NOR’EASTER A NO-SHOW FOR MOST
What a complete snow day bust — at least for most of the region.
The nor’easter that was hyped up as the biggest one to hit the Boston-area in years never came to fruition yesterday — missing to the south and ending up on a milk carton for much of the Bay State.
Two days before the snowstorm, forecast models had shown close to a foot of snow for the Boston area.
But then things drastically changed, while schools across the region shut down — including in Boston, where 0.1 inches of snow was measured at Boston Logan International Airport as of yesterday afternoon.
“I will take being overprepared than underprepared every single time, but it does come with a lot of disruption and inconvenience for families and people trying to get to their jobs,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio.”
“It’s really unfortunate, but we are glad to be safe, rather than sorry in this case,” the mayor added.
Less than 24 hours out from the storm arriving, the weather data and forecast models shifted the storm further south.
When you’re 48 hours out from a storm, the confidence in a forecast is “usually moderate,” National Weather Service meteorologist Kyle Pederson told the Herald.
“But the shift here started about 24 hours out,” he said. “And it became evident that this thing was going to go south.”
A slight shift in the storm track can “make a big difference between rain and 6 to 12 inches of snow,” added AccuWeather senior meteorologist Marshall Moss.
The southern areas of Massachusetts that felt the brunt of the snowstorm were in Worcester County, along with the Cape and the Islands.
Dudley in Worcester County recorded 9.3 inches of snow, Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard measured 9 inches, and Sandwich on Cape Cod saw 8 inches.
The New England snow jackpot was in Connecticut’s Hartford County, where 15.5 inches fell in Farmington and 15.2 inches in West Hartford.
The heavy wet snow combined with strong gusty winds led to power outages across southeastern Massachusetts. More than 20,000 outages were reported as of 5 p.m., according to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency tracker. The most outages were on the Cape and Vineyard.
The nor’easter also sparked high surf along the coast, including in Scituate. A coastal flood warning was in effect for eastern Massachusetts on the coast with roads becoming impassable around high tide.
Meanwhile, much of the region wondered what happened with the storm. The Needham Police Department posted a “MISSING” poster for the snowstorm.
“Identifying Characteristics: Fluffy White Stuff Which Typically Falls From The Sky,” the poster reads.
In Boston, city officials follow three different national and international forecasting services.
“It’s basically a calculation of how likely are we able to keep the roads clear as it’s coming down,” Wu said.
“All three models had really converged about 24 hours before on a pretty significant snow event right during the morning commute,” the mayor later added. “And it dissipated over the rest of the day, but we were trying to give families as much notice as possible to make their plans.”
Storm forecasting is becoming more difficult, she said.
“I think it goes to show not only is our climate changing in general, that we haven’t had a significant snow storm now in more than two years, but also the predictability of the weather,” Wu said. “Every storm can change so quickly on its path, the projections, the amounts.
“There’s always been some magic and some apologies to this, I’m sure, over the years,” she said. “But more and more so, it’s becoming very difficult to estimate how those storms are going to behave.”