NEW: Messy March Storm Hitting Rhode Island Tonight
Monday, March 18, 2013
A messy March storm is heading toward Rhode Island, making a potential mess of the morning commute on Tuesday.
A storm center will form over the Delmarva Peninsula later today and intensify off the New Jersey coast overnight. Then it will move over Cape Cod tomorrow afternoon. That track means another mixed bag for us here in Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts. Very cold air for this time of year will assure us that the storm will start out as snow later tonight. But with the storm track so close to us it does seem likely that snow w ill mix with and change to rain over most of the area tomorrow first along the coast early in the morning and as the snow/rain line works inland eventually reaching northern Rhode Island later in the day.
Commute outlook for Tuesday
While the evening commute today should be just fine, the morning commute tomorrow should be very tough just about everywhere, except possibly along coastal communities.
Initial accumulations before the changeover likely will range from 1”-3” near the coast to 2”-5” in the Providence area and perhaps 4”-8” over extreme northern Rhode Island.
As is almost always the case a storm track farther offshore would bring us all more snow and less rain. And that is something I’ll be watching and evaluating carefully during the next several hours.
