Local DPW officials and weather experts are urging residents to stay inside tonight as the area gears up for a storm that is slated to bring freezing rain and slippery roads.
“Our advice is to stay home, if possible,” wrote Milford Highway Surveyor Scott Crisafulli in an email. “If you can’t stay home, then take it slow. We expect slippery conditions throughout the storm. Also, be aware of the parking ban. We will be ticketing and towing cars.”
The storm was expected to start this afternoon with “snow, sleet and freezing rain,” according to forecasters with the Daily News media partner, WCVB-TV. Its intensity will increase into the night before converting to strictly rain on Tuesday morning in many areas.
MetroWest Daily News
The first significant snowfall of 2021 blanketed MetroWest and Greater Milford with more than a foot of snow in most areas, making travel and cleanup operations a challenge.
Westborough (18.4 inches) and Northborough (15.5 inches) claimed two of the highest snow totals in Middlesex County. But they couldn t reach the heights of Lowell - 24 inches - which had the highest total in both the county and state.
Flakes began to fall Monday morning, then ramped up throughout the afternoon and evening, causing road conditions to deteriorate.
“We had some heavy snow overnight,” said Milford Highway Surveyor Scott Crisafulli. “It snowed hard.
The region’s first nor’easter of the season Thursday was a culmination of “the right ingredients at the right time,” according to Bryce Williams, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service s Norton office.
“We had the cold air in place at the same time we had plenty of moisture in the atmosphere to work with,” he explained during a phone interview Thursday morning with the Daily News.
Williams said there was really strong lift in the atmosphere that caused the moisture in the air to precipitate. That in turn, made snow fall rapidly, he said.
“We had extremely cold temperatures, which make for a light fluffy snow, which accumulated quickly and then we had a lot of moisture with a very strong wind all together, making for a really big dump of snow,” he said.