All Over Albany

Icy, Snowy Apocalypse Watch

Timing is everything. And it's time for the Icy, Snowy Apocalypse Watch to return.

The paraphrased forecast for the next few days:

Tuesday: Maybe some snow, but not much. Cold overnight, with temps in the 10s.

Wednesday: Snow starting mid morning. Something like 5-9 inches during the day. Highs in the upper 20s.

Wednesday night: Probably more snow. Lows in the mid 10s.

Thursday: Sun, upper 20s.

The National Weather Service probabilistic snow forecast maps have the "expected" total pegged at 8 inches for much of the Capital Region core Wednesday morning to Thursday morning (with higher totals to the north). And the forecast seems pretty confident about that. The chance of more than 4 inches in Albany is figured to be 80 percent, more than 8 inches is 30 percent. And the chance of more than a foot is estimated to be 0 percent. (Apparently there's some chance we could also get some sleet.)

It seems like the big issue then is the timing of this storm. Half a foot overnight when plows can run without much traffic? Not a problem. Half a foot during the day, with snowfall cranked up around the evening commute? Ugh. (And if it's wet snow, double ugh.)

So we're marking this Icy, Snowy Apocalypse Watch just into the "proper winter" category because of the timing. Wednesday looks like it could be messy.

Shovels at the ready, hardy upstaters.

Media freakout forecast: Eh. It's February, sure, whatever.

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.