By Caitlin Ashworth
Gazette Staff Writer
A white Christmas in the forecast for Monday, and the snowstorm has a potential to break records and create hazardous travel conditions in the morning.
“We are expecting snow to develop tonight between 10 p.m. to midnight,” meteorologist Kim Buttrick of the National Weather Service said Sunday.
Snow is expected to fall until noon on Monday, Buttrick said, with a total of 4 to 7 inches. A low of mid to upper 20s is forecast for Sunday night and a high of low 30s for Monday, she said.
Winds will be picking up Monday night with a wind speed around 15 mph and gusts as high as 45 mph, Buttrick said.
“Once the snow ends, winds are going to be whipping out of the southwest,” Buttrick said.
Seasonably cold air is expected for the remainder of the week, she added, with highs in the teens and upper 20s. Temperatures are forecasted to drop to a low of 7 degrees on Tuesday night and 2 degrees on Wednesday night, according to the weather service.
The highest snowfall on record at the service’s cooperative weather observing station at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is 6 inches on Christmas day in 1978, Buttrick said. She added that the station has snowfall data from over the past 100 years.
The 30-year average for snow on Christmas in the Amherst area is 3/10ths of an inch, Buttrick said.
“It’s not unusual to have a white Christmas,” she said.
With a storm in the forecast, Buttrick said travelers should wait until the storm wraps up around noon Monday before getting on the road.
Wet and icy road conditions impacted drivers on Saturday.
Around 1 p.m. on Saturday, slush on the road caused a plow truck to slide and hit the guard rail at the parking lot at Maines Field in Northampton, according to the Northampton Police Department. The accident caused damage to the concrete posts of the guard rails, but damages did not exceed $1,000.
Another accident was reported at 1:51 p.m. Saturday when a car slid off the road and hit a telephone pole off Sylvester Road in Florence, police said. Police said they are not sure if the accident was weather-related.