Heavy Snow — Northern Worcester, Massachusetts

1996-12-07 · Northern Worcester, Massachusetts

Wider weather episode

A low pressure system centered over Georgia at 7 AM on December 7th moved rapidly northeast across North Carolina. The intensifying system then moved nearly parallel to the Mid-Atlantic coast with its center reaching Plymouth County in southeastern Massachusetts during the early morning hours of December 8th. Temperatures rose into the 50s along and east of the track of the low center...over Plymouth County and Cape Cod. Heavy precipitation occurred across all of Massachusetts with rain over coastal areas and the southeast part of the state and heavy snow in all of western and central Massachusetts and much of Middlesex and Essex counties in the northeastern part of the state. A very distinct rain-snow line existed throughout this storm. It was oriented from south-southwest to north-northeast and extended from extreme western Norfolk County across Middlesex County to Essex County. Lightning and thunder was observed during the evening of December 7th along the rain-snow line. Some snowfall totals for this storm event and totals on the ground from a heavy snowstorm which occurred on December 6th included: Ashburnham, 18 inches with 26 inches on the ground; West Townsend, 17 inches with 25 inches on the ground; Worcester, 14 inches; Ware, 13 inches with 15 inches on the ground; Westboro, 12.3 inches; Shrewsbury, 12.2 inches with 19 inches on the ground; Springfield, 8 inches; Greenfield, 6.1 inches with 9 inches on the ground; Tyngsboro, 6.0 inches; Billerica, 5 inches; and Lowell, 4.8 inches. The snow was especially wet and heavy, resulting in heavy damage to trees and power lines. Power lines and tree limbs began snapping under the weight of the snow shortly after 7 PM on Saturday evening, December 7th. Widespread power outages affecting tens of thousands of people occurred in Worcester, Middlesex, and Essex Counties. Statewide, about 500,000 people lost power at some point during the storm, but extended power outages (lasting several days) occurred in central Massachusetts and the Merrimack Valley and affected about 113,000 electric customers. Thousands of trees and limbs knocked down by the snow forced police to close sections of many roads. At least a couple of people received minor injuries from falling tree limbs. Hundreds of homes and vehicles were damaged when snow-laden tree limbs crashed down. Thousands of people endured several days with no power or heat and many left their homes for shelters set up by local governments and the American Red Cross. Strong to gale force east to southeast winds occurred over the southeast part of the state and especially along the coast from Cape Cod to the New Bedford area. A peak wind gust to 64 mph from the east-southeast was recorded at West Island on Buzzards Bay. In addition, heavy rain totalling 1.5 to just over 2 inches resulted in street flooding. A number of roads were reported completely flooded in the New Bedford area, where over 2 inches of rain was reported. The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency stated that dollar damages totalled $4,080,700 for public -type damage. When private sector damage (trees onto homes, etc.) is taken into account, we have roughly estimated the total storm damage to be approximately $15 million.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 5584450. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.