STORM WILL MAKE IT ‘FEROCIOUS OUT THERE’
The Bay State’s third winter nor’easter in less than three weeks is expected to be a howling storm that will create “brutal” commutes today with white-out conditions, dumping as much as 2 feet of snow, according to meteorologists and state officials who urged people to stay home.
Winter Storm Skylar will blanket the entire state, Gov. Charlie Baker said, with the eastern and central areas — including Boston — getting between 12 and 18 inches; up to 2 feet on the South Shore; and six to 12 inches in western Massachusetts. The snowfall will be heaviest during the morning commute, blowing in at 1 to 3 inches an hour with wind gusts up to 60 miles an hour creating white-out conditions.
“Much of the morning will be a really difficult time to drive,” Baker said, predicting “brutal driving conditions.”
“It’s going to be ferocious out there, it’s going to be nasty,” agreed Tom Kines, a senior meteorologist with Accuweather.
Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollock said the state would likely have all 4,000 of its snow removal vehicles on the roads, and she and Baker urged businesses to let employees work from home. All nonemergency state offices are closed today.
Boston schools, libraries, youth centers and other nonemergency offices are also closed, Mayor Martin J. Walsh said. The city’s salt supply stands at 26 tons after a recent delivery and is in “good shape,” Walsh said, but he said this storm’s continuous heavy snowfall will likely be reminiscent of the monster nor’easters that buried the city three years ago.
“It feels like we haven’t really seen this type of storm since 2015, we’re taking it very seriously,” Walsh said, adding he was particularly
concerned about the potential for fallen trees knocking out power. “In the last couple of storms, the snow and wind really made the roots vulnerable... we’ve probably had more trees go down this year than any other year.”
National Grid and Eversource spokesmen said their companies have emergency crews on standby to deal with outages. Several local officials criticized power companies last week after residents went days without electricity, but Baker said he was worried about exhaustion setting in for restoration crews.
“My biggest concern has as much to do with capacity and the number of days in a row a lot of these people are working,” Baker said. “They’ve literally been working around the clock for almost two weeks, I worry a little about the human energy issues associated with that.”
The barrage of bad weather — on the heels of two devastating storms that damaged roads and sea walls and caused widespread power outages — will have costly repercussions for cities and towns already straining to deal with snow removal.
The successive storms have run up bills for tree removal and dealing with downed wires, adding overtime on top of paying for snow removal, Massachusetts Municipal Association Executive Director Geoff Beckwith said.
“Mother Nature is throwing us a curveball, these white snowflakes are going to melt into red ink for cities and towns,” Beckwith said.