Winter Storm Watch For Saturday, December 5

This afternoon (Thursday), the National Weather Service issued a Winter Storm Watch for the Berkshires. The Watch begins Saturday morning and expires Sunday morning.

The weather experts are now saying that phasing will occur--a low pressure system from the southern Plains meeting a trough dropping in from the Great Lakes--and a storm will strengthen as moves up the east coast.

Interior Maine, central and northern New Hampshire, and Vermont will be the big winners for this storm, but Berkshire County could see 4-7 inches (south to north). The snow will be wet and heavy especially early on as we will still be in the 30s during the day on Saturday.

Image courtesy of NWS Albany

Right now the worst of the storm looks like it will occur late morning and early afternoon on Saturday. So if you are planning to get your tree this weekend, you might want to get an earlier start to your day, and even then it will be wet out (rain mixing with snow).

This storm will be a strong one so that means that as it exits through the Gulf of Maine, winds will whip up considerably Saturday night and into Sunday. With heavy wet snow probably sticking to trees, more downed limbs than usual are expected which would of course lead to a greater chance for power outages. 

Bernie Rayno and the gang at Accuweather are fully on board for a big one.

Fortunately for Superintendents, this first real storm of the season will fall on the weekend. In the pre-Covid days, this storm would have made for a tough call due to the timing. But, as most schools are fully remote at the moment, had this storm fallen on a school day, students would have likely experienced their first remote-snow-day-but-not-a-snow-day. Yay technology.

If the models end up coming into more agreement about the track, we'll be upgraded from a Watch to a Warning at some point on Friday. Despite the potential for a Warning, the GSD staff does not think this will be that big of a storm. The warm air has us concerned, and that will keep snow totals in the 2-4 inch range, not 4-7.

Updates to follow on Friday.