A blizzard occurred today at several locations across southeastern New England, according to the National Weather Service.
A preliminary summary of Blizzard Conditions from the National Weather Service this afternoon announced blizzard criteria were met in Newport starting at 8:50 am.
The definition of a blizzard is that falling and/or blowing snow reduced visibility to below 1/4 mile along with sustained winds or winds that frequently gust to 35 mph or more…and that these are the predominant conditions for a period of 3 consecutive hours.
When reviewing whether a particular observation location had blizzard conditions, the National Weather Service counted visibilities equal to 1/4 mile, since that is quite low for an automated visibility sensor to detect.
Blizzard criteria were still occurring at some locations as of this writing, so durations will need to be finalized on Wednesday by the National Weather Serve..
At Boston, MA, blizzard criteria were met, starting at 8:30 AM.
At Martha’s Vineyard, MA, blizzard criteria were met, starting at 8:00 AM. There was a 3-hour wind-data outage, but mesonet data at Vineyard Haven indicated continuous gusts at or above 35 mph during that period.
At Marshfield, MA, blizzard criteria were met, starting at 855 AM. There was a wind-data outage between 9:15 AM and 11:55 AM, but mesonet data from Duxbury were used as a proxy and indicated nearly continuous gusts at or above 35 mph during that time period.
At Plymouth, MA blizzard criteria were met, starting at 7:32 AM and continuing through 10:25 AM and likely beyond, but there was a prolonged data outage after that time.
At Hyannis, MA blizzard criteria were met, starting at 7:30 AM.
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