Need Sun. night ideas on early part of storm

[ninmaven]

My husband and I will be driving to New Hampshire this weekend to help out at the Clark campaign headquarters. I’m concerned with our drive back Sunday night. There won’t be snow falling in NH, but I’m worried that the weather will get worse as we drive through Westchester and then NJ. My husband drove up there and then back through last weekend’s storm and he said the roads weren’t bad until he was almost home.

I’ve looked at many forecasts for my area and they vary so greatly that I don’t know what to believe: some say light snow, some say ice, others say chance of snow, and some say moderate to significant snow. The timing on this event seems to be changing too. The start time for my home area was originally Sun. afternoon. Now it’s showing up later and later on Sun. night. I’ve even seen one or two forecasts that have nothing for Sun. but show the event occurring Mon.-Tues.

On Sunday, we will start our drive around 4:00 PM, and should arrive home around 9:00-9:30 PM if there are no problems. I enjoy reading the forecasts on this board (and Jeb’s enthusiastic posts!), and I’d like some opinions on what you all think we might encounter on our drive Sun. night. I don’t need to know snow totals for the entire event (which, I might add, on this board seem to be predicted higher for Central NJ than most other forecasts I’ve seen and that would be a good thing if I didn’t have to drive in it!) – I just want to know how much (or how little) snow may be on the ground from Northern NJ down through North-Central NJ during that time period and I’ll be most concerned if there is ice. I’ll be able to check this board for responses through 9:00 PM EST tonight. Thanks!

[JCT777]

Sunday evening could be pretty nasty in northern NJ. I would expect that area to get about 3 to 6 inches of snow, starting late afternoon Sunday and continuing into early Monday.

[Anonymous]

Your road temps are very very cold and will support snow. You are 17 degrees RIGHT NOW!!! I don't know what they do up there to treat the roads when it snows, but if it's this cold when it snows there, it may be quite slick. At least you should not have to mess with that freezing rain.



-JEB

[ninmaven]

Thanks guys. Salt is used to treat the roads here and the major roadways are usually pretty well treated. Unless the snow were to come down at a high rate per hour where the plows couldn't keep up, it should be ok. I was more worried about possible icing. Also, the local streets near my house tend to be hazardous because we only have a small public works dept. that uses pickup trucks with plows attached during a storm. We wait until the day after for the large county plows to come through to do a better job. Of course, the snow is compacted by then and the plows aren't able to get all the way down to the surface which leaves a nice slick coating of snow. There's still patches of ice and compacted icy snow on those streets from last weekends event.