A snowstorm Tuesday that was set to dump between 12 and 18 inches on Massachusetts is now predicted to have more disappointing snow totals of less than 6 inches for the vast majority of the state.
But there could be a silver lining for snow lovers, especially in the interior portion of the state set to get the least from Tuesday’s storm:
Another storm is on the way on Thursday into Friday.
National Weather Service meteorologist Torry Dooley said Tuesday that it was too early to have snow total predictions for Thursday’s storm, but said it was on track to affect the interior portion of the state, and less of the coast.
“Most of the snow would fall across northern Massachusetts,” he said.
The storm would likely be quick-moving and affect the state from late Thursday night into Friday morning, he said.
Less snow than expected Tuesday
News of the new storm comes as Tuesday’s storm is affecting different portions of the state than initially predicted.
The storm was initially set to drop amounts of snow on Boston and Worcester those cities hadn’t seen in years, but predictions fell Monday afternoon and continued to fall into Tuesday.
Instead, most of the snow is now expected to fall on south Eastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod, which is predicted to get between 6 and 8 inches.
Only southeastern Massachusetts is now expected to receive more than 6 inches of snow on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.National Weather Service
“The biggest thing that happened was the storm itself tracked further south,” Dooley said Tuesday.
As of Monday morning, the National Weather Service’s Norton office’s storm model guidance showed a storm headed directly for a point just off of Nantucket known as “the benchmark,” Dooley said.
Decades of weather forecasting has established that storms that travel over that point bring the heaviest snow to southern New England, Dooley said.
“Guidance for this storm in particular definitely shifted more south than what was expected,” Dooley said. “Our forecast is only as good as the model guidance we have to work with, and it really honed in on passage of a low pressure system over what we call the benchmark.”
