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Meteorologists Expect Rain, A Bit Of Snow This Weekend

BOSTON (CBS) - Good news this morning: no more forecast changes! After a day of forecast "adjustment" on Friday, we are back on track and believe that we finally have a good handle on this weekend's snow.

This will be a long-duration, low-impact event. It will be raining or snowing for several hours this weekend, but in the end it won't actually amount to much more than a nuisance.

Light snow could begin to fly at any moment Saturday, but we won't see anything steady until tonight.

This is when the actual storm that we have been tracking will make it closest pass to southern New England.

Between 7 p.m. Saturday night and 4 or 5 a.m. Sunday, we will be on the northern fringes of a relatively weak ocean storm.

Away from the coast, there could be a dusting to an inch or two of snow in this time frame, while right at the coastline it could be rain or snow.

Over southeastern Massachusetts including the Cape, this round of precipitation will almost certainly come as rain.

As the storm passes by well to our south Sunday morning, it will likely develop something called an "inverted" or "Norlun trough." This is basically an arm or band of snow extending backwards from the storm which can produce significant snowfall rates in relatively small, localized areas. Best bet for the focus of this snow band will be along the Coast from southern Maine to the seacoast of New Hampshire down to perhaps the North Shore of Massachusetts. We will be watching for the development of this band between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Sunday. Where it does develop, there may be several inches of snow during the day.

Elsewhere on Sunday there will just be light snow at times, no more than 2-4", probably mainly on the lower end, closer to an inch or two.

A couple of other bulls-eye spots may be in the Worcester Hills and higher elevations of southern New Hampshire, where a few locations could get 3 or 4".

So, you add it all up and we are looking at a total of about 3-6" in areas north and west of Boston including the North Shore and Essex County, parts of northern Middlesex and Worcester counties, and Southern New Hampshire.

About 1-3" is likely in Boston and areas just west and south, but considering the heavy and wet nature of this snow and some mixing with rain it should compact and look very unimpressive.

Farther south in extreme southeastern Massachusetts and over Cape Cod, there will be very little if any snow accumulation - perhaps just a dusting to an inch as the whole storm ends late on Sunday.

Again, there are relatively no wind, and no coastal concerns this go around.

If you have travel plans, you should be fine -- just leave a little extra time on Sunday.

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