After a brief bout of unsettled weather, New England is turning back to a mostly dry pattern once again. An area of low pressure will continue to swirl well to the northwest of New England, near James Bay in Canada. This low pressure system will keep New England under broad cyclonic flow for Saturday, though only limited snow showers are expected this afternoon across far northern New England. The rest will likely just see some cloud development in the afternoon, similar to Friday.
This cold cyclonic flow will help a major lake-effect snow event develop for the eastern shorelines of Lakes Erie and Ontario, where several feet of snow will be possible through the weekend. Between 20 and 30 inches has already been reported in the Erie, Pennsylvania area. In New England, only light snow showers are expected with little to no accumulations across the northern woods.
New England, and really the United States as a whole, will be entering into a rather stagnant pattern for the first half of December. This pattern is a ridge-in-the-west-trough-in-the-east. This will lead to several days of persistent weather with very little variation between them. Without any well-defined storm systems within the troughing over New England, the region will be mainly dry (outside of occasional mountain snow showers) and partly cloudy to mostly sunny, with generally more clouds farther north.