All Over Albany

Icy, Snowy Apocalypse Watch

Update: Or not. A zone of dry air in the system "greatly diminished the precip over the area," according to the NWS.
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Spring starts this Wednesday at 7:02 am. So, if you're winter, you might be thinking, "Oh, man, I should really finish stuff up." And so it is.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning from 6 pm Monday through 8 pm Tuesday. Here's the (paraphrased) NWS forecast:

Monday night: Light snow begins in the evening, with heavier snow and sleet over night. Accumulations of 3-7 inches possible. Lows around 31.

Tuesday morning: Snow, sleet, and rain through the morning into the afternoon. Another 2-4 inches possible. Highs in the upper 30s.

Tuesday evening: Rain into the evening, then back to snow. Lows in the mid 20s.

Wednesday: Maybe some snow to start, trailing off as the day moves along. Cloudy. Highs in the upper 30s.

Thursday: Cloudy. Highs in the upper 30s.

The forecast discussion calls this a "potent late winter storm." And the forecast warning mentions "heavy snow" with total accumulations of 8-12 inches.

The snowfall forecast map has the central Capital District in the 8-10 inch range, with less to the south/southeast and more to the north/northwest (sorry, Saratoga County).

Many of the winter storms we get here move up the East Coast -- and because of that, small variations in the path can have a big effect on snowfall totals. But this storm is a multi-state-large blob of precipitation moving across the midwest, headed in this direction. It looks like a pretty good bet that it's going plow through here.

So, given the track and the possibility of wet, heavy snow -- and bonus sleet and ice -- we're going to peg this as solid "Winter's Making an Effort" Icy, Snowy Apocalypse. Ugh.

Shovels at the ready, hardy upstaters.

By the way: We've gotten just about 41.9 inches of snow this winter. That's about 11 inches off the normal pace..

Necessary note: You should take this all with an enormous bag of rock salt. AOA has absolutely no weather forecasting expertise. At all. That said, the world will probably not end because of some snow. Most likely.

Earlier on AOA: Familiarity breeds chopped off fingers -- or, don't stick your hand in the chute of a snowblower