<p>If you are driving on Friday, you will be fine unless you wait until night. We are supposed to get only light stuff until the night and the heaviest will come as the storm pushes out and the winds come back from the northeast. Big winds too. That won’t be until late Friday, early Saturday. </p>
<p>I would be a little concerned about traffic volume on Thursday and Friday. We’ve had no snow at all and people here tend to get nuts for the first few storms of the season. Since this may be a top 10 ever storm, I expect people to bolt on Thursday with many not showing up on Friday and then those who are in on Friday leaving really early. The memory of 1978 is vivid: people stuck in their cars on 128 for days. So my only concern would be traffic.</p>
<p>I take advice about not driving seriously. My aunt was visiting with a friend before the last big storm and they headed for NYC just before it broke. They spent the night in their car at a gas station in CT. </p>
<p>BTW, a nice meteorological blog is weather wisdom. It runs at the Globe’s site but is independent. Talks in more detail about the models used and shows actual pictures from models instead of the TV simplified graphics. </p>
<p>When my kids were little, I used to take them out in blizzards. It’s an experience. My oldest remembers us being the only people out, the wind whipping, snow flying sideways in thick bands and then having to get home by sliding down the public steps that run down the hills above where we lived. I had to pull her downhill by her snow boots because the drifts were 3 to 4 feet deep. </p>
<p>I’m a little concerned about our friends who live on the beach in Marshfield. They could get a really big tide.</p>
<p>The problem with waiting until Friday afternoon is that if you run into an issue, such as an accident slowing traffic or a few early microbursts of heavy snow, your goose is cooked. The visibility Friday evening is bound to be terrible, and because we haven’t had a lot of heavy snow this year inexperienced snow drivers may drive poorly. There are always more accidents with the first storm or two of the season. You will not want to get stuck in this storm. Even if you have plenty of gas, if the snow is covering your tailpipe you can’t run the engine without risking CO poisoning.</p>
<p>I love big storms, and to tell the truth I’m kinda hoping for a big one. My only request of the gods is that WBZ bring Shelby Scott out of retirement for a weather reporting cameo!</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for their advice. I’m going to try and make it. I’ll either take the DM Coach on Thurs night or very early Fri am. D is taking a DM Coach from NYC on late Friday afternoon, so hopefully she makes it up back. It will be an experience for this old time midwesterner.</p>
<p>I hate to say it Dumbo11, but I think your daughter’s making a mistake, unless she likes the idea of spending 36 hours stuck with 40 strangers and an overflowing bus toilet. Here’s an interactive map of the expected snowfall totals:</p>
<p>Well she doesn’t have much of a choice, unless the company decides to postpone their big interview day. Worst case she ends up in NYC for the weekend. I’m going to hope for the best (and probably regret it). At this point, flights are sold out so I wouldn’t be able to make it home anyway. Wish me luck :).</p>
<p>Let’s be clear about this: NOAA has issued a blizzard warning for MA, not a snowstorm warning. A blizzard means zero visibility. It’s not about people being inexperienced or bad drivers. It’s about snow falling at a rate of 3 inches per hour. Translation: you can’t see twelve inches past your face.</p>
<p>Dumbo, they have upgraded this storm to blizzard status. The worst of the snow is supposed to be Friday night into Saturday morning with 2-4 inches coming down per HOUR. I seriously think a bus heading to NH any time after 3:00 in the afternoon is going to be iffy at best.</p>
<p>Of course, I’m still hoping I get into Hartford at 2:45 in the afternoon. Keeping my fingers crossed…tomorrow is going to be an adventure.</p>
<p>Sop14’s Mom-
I absolutely agree with you. The only reason I mentioned inexperienced drivers was that even with a relatively light snowfall traffic can slow down to a crawl. Anyone planning to get somewhere before the blizzard rolls in needs to plan for that. Accidents, armadas of snow plows trying to keep ahead of the storm, people leaving work early, panicky drivers- all can make driving in the lead up to a blizzard very challenging. And once the blizzard hits it will be too late to effectively take shelter.</p>
<p>New England deals well with weather, but when you have a snowfall rate of 2+ inches/hour it becomes impossible for the plows to keep up.</p>
<p>Sue22 - I’d love to see Shelby Scott come back also! Then you know it’s a big storm!</p>
<p>DD’14 is a new driver and is hoping for school to be cancelled on Friday as the kids come from a variety of towns. Don’t think that will happen but I’ll be keeping a close watch on the timeline to decide whether to drive her myself or just keep her home. At this point with no tests and not feeling great already, she could probably use a morning to sleep in and then spend the day figuring out her physics and reading Pride & Prejudice and be more productive!</p>
<p>Heading out today to buy white foods for the storm…milk, bread, wine…</p>
<p>Does anyone have a better “time” projection than “late afternoon” for when this snow is supposed to escalate? I have one of the earliest flights from BWI to Bradley (given my flight from Cleveland). I’m supposed to depart at 1:15 and arrive at 2:45. Any chance I might beat the bad part of the snow? Bradley can handle 3-5 inches. They cannot handle wind or blizzard conditions.</p>
<p>I checked the weather channel web site. It appears that it will begin snowing in Hartford around 9 am on Friday and it should turn to steady snow around noon. The snow will become heavy around 9 pm. Then around midnight the wind will kick in. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Sue22, love that hourly forecast. Bookmarked! From that forecast, looks like we are in the jackpot region for 35" of snow! </p>
<p>Typically around here if a storm comes, plowers will not plow the local roads as often until the snow is getting ready to stop. I am sure they try to keep up with the highways but if it is coming down so rapidly it is tough to keep up. So I am expecting that we won’t get out until Sunday now.</p>
<p>We are supposed to fly out of Portland, Maine at 6:44 am on Friday. We should be fine, but I’m still nervous. Our cruise leaves from Fort Lauderdale on Saturday.</p>
<p>thumper, if you look at the hourly map that Sue posted, (click through the pages) you will see that at 3pm on Fri around Bradley there will be about 3". I would just keep checking that map since they update the totals and estimates.</p>
<p>ML, I will be crossing my fingers and saying all sorts of prayers that you get to Ft. Lauderdale on time. I can’t wait to hear about the cruise!</p>
<p>aqua, since I grew up in Texas, I still LOVE snow, so I’m actually a little bummed out. I missed the other snow at the end of December, because I was in Austin visiting family. And this time, we’re leaving our three kids (14, 17, and 20) with a family friend, so I’m a little worried with how they will do. We have backup friends in place. I just need to breathe deeply and relax!</p>
<p>I’ve driven in lots of snowstorms and blizzards over the years, many times with 30-50 mile trips and it’s not something that you want to do if your inexperienced with snow or your vehicle isn’t prepared or you’re not prepared to find shelter.</p>
<p>We’ll have much better information tonight and tomorrow morning - I think that asking for accuracy of timing isn’t that useful (understandable because people have travel schedules), but timing can change quite a bit over 36 hours. At the moment, my plans are to pick up my son in Boston tomorrow but that might change to Saturday evening. If he can get out of work early (around noon), then I could pick him up and I doubt that there would be any problems unless the snow or traffic got a lot heavier earlier than expected. I think that trying to leave around 2:00 PM or later could be a disaster. Traffic could easily become a big problem with employees leaving early.</p>
<p>So I’ll make my decision tomorrow morning on whether or not to go in.</p>
<p>One thing about the DPW in Eastern Massachusetts. Their approach seems to be to wait for the first big accident before they start sanding, salting and plowing. I drove 100 miles through freezing rain and snow last week so I can deal with this stuff but there are times when it is best to stay home.</p>
<p>One of my friends is heading for FL today and coming back next week. I told him that he has good timing.</p>
<p>I’m going to see what happens. I’ll fly from Cleveland to Baltimore tomorrow morning, and hope for the best. If my flight gets canceled at 1:15, I’ll rebook whenever they can rebook me on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, and my favorite relatives there will retrieve me, and I’ll spend the weekend with them.</p>