Temporary Break from Major Storms

Monday 9 AM

A storm moving through the upper Great Lakes is bringing milder air into the Northeast while generating gale-force winds on its south side. This video presents some forecast ideas for the week ahead.

A low pressure area that should form in the Gulf States and come part way up the East Coast by late Wednesday night may cause a swath of snow to develop. This preliminary sketch map shows what accumulations may result. One challenge at this point is determining how far up the coast the snow will actually advance. The NAM model has been especially bullish on more snow farther north.

Looking back on the weekend blizzard, Boston had its fifth-largest accumulation with 24.9 inches. Based on the water equivalent, the city of Boston received 17,099,216,640 pounds of snow on its 47 square miles. Portland, Maine, had its biggest snowfall ever. For awhile Saturday, the storm even looked like it had an eye.

This picture is part of a shot included in The Capital Weather Gang's blog about the storm for The Washington Post.
Many comparisons have been made between this storm and the Blizzard of '78 that hit the same area. For the Boston area, my opinion is that two major factors helped avert the degree to which people became trapped out on the roads. This was a huge problem in 1978, and was a problem on Long Island Friday evening. Factor one was the Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick's decision to announce in advance that there would be a ban on non-critical travel at midday on Friday. You cannot get stuck on a highway you're not on. The second factor was that the worst of the storm began later in the day than was the case in 1978. Factor one negated the importance of factor two.