Betcha Any New England Storm Forecast This Weekend Will Be Wrong

The brave folks at the National Weather Service in South
Burlington took a crack at a snow forecast for the 
upcoming weekend storm. Expect changes to this
forecast due to lots of question marks remaining
about the storm

There's a weather tricky forecast for anybody trying to figure out how a winter storm will affect New England this weekend.   

Whatever  you're hearing about this storm now will probably be at least partially wrong.

This is definitely NOT some kind of diss against all the great meteorologists in the New England region.  It's such a difficult forecast that it's bound to have some problems. 

First off, it will be a rapidly developing and strengthening storm. Such storms are always dicey when they're in that stage. 

Some parts of New England will have temperatures that are marginal for rain or snow, so that will greatly affect how much accumulates and where. 

This is a nor'easter, so any deviation from the forecast track makes a big difference in what kind of weather you'll get. If you're off by a dozen miles or so in the forecast of most weather systems, it's not that big  deal. But a slight fudge in a nor'easter forecast and you're screwed. 

This is especially true with this storm. It will be fairly compact, so on the western side of the storm, you will have a sharp east to west gradient of heavy snow vs. not much at all. 

There's one more problem with this storm.  It's supposed to come into New England tomorrow. Usually, a day or so before a storm, the computer models that help meteorologists with forecasting have come into fairly good agreement with each other as to how things will play out. 

As of this Friday morning, those computer models were still arguing with each other. 

You see why New England meteorologists are pulling out their hair?  This is a worst case scenario in terms of how high the potential is for a forecast bust. 

So, the bottom line is, it appears somebody in New England will get a lot of snow out of this the coast will have a lot of wind and maybe some coastal flooding, but otherwise all bets are off. 

If you can find any kind of consensus in the models so far, it seems like the best chances of more than six inches of snow would be in central Massachusetts, much of New Hampshire and interior Maine. 

Even that's no guarantee. Some model leave a good chunk of New Hampshire with not much snow and push that precipitation more eastward. A few bring the heavier snow into eastern Vermont. Who knows?

Whoever gets the snow is at risk for tree damage and power failures.  The places that do get nailed will have heavy, wet snow and gusty winds later Saturday, Saturday night and into Sunday.  That's a recipe for problems. 

Here in Vermont, the going forecasts have places east of the Green Mountains getting some snow.  The heaviest snow would probably be in the far northeast corner of Vermont up by Island Pond, where current forecasts call for more than six inches of snow.

The rest of eastern Vermont would get one to four inches in this scenario and the Champlain Valley would get maybe an inch, if that. 

But, yeah, that's the current forecast.  Don't hold anybody to it. 

Just a slight wobble westward with this storm, and the whole state of Vermont would be in play for some decent snows. A slight wobble east and the Northeast Kingdom is off the table. 

So here's how to manage your weekend plans with this uncertain scenario.

First of all, we're supposed to try to stay home and away from people anyway to protect ourselves against Covid.  So this iffy forecast is just another great excuse to not go anywhere.

If you're adamant about heading out Saturday afternoon through much of Sunday, to be on the safe side, plan on dangerous driving conditions. It might or might not happen, but plan for it anyway.

The forecast actually gets much easier once the storm departs later Sunday.  Next week will generally e cloudy, with a slow warming trend starting with slightly cooler than normal weather Monday to a little warmer than normal by the end of the week. No big storms are in sight after this mystery storm goes away on Sunday.