Sunday, December 15 Winter Storm Briefing #1

Hello, I’m Todd Foisy with the Weather Service in Caribou, and here’s your weather briefing for the upcoming winter storm on Sunday, prepared for you early Friday afternoon, December 13. We’re going to discuss the hazard risk assessment, the situation, then we’ll get into the possible impacts and the timeframe. Here’s an assessment of the hazard risk. We are looking for a yellow/moderate impact, with the areas most greatly impacted being Downeast and Central Maine. Will this weather happen? That’s likely, although we don’t quite yet have high confidence. Will there be travel disruption? Yes. Power outages? Possible. And Blowing/Drifting snow? Possible. Now let’s get into the details. The center of the system will be near Cape Cod early Sunday, then track to Nova Scotia late Sunday, meaning Sunday is when we will be under the gun in Eastern Maine. There’s high confidence of Downeast and Central areas at least getting hit fairly hard. There is high confidence that this will be an all-snow event throughout the area, even the coast. Here’s a map of the snow totals late Saturday night to Sunday, and keep in mind these will likely change as we get closer to the event with more confidence. A little over 14 inches Downeast and 6 to 10 inches up north. Again, we are expecting it to be all snow, and the snow will be rather low density, or fluffy. There may be some blowing snow issues during and after the snowfall, mainly Downeast, with winds there 15 to 25 mph with gusts to 35 mph. Timeframe, again, will be mainly late Saturday night to Sunday. Heaviest from 7 AM to 1 PM Sunday, and Downeast and Central areas, with snowfall rates of 2 inches per hour possible. Strongest winds will be throughout the day on Sunday and Downeast, which could lead to some blowing and drifting. Lesser impacts for the north, with 5-8 inches Sunday. And light snow will likely linger into Sunday night and Monday mainly over the north, with another 1 to 3 inches. That’s all the time we have for today. Have a great day!