Freak October Snowstorm Becoming More Likely

Hello, Snow!

This evening’s snow is a rare enough event. It looks as if the greater Hartford area has picked up measurable snow in October for the first time since 1979 and for only the 4th time in the last 100 years. We will need to wait to hear from the weather observer at Bradley Airport to get the official word.

This may be just a prelude for a significant and high impact winter storm that appears to be brewing for the weekend. All day I’ve spoken to meteorologist friends who have all said the same thing, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Obviously things can change and a variation in the track could mean only a little bit of snow. As of right now, however, the model consensus is a major winter storm that has the potential to bring down trees, tree limbs, and power lines given the amount of foliage still on the trees.

As we’ve seen tonight even though it’s October the sun angle is quite low and given a heavy enough snow rate snow can accumulate on the grass and on the roads. The GFS and the NAM computer models along with the Euro show substantial snow totals (most certainly “plowable”) even down to the shoreline.

For entertainment purposes here’s a look at the >12″ snow probability from our SREF guidance suite. The blue shading is 25 percent chance. Obviously this isn’t what I’m forecasting but this shows just how incredibly bizarre, rare, and unusual this storm could be.

By midday Friday we should have a better handle on this storm. At this point it looks like this storm has the potential to be unlike anything we’ve seen in recent memory.