Doubling Trouble

Greetings, Flake Followers. It's good to be a winter enthusiast this week. The mopey GSD Staff is finally emerging from their zombie-like states and studying models, checking temperatures, and generally getting work done. It's good to see the office busy again!

Only good news to report this evening. We still are feeling very bullish about the Friday morning delay scenario. Given how challenging the morning commute was for many school districts last Wednesday (mostly in the northern half of the county and in high elevation towns), Superintendents might be much quicker to record that robocall message this time around. NWS Albany is forecasting 4 inches for Berkshire County with just about perfect timing. We're still 60 hours away, but if the forecast holds, we'll see many delays on Friday.

Delays on Friday if this map is accurate. (NWS Albany)

The weekend storm is still showing up in the models. The predicted track did bump to the west, which could introduce sleet and freezing rain into our area, which would keep snow totals down and make snow removal by shovel most unpleasant. The one really good sign we're seeing is the predicted amount of precipitation. Right now the models are consistently showing between 1 and 2 inches of liquid. If we plug that into our 10 snow inches for every 1 inch of liquid formula, we end up with easily the biggest storm of the season.

We're definitely still bitter about this big fella falling on the weekend, but beggars will not be choosers in mid-January of 2019. As for timing, Sunday looks like a terrible day for any kind of travel in New England. Saturday should be fine for most of the day, as the storm won't start until very late in the afternoon at the earliest.