Cloudy Skies Last Through Tomorrow Morning, with Sunshine Possible by Tomorrow Afternoon

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine (WAGM) - Good evening everyone and happy Wednesday. I wanted to take a moment to start off this evening and talk about what happened with this system and why a lot of communities didn’t see any if not trace amounts of snow with this system. We had several factors working against snow lovers with this low pressure, as it wasn’t able to gain enough strength and work into the Gulf of Maine fast enough yesterday. This resulted in filtered sunshine across the county, and milder temperatures than what was originally forecasted. This mild air helps to eat away at snowfall as it tried to make it to the surface. The other factor that helped to eat away at the snow was dry air in place at the surface. While temperatures were still sitting in the mid to upper 30s last night, dew points were in the upper teens and lower 20s. This dry air was too much, and allowed for any snowfall in the upper levels of the atmosphere to evaporate before it reached the surface. These two factors helped create the very low snowfall amounts that we did end up seeing, while some portions of far southern Aroostook did see it snow long enough to create more of an impact in terms of accumulation.

Looking at some of the snowfall reports, like I mentioned southern Aroostook was able to pick up a few inches of heavy wet snow from this, but overall, this system underperformed in many communities. I know some people are getting tired of the winter, so this was a relief to them that this system underperformed but wasn’t great news to people wanting more snow.

In terms of snowfall for the season, that has now brought caribou up to 8.7 inches of snow for the month of march. This is actually running a few inches below the average for this time of year, but we’re also running a good 7 inches under where we were this time last year for march snowfall. Overall this season, we’re just a couple tenths of an inch under what we had this time last year. Keep in mind, this is almost 10 inches higher than the average snowfall. I also want to point out that winter isn’t over yet, we still got another foot of snow before winter was over last year, and comparing the average puts us at almost 20 more inches for the season.

This evening’s weather setup shows the area of low pressure continuing to sit and spin in the Gulf of Maine. This will eventually begin to work its way east later tonight, bringing shower activity to an end, and some breaks in the clouds possible for tomorrow. Tomorrow is now looking better, with more breaks in the clouds and sunshine possible by the afternoon and evening. Friday starts off with partly clear skies, before cloud cover quickly increases once again, and snow showers return to the region tomorrow afternoon into the evening.

Going hour by hour through the rest of this evening shows isolated snow showers breaking apart and tapering off, leaving us with cloudy skies going into tomorrow morning. A few beaks in the clouds are possible by tomorrow morning but will be limited. Low temperatures tonight are expected to fall back into the lower to mid-20s for most spots. Northerly winds are still expected to be gusty during the overnight hours but will eventually begin to lighten up going into tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow starts off with mostly cloudy skies, but sunshine is expected to break through going into the afternoon hours. This will help give temperatures a little bit of a boost, before colder air returns with clear skies and northwesterly winds tomorrow night. High temperatures tomorrow are expected to climb back into the upper 30s, and possibly some lower 40s. Northwesterly winds are expected to be breezy at times tomorrow, which will help make temperatures feel a bit cooler, but overall a nice and mild day is expected.

More details on this evening’s forecast can be found in this evening’s Weather on the Web Video Forecast attached to this article. Have a great evening!

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