Snow Tonight and Early Next Week

Signs are afoot that we may be turning the corner. While an end-of-the-week big storm did not materialize, we do have some snow on the way this evening that has a very small chance of impacting the morning commute tomorrow.

Bennington County has a Winter Weather Advisory in place for this evening for elevations over 1200 feet. This means that North County school superintendents should at least be aware that snow will fall for several hours in the early morning hours. While there is not much moisture with this storm, some locations along the Vermont border could see 2-3 inches. If the timing is right and road crews (literally) sleep on this storm, we could see a few delays. The usual suspects--Adams/Cheshire, North Adams, Mount Greylock, Savoy, Florida, Southwest Vermont SU--have a much better chance for delays than any district south of Lanesborough. We want to emphasize, though, that the chance is very low for many delays.

WNYT Channel 13's snow prediction for tonight's minor snow event.

As for future storms, one of our favorite winter storm prognosticators (Judah Cohen) loves to watch the Polar Vortex (PV), and his analysis of model runs of the PV suggests that we're in for a prolonged period of storminess starting in about a week. According to his calculations, there should be enough cold air and storm frequency to make it feel like winter again in the Northeast. We're buying what he's selling and expect things to pick up considerably for middle and late January.

For next week, it looks like there are two pieces of energy that could give us snow. One looks to bring light snow to us Monday night, and the second piece (a coastal low developing off of New Jersey) could bring us more moderate frozen precipitation Tuesday during the day and Tuesday night. Our initial reaction to this forecast is one of skepticism. We're not seeing the phasing of the two storms (phasing would result in a blockbuster), and the timing is lousy. But there looks to be enough cold air and moisture with this mess to at least get the phrase "two-hour delay" into the discussion for the morning commute on Tuesday.

We doubt there will be delays tomorrow, but if you start to hear snow plows around 5 AM, you never know.