A powerful coastal spring storm is clobbering New England, bringing up to two feet of pasty snow, significant sleet accumulations and strong gusts that are knocking out power. According to PowerOutage.us, about 600,000 customers remained without power in the Northeast late Thursday, including 500,000 in New Hampshire and Maine. Winter storm warnings plaster all of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine into Thursday night, as well as most of eastern New York state north of Albany.
The same storm unloaded 1 to 2 feet of snow in parts of northern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula on Tuesday and Wednesday and cut power to more than 150,000 customers, with the heavy snow snapping trees and power lines.
The somewhat long-duration storm began Wednesday in the Northeast and won’t wind down fully until Friday night or Saturday for parts of New Hampshire and Maine.
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The snow is occurring on the cold side of a powerful storm system that has swept the country. It brought heavy rain, flooding and snow to California over the weekend before unleashing severe thunderstorms in the central and eastern states during the first half of the workweek.
New England details
On weather satellite imagery, an enormous swirl of low pressure can be seen over Ohio. It swung a cold front through the East Coast, along which a new area of low pressure formed south of Long Island. The coastal low-pressure area has been pinwheeling moisture back toward New York and New England while simultaneously drawing cold air southward. That frigid air mass has bled into the mountains of Massachusetts, where a wintry mix has fallen. Farther north, sleet transitioned to heavy, wet snow.
Snow will continue to fall at a moderate to heavy clip into Thursday night, especially from the Adirondacks northward to near the Maine-Canada border.
Snow totals
Here’s a roundup of how much snow has fallen:
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- 21.5 inches in Shapleigh, Vt.
- 20 inches in Stowe, Vt.
- 18 inches in Tamworth, N.H.
- 17 inches in Altona, N.Y.
- 16.5 inches in Porter, Maine
- 15 inches in Madison, N.H.
- 14.9 inches in Gray, Maine
- 13 inches in St. Albans, Vt.
- 12 inches in Wolfeboro, N.H.
- 8.8 inches in South Burlington, Vt.
- 6 inches in Manchester, N.H.
More snow to come
By Thursday night, the center of low pressure will near the Maine coast, pulling a milder marine air mass inland, causing snow to change to freezing rain or a wintry mix as far west as central Maine. Snow will become more intermittent in Vermont and New Hampshire but will keep falling steadily in far-western and northern Maine.
An additional 3 to 6 inches could fall in the Adirondacks and the Green and White Mountains overnight, with 4 to 10 inches across northern Maine.
The snow may keep going Friday into the night in interior Maine as the center of low pressure meanders near the coast. Additional accumulation will probably be modest, but several more inches could fall in northern Maine and higher elevations to the south.
Scattered snow showers may continue in the mountains of Vermont, New Hampshire and New York and downwind of Lakes Ontario and Erie.
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While precipitation might change to rain in eastern Maine and along the coast Friday, it could briefly flip back to snow early Saturday morning before the low-pressure zone finally pulls away to the east.
Strong winds and coastal flooding
The storm has featured strong winds, including a gust to 61 mph on Nantucket and 58 mph in Hyannis in Massachusetts. Boston saw gusts to 59 mph, and Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod, had a gust to 54 mph.
The Portland International Jetport in Maine gusted to 53 mph, and there were several gusts of 60 to 70 mph at the coast. Mount Washington’s winds increased throughout Thursday, with a gust as high as 107 mph late in the afternoon. Storm warnings are in effect for the waters off Maine’s coast into the night.
Strong winds have been helping to push water against the coastline. In Boston, water levels are running up to 4.5 feet above normal, with 2.5 feet of surge observed on the Outer Cape.
Great Lakes region
A widespread 5 to 10 inches accumulated in much of Wisconsin, but totals climbed to around 12 to 18 inches in the high elevations near Marquette in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and a few locations went past 2 feet. Much of the heavy snow fell Tuesday night into early Wednesday.
In Marquette, 14 inches fell on Tuesday alone, almost doubling the calendar-day record of 7.2 inches in 2016. Green Bay picked up 6.5 inches, including a record 5.1 inches on Tuesday. The totals from this storm surpassed the monthly average in Green Bay and approached the average in Marquette.
Additional storm snowfall totals include:
- 28 inches in Herman, Mich. (west of Marquette).
- 24 inches in West Ishpeming, Mich. (southwest of Marquette).
- 14.2 inches in eastern La Crosse, Wis.
- 8 inches in Caledonia, Minn. (southwest of La Crosse).
- 6.8 inches in Escanaba, Mich. (along Lake Michigan’s northern shore).
- 6.5 inches in Dubuque, Iowa.
- 4 inches in Freeport, Ill.
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