Wednesday’s weather features a brilliant blue sky, cold temperatures and that crisp winter feeling in the air. Although it’s rather brisk out there, these are the days when it’s quite nice if you can get outside and allow the January sunshine to do its work, giving you a little bit of vitamin D and an emotional lift.
With clear skies overnight, temperatures will fall back down into the upper teens and lower 20s. This is typical for this time of year and continues to allow for those backyard ponds to form thicker ice. But remember, if the ice is under 2 inches, you definitely do not want to walk on it. Once we get to 3 to 4 inches, the ice tends to be safe for walking and beyond that it just gets more able to hold heavier weight and activities.
Thursday will see a little more cloudiness mixing in with the sunshine and just a small chance of a snow shower over Western New England. But in general it’s just another dry, cold January day for the Boston area.
We do have another storm system to track for Friday. There’s a strong likelihood that the bulk of the system is going to be too far away to produce much significant moisture. However, it’s not as simple as the storm going out to sea and not seeing any precipitation.
Since water temperatures are still relatively warm and the winds will be coming from the north-northeast Friday night and Saturday, there could be some ocean effect enhancement to any light snow activity during this time.
I don’t think it’s impossible that a coating to a few inches of snow does occur, especially south of the Mass Pike (I-90), during this window. The snow would not be very heavy and would actually last a fairly long time, so it’s more of a nuisance rather than something that’s going to impact travel and things like that.
The map above shows a general probability forecast of 1 to 2 inches of snow — with the highest likelihood south of the Mass Pike and over Cape Cod and the Islands with little or no snow to the north. There will be several more model runs in the coming days so that certainly by Thursday evening and Friday morning, we will be able to nail down a more definitive accumulation map if it’s needed.
The rest of the weekend looks cold and dry with temperatures so much below average but nothing too extreme. But then we have a warm-up next week with temperatures getting back into the 40s, melting any existing snow and ice that’s on the ground.
Here’s a little bit more information on safety when venturing out on those frozen ponds this week:
This article was originally published by a www.bostonglobe.com . Read the Original article here. .