Ice Storm Alert: Winter Storm Watch Announced for Sunday Night & Monday

Despite the warm temperatures we have been enjoying, winter is trying to make its presence felt one more time before we flip the calendar to a new decade.

The National Weather Service in Albany has issued a Winter Storm Watch for the Berkshires for Sunday night and Monday because significant icing is expected. "Significant" to the NWS folks means a half inch or more of freezing rain and sleet. If we get close to a half inch of freezing rain, we would likely see tree damage and power outages.

The reason for the Watch is that we have a goodly amount of moisture coming at us from the west. The temperature will be at or around freezing Sunday night. The surface temperature will stay around freezing while the air temperature aloft (where the precipitation is coming from) will be above freezing. As the rain falls to the surface, the liquid will turn to a solid known as ice.

NWS Albany

We should point out that predicting ice storms is much, much trickier than even predicting thunderstorms. A half a degree temperature change in either direction can have big implications. Add in elevation and temperature variances and you can see quickly how difficult it is get a good read on who will get ice and who will get plain rain. Right now the meteorological consensus is that Western Mass will have all the right ingredients for several hours of icing.

Another factor for your consideration: for the public safety reasons, meteorologists will lean toward the worst case scenario with ice storms so that the public can prepare properly. This means that they are wrong about ice more often than not. So, there is a good chance that the ice will not be as bad as forecasters are saying, but in the 1 out of 20 times that an ice storm actually hits, you would definitely want to know the worst possible outcome.

A case in point of the un-forecastability of ice storms. Good luck interpreting this map. (NWS Albany)

We'll keep an eye on it. Right now we would expect that driving conditions will be dicey if not outright dangerous from 10 PM Sunday through late morning Monday. A few more runs of the models should allow meteorologists to give a more precise forecast.

(FYI: In the end of year review of the models, the Euro continues to get better and better five days out from a storm while the US model's results are still inconsistently reliable. So we'll look harder at the Euro over the next 24 hours and let you know what it says.)