Nor’easter forecast: Here’s when and where the snow and rain are expected in New England

Detailed summary

A coastal storm will bring rain to Greater Boston late Thursday into Friday, with a coating to 2 inches of snow possible in higher elevations.

A developing nor’easter is set to deliver the first snow of the season to parts of New England, though the Boston area will mainly contend with a cold, windswept rain starting Thursday and lasting into Friday. Several inches of wet snow are forecast for the highest elevations of Massachusetts and Northern New England.

This system will eventually slide off the mid-Atlantic coast late Thursday and strengthen into a nor’easter, bringing more rain, wind, and some wet snow through Friday. But unlike the others we’ve seen this fall, we should avoid major impacts like coastal flooding. This one is more of an inconvenience for Greater Boston and Southern New England.

This storm holds a decent shot of delivering a coating to a couple of inches of snow along Route 2, west of I-495, and a coating to 3 inches of wet snow in a few higher-elevation spots across the Berkshires, northern Worcester County, and most of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, with isolated spots seeing 3 to 6 inches across the highest terrain.

For the lower elevations and by the coast, it just won’t be that cold for widespread snow. Greater Boston should end up with about a half inch of cold, windswept rain, a lot less than what we experienced last week. The same rain scenario plays out as you head south to Cape Cod, the South Coast, and Rhode Island.

East of I-495 and south of the Mass. Pike should all stick to light and steady rain. There is a chance for a few snowflakes mixing in at low elevations at times, especially overnight to early Friday, but the odds of anything sticking, like along I-95 and I-495, are close to zero.

Light snow and rain start moving into Western Massachusetts, Connecticut, and parts of western Vermont late Thursday morning. Rain will extend into Greater Boston, Southeastern Mass., Cape Cod, and Rhode Island in the afternoon — about an hour before or after the evening commute — and last into the night.

Scattered pockets of precipitation will continue overnight and all day on Friday.

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Opening of the article, excerpted from The Boston Globe. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.