As mild air continues to unfold across New England, potholes continue to grow but ice and snow deliquesce to puddles that make for sloppy walkways and regular road spray on windshields.
Temperatures Friday exceed 50 degrees in some communities then never drop below freezing Friday night, so no widespread re-freeze is expected in most of central and southern New England on Saturday morning. Instead, a southwest wind will continue to deliver mild air to push daytime highs Saturday to near 60 degrees in southern New England and 50s into the north, challenging high temperature records for the day.
This time of year, warmth like this is unseasonable and doesn’t last long. Sure enough, a sharp cold front will slice from northwest to southeast across New England on Saturday night, shifting the wind to blow from the north and opening the door to fresh, new cold air from Canada.
Amazingly, Sunday’s daytime high temperatures are likely to fall some 30 degrees short of Saturday’s, landing in the 20s for much of New England as an ocean storm develops south of New England along the departing cold front.
Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Boston’s newsletters.
Although the storm center will be shipping out to sea, as it strengthens an expanding area of precipitation is likely to spread across southern New England on Sunday morning, continuing through much of the day.
With abundant cold air, snow is expected and will accumulate – in fact, a coating to two inches remains the most likely amount for many, with two to four inches possible by Sunday evening from the suburbs south of Boston through southeast Massachusetts, Rhode Island and perhaps eastern Connecticut.
Our weather team has issued a First Alert for the snow Sunday, largely driven by the potential for slick roads in southeast New England when folks may be traveling to Super Bowl parties. But even though we expect the snow to last through the day, we don’t actually expect roads to be bad all day. If the forecast goes to plan, there’ll still be warmth in the pavement on area roads from Saturday’s mild temperatures, and this means pretreatment or early treatment of roads before or at the onset of Sunday snow will probably help to keep roads in decent shape, at least with the exception of the highest snow recipient communities by late in the day.
Dropping temperatures likely will make for increasing ice on roads after the Super Bowl ends, then cold air sticks around Monday and Tuesday of next week, but 40s and 50s remain in the forecast for the second half of the week.
