What a good storm today! Snow came down at a good clip from noon on...as of 9:47 PM, it still is! My *unofficial* snow observation was 5.75"...I would expect 6" would be safe to say when it's all said and done. 

Saturday Snow

So many times in weather forecasts do anticipated storm events fall apart at the last minute. Of course it is not correct to say that the storm shifted track or did not grow as large, as the storm knew what it was going to do all along. We just can not yet pinpoint exactly what that plan is.

Anyway, that is not the case today. A storm that was originally forecast to bring us 1-3" then later maybe 2-5" has this morning been forecasted to drop 4-7"". Expect clouds to lower and thicken through the morning with snow starting around late morning to about noon. It will fall rather heavily at times, and will move out overnight tonight, as to not hinder any plans I may have of going to Boston tomorrow!!!:-D

Enjoy the weekend, I will be back Monday.

Nice snow

It's nice when things go right. My weather station has had over 24 hours of uninterrupted data. And it snowed today. This is more like it. The picture abovbe was taken at about 4:40 this afternoon. It didn't snow for very long but it came down at a good clip and accumulated to a coating rather quickly. I enjoyed it and hope you did too. This same kind of thing will continue tomorrow and Saturday (hit and miss snow showers) before some more organized snow for Saturday night into Sunday. We could see 1-3" then. Behind that moves in more arctic air. Should be nice for vacation...little cold, but quiet weather. Until then, enjoy. 

At last...

It has been a very long road, but I believe that I have successfully gotten a separate computer to upload my weather station data. This means that data should be available 24/7 and I can take my laptop with me again without losing upload time! Technology is nice when it works.

Sorry for a lack of updates this week, I have been working to get that set up. Not that we had much going on anyway. The same thing will happen for the next few days... but we will see more clouds and some occasional snow showers from now through Sunday before another blast of Arctic air moves in. Sunday night and Monday will be windy and cold much like last Friday and Saturday (not AS windy, however!!!). Highs next week will likely not reach 30. Still no big storms in sight :(.

The graph shows the temperatures for Thursday, February 16. The highest range of the graph is the previous record set in 1972 of 55°F. As you can see, temperatures from 1:00 to 6:00 this afternoon were above that. At 2:33, the temperature peaked at 58°F. This day was one for the record books.

Don't expect it to last! After morning warmth tomorrow, showers will move through along with winds that may gust to 40-50 mph. These winds will subside after the front moves through, but they will still remain active and will usher in frigid arctic air. Highs Saturday will just barely get above 20 and Sunday will likely be below 20 all day. Combined with the winds, wind chills Saturday night could approach -30°. Storm possibilities lay ahead for next week...not too sure about them, however. Have a great weekend! 

Interesting overnight temperatures

The graph above shows temperatures (green line) and wind speeds (blue line) from midnight to 7:00 AM Tuesday (times shown are UTC; EST is -5 hrs). The prominent feature of the graph is the dip in temperatures that bottomed out around 4:00 AM. Notice also that for the few hours preceding and proceeding this time, winds were completely calm. These two are related.

Warm air rises and cold air sinks. We in the Merrimack Valley are located at a low elevation, so at night when the sun is no longer heating the earth, the air the cold sinks down into the valley while the warm air rises above our heads. When there is wind, these layers are stirred up thus keeping temperatures at the ground a bit warmer. This phenomenon obviously happened overnight and is very well depicted in the graph. Something neat I wanted to share:-D

The weather will be quiet for most of this week. Temperatures will actually get quite warm, rising above 40 on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Rain will fall Friday, and some thunderstorms may even move through later in the day as a very strong cold front pushes through. If the rain leaves any puddles on the ground, they will quickly freeze Friday night. Arctic air will come POURING in behind the cold front and we will see some of the coldest air we have seen all season long. Highs Saturday and Sunday will not get out if the 20s if they get there at all and lows Saturday night will likely fall below zero. After we moderate some early next week, another snowstorm may come our way. Stay tuned and enjoy the mild air while it makes its brief return. Happy Valentine's Day!

Not-so-major storm.

Snow will start early Sunday morning and last through most of the day. It will also get very windy so the snow will blow and drift. By tomorrow night expect probably 5-7" of snow. Nothing we can't handle. Enjoy!

Go figure!

I like to give things more hype than they deserve a lot of times. I'm not one for conservative forecasting, I want to scare people with threats of big storms that will keep you trapped in your house for days. The one time there is a big storm possibility and I don't mention it, the threat does not dissipate and things actually come together. That's right. Yesterday I said there would be no big storms for a bit because it seems every potential there is for one (and there was a potential for Sunday) has been failing and we have seen nothing. The confidence for this storm has been increasing, however, much unlike others that start high and confidence drops out the day before.

If everything plays out right we could get a good dumping of snow. As irresponsible as professional meteorologist say it is to make snowfall predictions days ahead of a storm, I have nothing to lose and will go ahead and say there is a good chance we will see a foot. For now I will stick with a 10-12" prediction. Stay tuned for updates (likely Friday Night, Saturday morning if anything changes and again Saturday night). Get out the shovels and snowblowers, for winter is back and it is back big.

New feature!

It's been a while! There's been no weather to speak of, however. Will there ever be anything exciting? I'll get to that...in the meantime, I'm happy to introduce a new feature to the weather station page that can be viewed by clicking the current observation tag to your right. Now, the updates are loaded every 5 seconds. That's right, fast enough to be considered real time. While "official" weather stations are giving reports once per hour, you can get current obsvs from me at the rate of 720 an hour. I guess it's then safe to say that my weather stations is 720 times better than the official one :-P.

As for the weather...it's been cold! One would think that since we were getting lots of storms (with rain) that once it got colder we would get lots of snowstorms. Makes sense, right? The problem is, now those storms aren't hitting us. Mother nature is just completely against snow lovers this year. Aside from some small disturbances every few days with scattered snow shower or light snow, not much will likely happen. Some forecasters are calling for a brief warm up before we turn into a really bitterly cold pattern...and maybe some storms to go with it. Stay tuned!

11:00pm UPDATE: The graph above shows temperatures from 7:00 this evening to 10:50. As you can see, they bottomes out at around 8:30 just above 32 degrees but have risen since then. For this reason, I do not feel that icing will be a major issue for the morning commute. 

SCHOOL DELAY CHANCE REPORT

The NWS has posted a winter weather advisory for our area for a possible snow/ice accumulation of up to one inch before precipitation changes to all rain. If we do get this mix, there is a SMALL CHANCE of a delay for Friday morning. Who knows, though, we could just get all rain. Note, however, that temperature at 8:00 were just tenths of a degree above freezing. We will see. No post tomorrow...see you Saturday. No major storms in sight as it stands right now. Enjoy the weekend.

A call to Arms

ATTENTION, Citizens of the Northeast! We all know that this winter has been a dismal disappointment to say the least. Should we just sit here and let all the big snowstorms and cold air pass us by as we are forced to endure day after day of sunny, warm weather?! ABSOLUTELY NOT! We need to do something to claim winter back. The time is NOW!

Unfortunately, there is not much that we can do. I may have jumped the gun on a pattern shift occurring this past weekend, but forecasters really are calling for one to happen over the next two weeks. Do not expect to see much sun around here for a while...a parade of storms is lined up with one hitting roughly every 2 or 3 days. The first in line will come Friday with rain :(. Cold air moving in for Saturday night means that the next storm, slated for Sunday, will either start as rain and change to snow or be all snow (not all that large, probably). A larger storm may hit in the vicinity of next Tuesday...which would be exactly in line with the large storm mentioned in the previous post. After that, brace yourself. The arctic air that has been pooling up in Russia and now Canada will eventually spill into our neck of the woods. Forecasters calling for a very active, cold February...winter shall be ours once again!