Snow Saturday not a worry
Yes, there is more snow in the forecast, nevermind the bright sunshine and all the melting going on out there today. The National Weather Service folks in Sterling are making it a 50 percent chance of snow as yet another storm gears up for a run along the coast.
Our results will depend on the storm's track, but even if it tracks farther offshore than expected, we will still see some precipitation, they say. Temperatures will be cold enough to support snow. But "amounts for the most part will be light," the NWS says. "The exception could be lower Southern Maryland." Here's AccuWeather.com's take on the storm, which it tags as having "little impact."
But stay tuned. Snow forecasts can change.
The real weather news this weekend won't be snow, but cold. As the Saturday storm departs, an arctic cold front will move across the region, dropping temperatures into the teens Saturday night into Sunday. Winds will be blustery all weekend, adding serious wind chill issues to the low temperatures.
Behind the front, the air will be clear, so Sunday will be sunny. But temperatures will stay below freezing all day with a forecast high of only 28 degrees. Monday morning will be the coldest, with a low of 13 degrees forecast for BWI.
After that, the warmup will be slow, creeping toward the freezing mark on Monday and the upper 30s by Tuesday as the arctic high moves off the coast to our east. Normal highs at this time of year are in the low 40s.
Forecasters say we can expect another bout of precipitation at mid-week, but they're calling for rain, not snow.
Yesterday's snow left 2.4 inches at BWI - Baltimore's station of record. But many locations recorded more than that. One spot in Montgomery County reported 6 inches, and 5 inches was common in Howard and Carroll counties. Here's a rundown. And here are some interesting snow maps from AccuWeather.com
In terms of badly needed moisture, the airport reported an official 0.77 inch of melted precipitation from yesterday's storm. That still leaves us more than a half-inch in the red for the month to date. We need surplus precipitation to restore the groundwater and reservoirs in time for the spring and summer seasons.
Not sure yet how much we got here at The Sun. We don't have a heating element in our rain gauge, so the snow is still melting through the hopper. So far, it's reporting 0.57 inch and counting. Here are some other measurements from across the region, for melted precipitation, and also for snow.
