The snow arrived on schedule this morning, with the bulk of the accumulation is over by noon in Portland and mid-afternoon east of Rockland.    The snow has fallen at rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour in several places after 5 a.m and allowed it to accumulate quite quickly.

Already dry air is rapidly pushing northward from the south side of the storm.  This will bring an abrupt shutdown to the snow in southern Maine between about 11 a.m  1 p.m from the south.  If there are still flakes in your area after that time, they won’t be accumulating.  Those of you further north and east will have to wait until mid to late afternoon for your snow to end.

The National Weather Service has continued the winter storm warnings and winter weather advisories (purple) this morning for much of coastal and interior Maine, but not the mountains.  Since we are just being clipped by the storm to our east, the mountains are just too far away to receive any significant snow.

The map below gives a general idea of how much snow you should expect at your house when this is over.  Remember, an area can always fall out of the range given, but overall it should be within an inch or so.

In the big picture this certainly isn’t a major event.  Of course after having so many weeks without any snow, seeing the flowers in bloom, the buds opening and having a day near 70 degrees not too long ago it’s tough on the psyche to see so many inches of snow.

This snow is the start of a period of colder and perhaps even wintry weather ahead.  While tomorrow and Wednesday are generally dry and seasonable colder air is going to push south into the area again for Wednesday night and Thursday.   This could lead to some snow or mixed precipitation Thursday morning and even cause some slick driving.  This won’t be a big storm, but not what we want this time of year.

I’m thinking of this as an inconvenient interlude in what’s been a very early start to spring.  If you planted some seeds or put down fertilizer as I have already the snow won’t hurt it.  Some farmers used to call snow poor man’s fertilizer.  All precipitation has some nitrogen, but the snow’s nitrogen gets into the soil slower and won’t run off like rain.

Tomorrow will be a nice day with lots of melting.  Temperatures near 40 degrees should help melt several inches of snow and with even milder air on Wednesday much of the snow should disappear with the exception of the large snowbanks.

Spring in New England rarely arrives cleanly, it’s often a period of nice weather followed by some frustrating days (or even a week) of cool and wet conditions.  After a nearly winterless winter I prefer to think of today as simply a minor interruption, it’s spring after all.