Snow This Weekend: Winter Weather Advisory for the Berkshires

Well, shiver me timbers. Looks like the Snow Gods have decided to shine their smiling faces toward the Berkshires this weekend. That coastal storm that we got excited about earlier in the week and then dismissed? It's apparently back on.

Image courtesy of the National Weather Service, Albany

The storm will move along the New England coast as cold air shoots in from Canada. These two ingredients--moisture and cold air--will combine over the Berkshires to produce 2 to 5 inches of snow. As a result, the NWS has issued a Winter Weather Advisory for our area, with more snow the farther south you go in the County.

The timing of this storm will impact travel, especially in the afternoon hours on Saturday.

The bad news is that forecasters are less bullish about the Tuesday storm we wrote about yesterday. We're still holding out hope for snow, but the timing does not look very good for a delay on Wednesday.

Break out the snow boots for the first snow of the new season!

Shovels at the Ready...

It's beginning to look and feel like winter.

Snow flurries greeted the GSD Staff on the morning commute to the Home Office in Williamstown this morning, putting a bounce in the step of your fulltime winter weather brokers.

Good news...we have several chances for measurable snow over the next ten days or so. We'll see a few more flurries today, and then on Sunday we may see longer periods of snow showers that could bring a dusting to the Berkshires.

But the more delicious development is the potential for a coastal storm on Tuesday, perhaps extending into the wheelhouse hours of the morning commute on Wednesday. This storm has the chance to impact the length of the school day on Wednesday. Unfortunately, this is no blockbuster storm. If this storm were to arrive at the end of winter, we wouldn't be worked up about it at all. But because it could possibly be the first plowable snowstorm of the season, there's reason to get a just a smidge tingly all over because of it.

The most optimistic models indicate the potential for 6 inches. The least cooperative models don't quite bring the two energy systems together and we end up with snow showers and perhaps a dusting. It's always good to split the middle this far out in front of a storm, so the GSD Staff is going to (rather cautiously) forecast 3 inches of snow over the course of the day Tuesday, with the snow ending just after midnight. Alas, should this not-so-bold prediction come true, we will not have delays on Wednesday for Berkshire County schools. A near miss.

But we expect a lot more information on this storm, and we'll see what future runs of the storm models bring us in the next 72 hours.

Until then, think very snowy thoughts.

Measurable Snowfall for the Weekend?

What the GSD Staff does when winter refuses to start in a timely manner? Scrabble, crossword puzzles, read the news, twiddle thumbs, hunt for belly button lint. In other words, a lot of nothing.

But we actually have some winter weather news to report. Far on the horizon, we have officially heard the words "forecast" and "snow" used in the same sentences by meteorologists we respect. Eureka.

There is chatter about the possibility for a weekend storm. Unfortunately--[grumble, grumble, grumble]--it's on the weekend, and we're likely not to see a big snow event out of it. The deal is this: we have precipitation headed our way for Saturday. Some models are forecasting a coastal storm. The models we respect are taking it farther to our south; one model that is less reliable is bringing the storm farther north. As for snow, the worst case scenario is no snow at all. The best case scenario is 3 inches.

This is the best we can do for a forecast map for the weekend. The lighter green represents about a 20%-30% chance of a quarter inch of liquid precip, which equates to 3 inches of snow. Woo. Hoo.

So, you can see, there's not a lot to get excited about. Still, we're encouraged that the storm pattern appears to be shifting and colder air should take hold over our area for the next few weeks. A wise GSD Staffer once said, "You can't have snow without cold air in place."

We'll monitor this potential snow situation for you, but we wouldn't suggesting firing up the snowblower just yet.