Tuesday Storm Evening Report

All this predicting of snow days is all in good fun and pretty harmless, but what isn't fun at all is what happened in Sandisfield last night: a fire wiped out its Department of Public Works building and all of its snowplows. Here's the article from The Berkshire Eagle.

Sandisfield, as part of the Farmingdale River Regional School District, has announced a 2-hour delay for tomorrow as it will need outside help to clear the roads. (We'll hopefully have more information in the coming days about how people can help out the town should there be appeals for public support.)

As for tomorrow's storm, the GSD Staff is really feeling the pinch on this one. These are not the easiest set of variables for the first call of the season. But that's why we get the big bucks.

So, we're going to role out a very modest--and perhaps too conservative--20% chance of a snow day tomorrow. What does a 1 in 5 chance of a snow day actually mean? In our very complicated and nuanced calculus, it means two things. 1) Tomorrow, you have a much better chance of attending school than not; 2) If there are snow days, 1/5th of Berkshire County schools will be affected.

Here's why you should prepare for school: all the information we processed this afternoon has put this storm in a downward trend. Snow totals for the Winter Weather Advisory were lowered from 3-6 inches to 1-3 inches (with pockets of 5" in higher elevations). And the end of the storm was changed from 7 AM Wednesday to 7 PM Tuesday. And the Winter Storm Watch in Bennington, VT was reduced to a Winter Weather Advisory. And we were alerted that warm air will be nosing its way into the Berkshires in the middle of the day tomorrow and turn the snow to rain for a part of the day for most of the county. These are not good signs.

The 7 PM radar. Not a lot of moisture to work with.

Still, as they were on Saturday, the models could be slightly off, and there just might be enough cold air and lifting of moisture in place at the perfect time to cause a few cancellations. We do think the best chances for snow days will be in the northern half of the county, with Central Berkshire and Adams/Cheshire especially having the best chances for snow days, but the odds are not in students' favor.

The NWS released this map at 4 PM today. If it proves to be right, we'll see more schools get snow days than we are predicting.

We don't like it any more than you do. Perhaps we'll have better news to report in the morning. If this storm doesn't come through, though, you won't have to wait too long for the next chance at a delay or snow day. We're in a very active pattern with plenty of cold air to give us chances for shortened days (or days off) all the way through the 22nd of December. Monday and Wednesday of next week are days already on our radar.