Cold and clear this weekend; storm to arrive Monday night

By Lauren Dezenski, Globe Correspondent

Hold onto your hats. A frigid Friday — and weekend — are in store, setting the scene for another major storm likely dropping plowable snow Monday night into Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.

Areas north of the Massachusetts Turnpike and west of Interstate 495 have the best chance for snow, meteorologist Bill Simpson said. The storm will likely create a messy Tuesday morning commute, with a mix of rain and snow, though rain will predominate in the Greater Boston area, according to a weather service forecast discussion posted on the Web.

The storm could also bring significant storm swell and surge to the east-facing coast, where some homes, particularly on the North Shore’s Plum Island, are teetering at the edge of an encroaching ocean. But the storm is not expected to roil the waters as much as the February blizzard or last week’s big storm. Tides aren’t expected to be as high and it’s not expected to last nearly as long, forecasters said.

The storm’s exact timing and precipitation amounts are still uncertain. The impacts could certainly change in the next three to four days, but “confidence is growing that New England will bear some of the brunt from this storm,” forecasters said in a summary graphic (included at the top of this posting).

Today and through the weekend, it will feel more like midwinter, with daytime highs barely topping 40, overnight lows in the low 20s, and the wind chill making it feel 10 degrees colder.

This morning, Worcester and Orange clocked in with temperatures at 16 and 15 degrees, respectively. With the winds, temperatures felt closer to zero in Western Massachusetts, Simpson said. While Boston bottomed out at 21 degrees, the winds helped temperatures feel even chillier.

Daytime highs will barely break 40 degrees today in Boston, though with winds between 11 and 4 miles an hour, the high of 42 will feel more like the 30s, forecasters said.

The weekend into Monday will essentially be a carbon copy of today, Simpson said, with overnight lows in the 20s and highs in the low 40s paired with partly sunny skies.

The one bright spot: St. Patrick’s Day is expected to be completely sunny, though highs will only reach 41 in Boston and steady winds will blow between 6 and 14 miles per hour.