forecast

FIRST ALERT: New England Braces for Blast of Cold Tuesday

By Tuesday morning our temperatures will be in the single numbers north and teens and low 20s south.

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Our weekend featured the warmest air since Christmas in New England. And for the first time this year the snow/rain line moved all the way up into Canada. This relatively mild weather will be short-lived.

We have a warm front near the south coast of New England, and a cold front moving in from Canada. The squeeze play is on with showers and patchy fog continuing this afternoon. There may be breaks of sunshine in southern New England with temperature topping 50 degrees in a few spots. At the same time in northern New England rain showers are turning into snow showers as the freezing level comes down in elevation. But in the valleys we should remain in the 40s with no icy problems at lower elevations until tonight.

Things change rapidly tonight as an arctic front sweeps in with a developing low pressure system in the Gulf of Maine. The pressure gradient is going to tighten dramatically, causing our wind to increase to 30 to 40 mph in the middle of the night.

The temperature is going to fall dramatically with that wind; by Tuesday morning our temperatures will be in the single numbers north and teens and low 20s south. It's a drying wind, but some remaining puddles will freeze up resulting in icy spots into the morning, in addition to a few snow showers ending as the sun comes up.

We have a number of advisories for wind and wind chill tomorrow.

The windchill factor may be as cold as 30 below zero toward the Canadian border and even 10 below zero in parts of southern New England. The sun will be shining, but the high temperature only makes it into the teens and 20s, with wind gusting past 40 mph through early afternoon.

As the storm system stalls in southeastern Canada the next front coming at us from Ontario is going to be steered south. So what looked like may be a warming trend in the middle of the week has been called off. It still looks less cold for our Wednesday, but there’s also an area of snow in central in northern New England to start the day. Just a coating to a couple of inches, and in southern New England we should recover to 40 degrees Wednesday afternoon, but remaining near freezing in the north.

The storm in southeastern Canada will continue to retrograde, pushing another cold front in here Wednesday night and Thursday with a return to the 30s for Thursday, and then 20s and 30s for Friday, but it looks like the sun should be out.

The weekend forecast is not an easy one either. There will be a storm off the southeastern United States, for now it looks like it misses out to sea, but confidence level is low.

Stay tuned to our First Alert Ten-Day Forecast for the latest.

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