Hello everyone!

Our next storm will arrive today and kick off a pretty exciting week or so of weather here in New England.

Today’s storm of interest is currently located near Chicago as the analysis map above shows. There’s plenty of precipitation associated with that system, but it’s actually going to move mostly to our north as the low heads towards Ottawa. It’s the scattered showers visible between Cape Hatteras and Long Island that will end up dropping most of today’s precipitation in our area as they move up the coast late this afternoon into this evening.

Any morning glimpses of sunshine will be brief as clouds continue to arrive ahead of this storm.

Forecast radar imagery shows rain arriving in southern NH between 2-4 PM before moving into southern Maine around 4-6 PM. Despite our northeasterly winds, precipitation types will be rain outside of the mountains and foothills (though perhaps a few flakes/ice pellets might mix in right at the beginning of precip near Augusta-Waterville). Up in the mountains, an initial burst of snow could drop up to an inch or two before changing over to sleet/freezing rain.

Rain will continue through most of tonight along the coast while freezing rain remains the predominant precipitation type north of Route 2. Thankfully it looks like total ice accretion should remain in the 0.1-0.25″ range which usually isn’t enough to cause major power outage problems. Temps will warm up above freeing across the whole area tomorrow so slick travel tonight appears to be the biggest impact from this freezing rain.

Warmth tomorrow will give way to cooler temps on Monday along with some potential snow along the coastal plain. The coldest air of the season so far will then pour into the region on Tuesday ahead of what might be a more significant winter storm midweek.

-Jack