Published February 5, 2025 at 11:24AM
A Winter Weather Advisory is in effect from 9pm this evening (Wednesday) until 10am Thursday. According to the National Weather Service (NWS), “total sleet accumulations up to one inch and ice accumulations up to one tenth of an inch are expected.”
Per the NWS, “a mix of light freezing rain, sleet, and snow begins this evening. Precipitation mainly becomes a steady freezing rain tonight. Temperatures will warm Thursday morning transitioning freezing rain over to rain.”
Conditions are very likely to be slick overnight, but temperatures are expected to rise above freezing as sunrise approaches. The changeover to rain is likely to occur before sunrise, so it’s a matter of how long it takes to wash away any possible ice.
The latest map from the NWS (seen below) shows decreased totals for parts of Montgomery, Howard, and Loudoun counties, with the upper parts of all three of those counties having the most potential for icing. Areas like Germantown, Clarksburg, and Damascus are in the map’s range of one tenth of an inch to a quarter inch of ice. All of Frederick County is in that range.
Pencil Prediction: 2 Pencils. I was leaning towards three pencils when more ice was expected for all of Montgomery County, and there’s still a shot at that, but right now it looks like a delay is possible so that the school system can see the conditions before deciding how to move forward. School systems to the north, like Frederick and Carroll County have a better shot at closing if the changeover to rain happens later in the morning.
