First Alert Forecast: Some sun, then Yellow Alert later Friday for accumulating snow and ice

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The first few days of March will come in like a lamb, then winter comes roaring back by Friday. Thursday will see dry weather, aside from a few light flurries, along with some breaks of sun and seasonable temperatures in the upper 30s. Friday starts off just fine, with dry weather and even some sun. But conditions will begin to go downhill during the afternoon. Snow is expected to overspread the area from south to north, starting during the afternoon hours, and likely having an impact on the Friday evening commute. At this point we expect several inches of snow Friday evening, starting during the commute. Several more inches of snow are expected overnight into early Saturday, giving us a modest, but shovelable snowfall Friday evening into Saturday morning. We do still expect some warmer air to be drawn into the system, meaning some of that snow will likely mix with, or even change over to, sleet and freezing rain. At this point, the highest risk of icing is south of the Thruway, with the highest snowfall amounts north of the Thruway. This is still a very complicated forecast with lower confidence in who sees what kind of precipitation. At this early point, we’ll go with a 4-8” total accumulation for Rochester north toward Lake Ontario, and 2-4” south of the Thruway, but expect these numbers to change somewhat as the finer details become more clear.

The Yellow Alert remains up for Friday evening into the overnight, when the biggest impacts of this storm will be felt. Snow should taper into Saturday morning. Stay with the First Alert Weather Team as we continue to monitor new data and update the forecast.