Encased in Ice (hoping you shoveled snow and chipped away ice earlier today)

All day's ice covered driveway, Amherst MA (1/4/2015)
Photo by S.Vardatira

Despite every weather forecast to the contrary, the temperature in Amherst today never nudged out of the 30s. So no, all that snowy icy stuff is probably NOT going to melt tonight. (If you cleared cars and driveways earlier, give yourself a pat on the back now - if you didn't, get out there and start shoveling/chipping. Now is your last chance!) The temp is supposed to nudge over 40 briefly in the next few hours, though, honestly, that seems unlikely with temps having dropped back to 32 currently. But even if the temp does hit 40 in the next hour, it won't be there long enough to transform the landscape. By morning, the mercury will start falling, and at that point temps will stay BELOW freezing at least through next Monday, January 12. And whatever doesn't melt of that one inch of rain-soaked snow, sleet and ice is going to turn into block ice by tomorrow night. Overnight Wednesday to Thursday, it will get extremely cold, dipping to about -2 F. Beware black ice tonight and tomorrow, as the road puddles freeze over.

In the meantime, it's worth pondering why computer models not infrequently overestimate the temperature rise here in the Valley in situations like the one we had today. On several occasions in recent years, winter predictions of a significant jump in temperature (forecasts for today had us going from about 30 F to 45-50 F in less than 6 hours) fizzle almost entirely in the face of extremely cold ground temperatures, continued overcast/rain, and snow on the ground just adding to the impenetrable cold. Whatever warm air moves in is just not enough to scoop out the cold air nestled in pockets across the Valley.