Your RI Weekend Weather Wrap – Jan. 29/30, John Donnelly

by John Donnelly, meteorologist

Saturday 1/29/22:

Attach whatever hype you want to it, it’ll likely fit while it’s happening. A winter storm hits with blizzard conditions at times, which is defined as “sustained winds over 35 mph and visibility less than ¼ mile for at least three hours”.

Portions of southeastern New England will see this during the hours between 9am and 3pm, blinding sideways snowfall accumulating anywhere from 12 to 24 inches, higher in some isolated east-facing highland areas, less along the coastal areas.

Midnight high of 30 falls through the day, with an evening low in the teens, but who cares? The wind will be HOWLING through the day, driving the blowing and drifting snow into all the tucked away nooks and crannies. Snow starts around 10pm Friday, and ends around 9pm Sunday.

Sunday 1/30/22:

A clear and calm day to regroup and clean up, watch the plows navigate the speed bumps, let the chips fall where they may. Morning and evening lows in the single digits bookending an afternoon high in the low 20’s under clear skies and a much less taxing westerly breeze less than 10 mph.

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John Donnelly was born in Hialeah, Florida and moved back to Rhode Island and settled in Johnston, where he grew up until graduating from Lyndon State College in 1998 with a Bachelor of Science in Meteorology. As a child John always wanted to know how air moved, and he ran towards, not away from, thunder and lighting and various other ominous weather phenomena. He returned in 2001 to the old family neighborhood of Elmhurst where the McCabe’s, Donnelly’s, Walker’s and Callan’s have been since after the Civil War.