By Richard Kaufman
Although Tuesday is officially the first day of spring, the rest of the week resembles anything but.
But as the forecast continues to come into focus, timing of Winter Storm Toby appears to be shifting. According to Jacob Meisel, chief weather analyst for swctweather.com, Tuesday morning’s update indicates that light snow is expected to linger on the coast around 7-8 a.m., Wednesday, but will struggle to move inland until around 10-11 a.m. Far inland areas may see snow later in the afternoon. Overall, the steadiest snow is expected between 2 and 11 p.m., across the region. The slow-moving storm will stick around through as early as 2-3 a.m., Thursday morning.
This timing shift could have a significant impact on schools in Greenwich. Rather than cancelling altogether on Wednesday, the district could instead opt for a two-hour delay since steady snow won’t arrive until 12-1 p.m. Closures then are more likely for Thursday, since the window to clean up roadways would be potentially very small.
Meisel noted that The National Weather Service raised their expected accumulations into the 11-15 inch range for Fairfield and New Haven Counties, with 12-16 forecasted for Westchester. Meisel added that the totals are likely based off recent trends, and that he expects predictions to be scaled back throughout Tuesday. But as of right now, the morning commute looks to be unbothered, while the evening commute projects to be treacherous.
“Warmth aloft will make snow wet and we could be looking at another round of downed limbs and power outages [Wednesday] evening and overnight in worst case scenarios, so this could still be a significant storm, but there is a decent amount still to be worked out,” Meisel’s update said.
Timing on the storm is expected to be nailed down later today into tomorrow morning.
