Coldest Since January...
The high temp in Boston today was 23 achieved at 1PM making this the coldest high since January 30th earlier this year...truly Mid-Winter cold! The core of this cold is going to retreat a bit into Canada tonight and temps will be about 10 degrees milder tomorrow with lighter wind...it will definitely feel much better. There will be another vort max passing through late morning so there is potential for additional flurries otherwise look for some sunny breaks followed by increasing high clouds from a Mid-Atlantic storm system. The track of that system will stay flat and bring a few inches of snow to that region but only graze the Islands and perhaps the Cape with a period of light snow late Thursday night and early Friday morning...a dusting perhaps. The rest of Friday be blustery but sunny with temps in the mid 30s. Saturday also looks very pleasant with highs reaching the upper 30s with cirrus advancing in the afternoon.
Still not much new to add this evening regarding the end of the weekend system. As expected the GFS continues to dance all over the place while the more reliable EURO remains pretty similar from run to run. At this time there really is no reason to jump ship on the EURO and go with the GFS. Yes there will be a large coastal storm and it appears that both models have settled on a timeframe...later Sunday through Monday morning...so there, we have that. But as far as how robust this storm will be for us, the odds stay as a lighter snowfall for Eastern Mass perhaps a moderate one for the Cape and Islands. We are dealing with multiple packets of energy forming and shaping this thing which is why the GFS and to some extent the EURO early on are/were having issues from run to run. Again, this doesn't mean that a big one won't happen it just means the odds don't favor it at this time. One thing both models are on board with is capturing the surface low under a polar vortex and keeping it close by through most of next week. This makes sense considering the downstream blocking. And given the recent December pattern, will likely give us weather like this week and the week before...cold, blustery with periods of flurries or light snow.
