Tens of thousands of customers across Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Main were left without power on Monday morning, January 23, 2023, as a major winter storm brought strong winds, heavy snow and ice to parts of New England.
As of 17:40 UTC on January 23, Massachusetts had more than 10 300 customers without power, down from more than 45 000 earlier in the day. Most of the outages were centered in Franklin, Worcester, and Middlesex counties.
New Hampshire had 36 000 customers without power and Maine 24 500.
Traffic is difficult across the region and many schools and offices have announced closures until conditions improve.
The weather pattern across the central and eastern United States will be active over the next few days, with two well-organized low-pressure systems making headlines, NWS forecaster Snell noted.1
The first is the ongoing coastal low-pressure that will continue to bring widespread rain from the Mid-Atlantic Coast to southern New England on Monday.
It will also bring moderate to heavy snow from Upstate New York to central Maine, where 15 – 30 cm (6-12 inches) of snow could accumulate by Monday night. Winter storm warnings are in effect for these areas.
It will also be windy, particularly near the coastal areas, due to the strong pressure gradient that will be in place.
On Tuesday, surface high pressure will briefly settle in across the Eastern United States in the wake of that storm system.
As the week progresses, attention turns to a new storm system that will be developing across New Mexico and Texas on Tuesday morning, January 24.
This storm will bring widespread precipitation as it draws in strong moisture from the western Gulf. There will be enough cold air in place in areas such as the Texas Panhandle and much of Oklahoma to support snowfall, some of which could be locally heavy.
As the storm system continues to develop and move east on Tuesday night and Wednesday, January 25, it will bring noteworthy snowfall to much of northern Arkansas and western Tennessee.
The warm sector of the storm system will mainly affect coastal areas of the central Gulf Coast due to its southern track, but there will be enough kinematics and instability in place to support the development of severe thunderstorms from southern Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle on Tuesday.
The Storm Prediction Center has issued an enhanced risk of severe weather for these areas. Additionally, there is a slight risk of excessive rainfall from eastern Texas to south-central Mississippi, where some areas could see rainfall totals exceeding 51 mm (2 inches), with the potential for rounds of training convection.
1 Short Range Forecast Discussion – NWS Weather Prediction Center College Park MD – 255 AM EST Mon Jan 23 2023
