind if you have traveling plans Saturday. Temperatures are certainly looking a bit milder during the day Saturday than it has been in recent days with highs in the upper 20's to low 30's but crashing quickly with the projected frontal passage approaching.  Weak high pressure builds in Sunday with the cold front offshore and high temperatures back into the teens for many ! Winds will still be a bit gusty on Sunday but this time from the west in the wake of the frontage passage. Wind chills will be below zero for much of the region. Yet another disturbance will dive southeast out of central Canada early Sunday rounding the upper level low that will shift close to Hudson Bay at that time. This disturbance has a shot to bring some more snow showers and gusty winds into the region very late Sunday into Monday morning, but confidence a bit lower with this shortwave feature. Beyond this, the deep arctic winter cold chugs on with temperatures remaining well below normal and we make make a run at some record cold as well mid to late next week. There will be the potential to watch for a close brush with a large ocean storm late Tuesday into Wednesday but at this time I feel as though this is a near miss. The upper level pattern seems to not dig enough and go negative in time to take building southeast moisture up the coast, therefore appears to take the bulk out to sea. Its certainly is something keep an eye on at least though.   ~Anthony 

Below is a snow map for Saturday. Click on the image for a larger view