Nor'easter to unleash 1st blizzard of season in New England
The official start to winter is less than three weeks away, but Mother Nature didn't get the memo apparently. Less than one week after a storm hammered parts of the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes with heavy snow, forecasters are warning of a storm that will develop hundreds of miles farther to the east and is likely to bring heavy snow and punishing winds. Not only is it likely to become the first nor'easter of the season, but has also qualified as the first blizzard of the season across part of New England.
The storm that brought heavy snow to parts of the southern Plains at midweek has re-energized along the Eastern Seaboard and is taking a track just off the coast of the northeastern United States, putting central and northern New England in the path of the heaviest snow.
Heavy rain began falling in the I-95 corridor from Washington D.C. to Boston early Saturday. By late-afternoon, rain had dissipated in the mid-Atlantic and rain had changed to snow near the Boston area.
By Saturday night, the storm continued to rapidly strengthen, tapping into colder air and Atlantic Ocean moisture with New England in the crosshairs.
"Downtown Boston will be on the edge of the heavy snow, but more robust snow accumulation is expected around Route 128 and to the north and west," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist John Feerick said.
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From central and southern New Hampshire to northern Maine, as well as parts of New Brunswick and the Eastern Townships of Quebec, an all-out blizzard has taken place with the worst conditions persisting from late Saturday through Saturday night.
Forecasters expect the combination of heavy snow and wind gusts frequenting 40-60 mph (64-97 km/h) to cause not only extensive blowing and drifting snow but also whiteout conditions. Travel will be dangerous and may be impossible for a time with 12-18 inches (30-45 cm) of snow in store with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 36 inches (90 cm).
Snow may fall at the rate of 2 inches (5 cm) per hour or greater in the heaviest snow bands of the storm. Snowfall of this intensity, combined with blowing and drifting, is likely to overwhelm road crews and some roads may close as a result.
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In addition to the storm evolving into a nor'easter and blizzard in New England, the storm also went through the process that meteorologists call bombogenesis. A nor'easter is a storm that simply brings stiff northeasterly winds to a broad area along the coast in the eastern part of the United States. Bombogenesis, or rapid strengthening, occurs when the central barometric pressure of a storm plummets by 0.71 of an inch of mercury (24 millibars) within 24 hours. When a storm undergoes this level of intensification, it is referred to as a bomb cyclone.
Between a 24 hour period early Saturday to early Sunday morning, the storm system managed to drop 27 millibars (0.80 of an inch), officially qualifying as a bomb cyclone.
Within a bomb cyclone such as this, winds often become powerful enough along the coast in New England and on eastern Long Island, New York, to break tree limbs, knock over poorly-rooted trees, lead to sporadic power outages and even cause minor property damage.
An AccuWeather Local StormMax™ wind gust of 70 mph (113 km/h) is forecast to occur from eastern Massachusetts to Nova Scotia and southeastern New Brunswick.
As quickly as the storm arrived early this weekend, it will be just as quick to exit on Sunday. However, blustery conditions will prevail in the mid-Atlantic, and winds are likely to still howl across New England as the snow exits northern Maine, New Brunswick and eastern Quebec.
Chilly conditions are forecast to linger through early week from the Great Lakes to a large part of the Atlantic coast in the wake of the storm, and that may set the stage for a round of winterlike conditions in areas farther to the south.
Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
