Tomorrow is the busiest travel day for Thanksgiving and Mother Nature is going to take an already bad situation and make it worse with wet weather rolling through tomorrow morning. It will actually start later tonight and with the chilly air overhead, could start as snow for some of us — mainly the higher terrain. It will then change to rain for everyone during the daylight hours on Monday.
Here are some quick takeaways:
-It’s a brief few hours of snow in the high terrain and then will flip to rain like the rest of us.
-Rain totals should end up around an inch in most places. It will be steadiest and heaviest in the morning so watch for some pockets of ponding if you’re traveling tomorrow morning.
-Wind will get gusty on the coast line with gusts up to 50 mph possible, most likely on the Cape and Islands.
Rain and snow will begin later this evening, around 9pm. The snow will be confined to just the high terrain, and even there it won’t last for more than a few hours before changing to rain.
Already by 2am, the rain/snow line will push northward into New Hampshire and where it was snowing will flip to rain for the remainder of the overnight hours.
Out the door Wednesday morning still features steady and, at times, heavy rain. And that will be the case for the morning hours tomorrow.
By the afternoon hours the rain will begin to taper off, so if you have some travel flexibility, weather conditions will improve after about 1 or 2pm tomorrow.
Snow amounts are really not all that impressive. As you probably gathered by now, any accumulation will be in the high terrain. Areas outside of 495 may see a very brief period of snow showers but it won’t last long. As if flips over to rain, that rain will wash away any coatings that do accumulate. So your best chance of seeing snow will be later tonight — you won’t have a coating on the ground tomorrow morning.
Even areas that see 1-3″ of snow will have a lot of it washed away and compacted by tomorrow morning as the rain washes it away and compacts what’s left. It will basically be a sloppy and slushy mess tomorrow morning. And throughout the course of the day, will be washed away by the rain.
Where it is rain the entire time, it’s not just rain. It is a wind-driven, cold rain. Wind will be breezy everywhere, but the coast will take the brunt of it. There’s a wind advisory for the Cape and Islands where winds could gust 40-50 mph. The rest of the coast line of Massachusetts doesn’t have a wind advisory but could still see wind gusts 30-40 mph.
While Wednesday is an ugly day, Thanksgiving is much nicer. Temperatures have trended up quite a bit. Last week, it looked like it might be a very cold Thanksgiving. I’m not saying it’s balmy, but it’s not terrible. Temperatures for some of us might make it to 50° which will be spot on the average. However, the wind, while less than Wednesday, will still be gusty and put an added chill to the air. We’ll get some sunshine to peek through the clouds as well.
So your pre-Thanksgiving travel has some weather impacts, mainly Wednesday, but post-Thanksgiving travel looks great. We’ll get a nice break from any curveballs from Mother Nature through the weekend with our next chance at a few showers inbound for Monday.
