WINTER STORM WATCH FOR LATE MONDAY - EARLY TUESDAY

Written by: Bob Metcalfe

The National Weather Service office in Buffalo has issued a Winter Storm Watch for Orleans, Monroe, Genesee, Livingston, and Wyoming counties effective Monday night through Tuesday afternoon. This in anticipation of breezy winds, colder temperatures, and periods of snow during that time frame.

The storm will arrive as purely rain early Monday morning. Rain could be heavy at times throughout the first half of the day on Monday, before tapering off a bit into the evening. But a wind shift to the west/northwest into Tuesday morning will drop temperatures enough to see a changeover to snow. With Lake Erie almost completely free of ice as of now, this will me the highest concentration of snow totals in the higher elevations of the Southern Tier. Early estimates suggest accumulations of 6" or more for areas east of Lake Erie, including Genesee and Wyoming counties. Elsewhere, we could see a couple of inches of slushy accumulation.

Fortunately this isn't a long-lasting storm. By Wednesday we'll only see a few more early snow showers before things wind down into the latter half of the workweek. Stay tuned, we'll have plenty of updates to follow.