Week of wintry weather off to icy start
KINGSTON, N.Y. » Spates of sleet and freezing rain were expected to become steadier late Monday, leading to possible treacherous roads and a difficult Tuesday morning commute, forecasters said.
The National Weather Service in Albany issued a “winter weather advisory” for the period of 7 p.m. Monday to 1 p.m. Tuesday, saying dangerous driving conditions and isolated power outages were possible throughout the Mid-Hudson Valley.
An “ice storm warning” was issued for Orange County.
“It’s ... going to be a slippery commute in the morning,” Kevin Lipton, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service at Albany, said midday Monday.
Later in the day, though, meteorologist Brett Rathbun said the precipitation could change to rain by daybreak along the Hudson River and east of the river if temperatures climb enough.
For the overnight period, the weather service was predicting total snow and sleet accumulation of up to an inch, plus up to four-tenths of an inch of “flat ice” accumulation.
“It will coat things,” Lipton said. “There should be glaze on a lot of objects.”
Lipton said the weather system wasn’t expected to cause widespread power outages. “The main hazard is going to be bad travel conditions,” he said.
Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. said it was monitoring the system and had “a full complement of crews, as well as our core contractors, ready to respond if power outages occur.”
Lipton said the MondayTuesday weather was just the first of two wintry systems expected to affect the area this week. Another is expected for the Thursday-Friday period, but Lipton said details still were sketchy.
“This will be a very wintry week ... typical Northeast winter weather,” he said.