Winter Storm Warning: Heavy snow and wind gusts

Good morning everyone. I'm storm team meteorologist Alexa Bianco. So looking at the winter weather alerts, we are in a winter storm warning for our area. The eastern side of the state is actually in a blizzard warning and other parts along the southern part of New England here. But we're not a blizzard warning, but areas will have some blizzard-like conditions from part of this storm. Forecast focus early light snow today and then we have the heavy snow coming in later on. That heavy snow does continue into Monday. Starts to clear out between six and seven o'clock tomorrow night and we do see some more chances of rain and snow midweek and also the back and half of the week. Clouds and radar you can see that system making its way towards us soon. We will see some lingering snow showers for the first half of the day, some appetizers of snow before the real stuff starts to come through and will come through a little bit later on. So you can see here some snow showers the first half of the day. Pretty scattered, nothing crazy, lights flurries, light snow, but then by seven, eight o'clock this is when we start to see the snow pretty much come through. Widespread between nine and ten o'clock already and pretty heavy by 2 a.m. So this is where we're going to see the heaviest amount of snowfall, about one to two inches per hour for snowfall rates. That's significant, that's coming down pretty good and this does continue till about the heaviest going to stay for the morning, especially 6 a.m. for that morning commute. You really don't want to be on the roads between 2 a.m. and especially 10 a.m. in the morning. That's going to be the heaviest and that's gonna be the most dangerous because the visibility will be low as well from the strong wind gusts. We're gonna see peak hour till about one o'clock because we're still seeing some snow showers, still seeing some snow east of going 91 here, but pretty much we're starting to see this clear out of the valley for the most part by one o'clock and by six, seven o'clock we're drying up here in the valley. The eastern side of the state is still dealing with that snow continuing a bit for some snow showers, then by 12 a.m. we're drying up. Some of those clouds are starting to dissipate. We're drying up for Tuesday and seeing some sunshine, but as far as the forecast goes for accumulation, we've had to adjust this a few times because this one's a little bit trickier, especially with the temperature, the snow-to-almond ratio, and it's wobbled a little bit, so three to six more north, especially in the northern part of the Berkshires, very, very northern part of Berkshires around North Adams. For the most part, everyone's seeing a good amount of snow, so six to ten for more of the central part of the valley and even the Berkshires, ten to eighteen for everybody else, so everyone's going to get a big amount of snow regardless. It's going to be plowable regardless, it's going to be heavy to lift you because it's not going to be wet, it's not going to be wet, but it's not going to be fluffy either. It's going to be more sticky, it's going to be more dense, so that's what you really want to watch out for too, is make sure not to lift with your back when lifting this snow either when shoveling. So wind gusts are going to pick up in speed by 12 by tonight into the rest of the overnight hours, especially up to 50 mile per hour wind gusts through the overnight hours into Monday morning and even the early half of afternoon. It's going to decrease visibility quite a bit. I can't emphasize that enough, so you really want to be careful and power outages are expected from this as well, and these windier conditions do continue even into Monday evening, even after the storm is pushed out, we're still going to be having those gustier conditions heading into Tuesday. But as far as what to expect from this snow, from this snowstorm, snow starts 8 o'clock, widespread, going to be gusty. Monday, heaviest 2 a.m. to about 1 o'clock in the afternoon, 1 to 2 inches per hour for snow rates, and then low visibility, power outages, going to stick to power lines, trees, want to watch out for falling trees. Just have everything you need now and get it done this morning to be prepared for what we're going to be expecting. 10 to 18 for some parts, and then also 6 to 10 for others, and then the 3 to 6 for the more nor-nor-north you go. But as far as today goes, 32 to 36 is your range of highs, light snow early, heavy snow later, gusty tonight, heavy snow windy, 20, 20, 26 is your range of lows, and here is the 22 storm team seven-day forecast. So mid-30s today, heavy snow later on, that snow continues into Monday, persisting with the wind, and then also a dip in temperature by Tuesday, a bit into upper 20s, partly sunny, and then a chance of some snow and rain mix by Wednesday, temperatures finally get more mild into the lower 40s, especially for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, snow mix on Thursday evening into Friday potentially, and then we finally see some sunshine by Saturday with temperatures in the mid-40s.