This morning started out with a little snow in some spots.  Don’t believe me? Well, I can understand that if you live in Providence or points south.  I mean, seriously, we were breaking temperature records a week and a half ago.  Who would think we would get snow?  Well, we did.  It wasn’t  a lot.  But we did.

Here’s a pic I took on the Scituate/Foster line this morning:

This snow, again, was mainly to the north and west of 295.  What is more interesting is that we could see a little bit more late Sunday night and early Monday.  A quick moving weather system will bring some light rain to the area during this time frame.  As the system departs early Monday morning, the atmosphere will be cooling and some light snow is possible.  Much like this morning, it should be limited to grassy surfaces.  It may be spring and it may be just about April, but winter is trying to hang on!

-T.J. Del Santo

Pete Mangione here with this update: It’s hard to believe it’s been 2 years since the historic floods. Here is a link to our website which looks back at that event. Here is the link.

A lot of people were wondering during our warm spell last week if the snow was gone for good.  Well, as proved this morning, the threat of snow stays with us through March and even into early April.  Remember, last year we had snow on April 1, and who can forget the April Fool’s storm in 1997! We won’t see much accumulation today, perhaps a little snow on the grassy surfaces.  Speaking of grassy surfaces, here is a pic sent in by TJ Del Santo this morning!

Welcome to another edition of the ol’ column. Keep sending your takes, tips and trial balloons to tnesi (at) wpri (dot) com and I may include them. Onward!

1. With Congressman David Cicilline facing an uphill battle to win reelection this fall, maybe he should follow the playbook of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In 2005, Blair won a third term by following a plan his advisers dubbed “the masochism strategy.” Basically, Blair went all over the United Kingdom and allowed voters upset about Iraq to vent their anger at him directly, publicly, and constantly. “The calculation,” Time explained, “is that people might start listening to Blair again if he sits there and responds to whatever they dish out.” Perhaps something similar could work for Cicilline. He could go all over the 1st Congressional District and let people, well, holler at him a bit – then use those opportunities to make the case, “Yes, you don’t like me much and, yes, maybe you feel I misspoke about the city’s finances in 2010, but you really don’t like the other party, and I promise I’m going to vote the way you want in Washington.” It might work.

2. Here’s a bit of irony. Senate Majority Leader Dominick Ruggerio’s companion when he was arrested for drunk driving on Wednesday, state Sen. Frank Ciccone, is a former member of the legislature’s Permanent Joint Committee on Highway Safety. The 11-member committee is supposed to put together “a coordinated state highway safety program to reduce traffic accidents,” but apparently it isn’t as permanent as its name suggests – a legislative spokesman tells me the committee has been inactive for a few years now. I guess highway safety just isn’t a big priority for lawmakers these days.

(more…)

Good Evening..

If you dont like snow, especially this time of year, you’re in luck as we are not expecting alot.

Its 51 degrees right now as I write this..so how can it snow if its mild.  When forecasting precipitation type, we  look at the the temps not just near the ground, but several thousand feet up. The air high above is cold enough to support some snow for a time. The temps near the ground will eventually cool off later Tonight.  This all points to a period of some wet snow before a change over to plain rain later Saturday Morning.

The snow will not stick to all surfaces overnight…pavement and road temps should be mild enough for most snow to melt on contact. However colder surfaces like car tops, grassy areas and patio decks, the snow will accumulate, but only small slushy amounts.

Tony Petrarca

By Ted Nesi

BARRINGTON, R.I. (WPRI) – State Sen. Frank Ciccone III allegedly threatened a Barrington police officer early Wednesday morning as he prepared to arrest Senate Majority Leader Dominick Ruggerio for drunk driving, according to a police report released Friday afternoon.

“You think you got pension problems now?” Ciccone, 64, reportedly told Police Officer Michael Gregorzek as his fellow officer Walter Larson administered sobriety tests to Ruggerio, 63, according to the police report. ”Wait ’til this [expletive] is all done. This guy voted against you the last time, it ain’t gonna get any better now.”

Ciccone, D-Providence, was one of two senators who voted against the landmark pension overhaul Rhode Island enacted in November. Ruggerio, D-North Providence, was a co-sponsor of the legislation, which included changes to police and fire retirees’ benefits for those enrolled in the state-run system. Both men work for the powerful Laborers International Union of North America.

In a statement, Ciccone declined to get into the details of the report. ”While the Barrington Police were at all times courteous and professional, I do not agree with the accuracy of some of the details in the report,” he said. “However, I certainly regret anything I may have said Tuesday evening that was inappropriate.”

Read the rest of this story »

(photo: General Assembly)

Josh Fenton has opened the kimono at GoLocalProv and offered a peek at the startup news site’s strategy.

In two separate articles on NetNewsCheck, Fenton declined to disclose the numbers everyone wants to know – revenue and profit – but said GoLo “went functionally cash flow positive in Providence after about eight months” and is benefitting as advertisers shift their spending from print to digital.

According to Fenton, GoLo gets an average of 115,000 unique visitors a month; its dominant demographic is women between the ages of 30 and 50; it has 10 full-time employees; nearly half of its revenue comes from display advertising; and 20% of its unique visitors arrive via social media.

“You have to get to a point where you’re competing for the news cycle,” Fenton told NetNewsCheck. “That has always been our strategy – to invest in the level of reporters and research that allows you to break the biggest stories in the marketplace.”

Fenton also pointed with pride to the fact that GoLo doesn’t subscribe to a wire service such as The Associated Press. “There’s no third party content on our site,” he said.

… at least when it comes to unemployment rates:

Many of the states hit hardest by the housing bust are also showing signs of health. Florida’s unemployment rate has fallen to 9.4 percent from 10.8 percent a year earlier. California’s rate is still painfully high at 10.9 percent. But it has dropped from 12 percent a year ago, a sign of progress.

Nevada has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, at 12.3 percent. The state lost 12,800 jobs last month, the most of all states. That was also the biggest percentage job loss of any state.

Rhode Island’s unemployment was the second highest, at 11 percent, up slightly from the previous month. Its rate hasn’t improved much, declining only 0.3 percentage points in the past year.

Update: As if that wasn’t enough, Calculated Risk adds this grim statistic:

Only three states still have double-digit unemployment rates: Nevada, Rhode Island, and California. This is the fewest since January 2009. In early 2010, 18 states and D.C. had double digit unemployment rates.

As you can see from the CR chart at right, Rhode Island has had relatively little decrease from its peak unemployment rate compared with other states. Also, Michigan’s recovery looks pretty extraordinary.

The Rhode Island political establishment continues to close ranks around Congressman David Cicilline.

Gov. Lincoln Chafee said Friday he’s endorsing the freshman Democrat for reelection. On Thursday evening, Chafee attended a Cicilline fundraiser in Providence whose host committee included Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and Treasurer Gina Raimondo.

“A lot of the criticism leveled against Congressman Cicilline’s time as mayor I think is unfounded, because he suffered $30 million in [state aid] cuts, and that’s what we’re talking about,” Chafee, an independent who left the Republican Party in 2007, said during a taping of WPRI 12′s “Newsmakers” this morning.

“No mayor can take $30 million in cuts just like that. No organization – ‘Newsmakers’ or Channel 12 couldn’t take these kind of cuts without ramifications,” he said. “So I think some of the criticism has been unfair.”

However, the governor said Cicilline may have erred in the way he described Providence’s financial situation to voters while campaigning for Congress in 2010.

(more…)

Central Falls receiver Robert Flanders is making waves in Rhode Island, all the way from Philadelphia.

Flanders flatly told a Bloomberg reporter there this week he sees no way Providence can avoid bankruptcy, a comment that appeared to leave Mayor Angel Taveras aghast – even though Flanders is advising him.

“I was surprised and I disagree,” Taveras told WPRI.com on Thursday when asked about Flanders’ remarks. “Providence is not Central Falls. I will do everything in my power to avoid that.”

“Providence,” the mayor repeated, “is not Central Falls.”

Maybe not, but Flanders is now a true believer in the power of letting cash-strapped municipalities file for bankruptcy under Chapter 9 of the federal code. The Huffington Post’s Matt Sledge reports on what Flanders told attendees at a Bond Buyer conference in Pennsylvania’s capital:

From the comments of Flanders and others at the municipal bonds conference, it seems like the industry is in agreement about one thing going forward: someone is going to have to suffer, and it shouldn’t be bondholders. And the draconian measures needed to stave off financial disaster will often require an unelected official – be it a receiver in Rhode Island or an emergency manager in Michigan – to assume near-dictatorial powers.

Bankruptcy, Flanders said, should no longer be a dirty word. Sometimes it’s the only way to extract concessions from public employees unions and retirees, who he said weren’t very happy when he first proposed slashing pensions by 50 percent. …

It was only bankruptcy’s provisions that let Flanders, as city receiver, actually go through with those cuts, he noted. “We could blow up any contract we liked.”

Public employees’ concerns should be balanced, he argued, against the investors whose money allows cities to operate.

Read the rest here. All this comes as Taveras continues to struggle in Providence, Woonsocket prepares to slap a 13% midyear tax hike on its residents, and Governor Chafee is beating the drum for his far-reaching package of municipal-relief legislation. Chafee will discuss his proposal on “Newsmakers” this weekend.

HuffPo isn’t the only left-leaning publication covering Providence’s financial troubles, either. The Nation’s Erin Schikowski, who attended Taveras’s retiree town hall earlier this month, filed a story giving an overview of the situation on TheNation.com this week, too.

(photo: AP)

After two dreary days it’s refreshing to see the sun shining on this Friday morning, with a cool and crisp finish to the work week expected.  In fact, today will be one of the more pleasant days of the week.

City Cam Friday Morning

A storm system that’s making it way into the Ohio Valley today will head off of the mid-Atlantic coastline tomorrow and track south  our area.  It’s still looking like it will come close enough to us to give our area a bout of precipitation, especially Saturday morning.  Our computer models this morning are still highlighting the threat of some wet snow mixing with the rain.  Some are even showing the potential for some very small accumulations (slushy coating to 1″) through Saturday morning.  Here’s what I’m thinking for Saturday:

What to Expect Saturday

The wintry mix should transition to a chilly light rain and drizzle by mid-day before ending late in the afternoon.  Skies will clear overnight and we’ll begin Sunday with bright, cool sunshine.  The next weather disturbance will move through later Sunday evening and night bringing scattered rain showers.  At this point it looks like Sunday “day” will be dry.

Weekend Futurecast

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I am holding out hope that the final outcome of the hard-fought Republican presidential primary will be decided when Rhode Island votes on April 24. It would be political-reporter nirvana. Maybe Gingrich would do “Newsmakers” and we could call it “Newtmakers.”

… Alas, with less than a month left before the primary it looks as if Rhode Island may not play the crucial role this year I’d hoped it would. But if that’s so, I wouldn’t be the first person to overestimate Rhode Island’s importance in the GOP primary process. Jay Leno sent Conan O’Brien here for the same reason back in 1996:

Thanks to reader Nate Lavigne for sending in this long-lost classic.

Good Morning…Yes It is Now 12:06am

An Update to my previous post….looking at new data. It is possible for some slushy accumulations on colder surfaces like car tops, patio decks and grassy areas by dawn Saturday. Still think there will be mostly melting on paved surfaces.  Stay tuned for updates thru out the day Friday. The precipitation does not arrive until 2AM Saturday Morning….Friday Evening looks dry.

Tony Petrarca

Good Evening..

What was looking like a dry weekend earlier this week has become a bit more complicated. We started to hint at this last night. ( see previous blogs).  A rain wet snow mix will arrives very late Friday Night..after 2AM. Any outdoor plans for Friday night thru midnight looks fine. The mixed precipitation will spill over into early Saturday morning.  As Michelle mentioned in her last post, it is difficult this time of year for snow to accumulate. The air has to be either exceptional cold and /or the snow has to come down very hard. Not expecting either with this next system, so at this point expecting only wet pavement by Saturday morning.

Also another weak weather system will pass by later Sunday afternoon with a few rain showers.

Tony Petrarca

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Providence Mayor Angel Taveras says Providence’s tax-exempt hospitals may not wind up making a cash contribution to the city budget but instead take over providing some services to residents that the city currently offers.

“We’re giving the hospitals ideas of ways they could help but still address their core missions,” Taveras told reporters after testifying before the House Finance Committee in favor of a bill that would allow cities to charge tax-exempt institutions 25% of the amount they would owe if their property was taxable.

State Rep. John Carnevale, the lead sponsor of the 25% bill, led the charge against the tax-exempts, saying it’s long past time the organizations contribute more money to the city budget to offset the cost of services from which they benefit, such as public safety.

“Like the Wizard of Oz, they hide behind that 501(c)3 [tax exemption],” Carnevale said during his extended, colorful testimony. “They’ve taken lessons from David Copperfield and put together the grandest illusion of all.” He argued the institutions are wealthier and less charitable than they claim.

Read the rest of this story »

Here’s an interesting chart city officials gave out on Thursday afternoon at a hearing on a bill to force tax-exempt institutions to pay 25% of the tax bill they’d owe if their property was taxable. It shows the latest assessments of property owned by the seven largest, led by Brown University and Lifespan hospital group:

• Related: Moody’s: Cities must balance tax-exempts’ cash, contributions (Feb. 15)

Senate Majority Leader Dominick Ruggerio, who was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of drunk driving and for refusing to take a Breathalyzer test, helped sharpen the penalties he could face.

“Last evening the vehicle I was driving in Barrington was pulled over by the Barrington Police,” Ruggerio, D-North Providence, said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. “I declined a Breathalyzer test.”

On March 1, 2006, Ruggerio was one of 36 senators who voted for a bill that increased the fines and lengths of license suspensions for those who refuse to take a breath test. Governor Carcieri signed the bill, which kept the refusal as a civil offense rather than a criminal one, into law later that year.

“The Senate has long believed that closing the refusal loophole is the most important step we can take to reduce drunken driving in our state,” then-Senate President Joseph Montalbano said. “This is common-sense legislation that exists in many other states, and I’m very proud to see it finally become law in Rhode Island.”

At the time, national rankings gave Rhode Island poor marks for stopping drunk driving, with 85% of suspected drunk drivers refusing to take a breath test, compared with 25% nationally, and no state recording more traffic fatalities linked to alcohol consumption, according to the General Assembly.

Rhode Island has two of the four “optimal laws” against impaired driving, putting it in the middle among all states, according to Advocacy for Highway & Auto Safety. Rhode Island does not require convicted drunk drivers to take breath tests before starting their cars or mandate tests for drivers involved in fatal clashes.

Ruggerio is scheduled to be arraigned in District Court next week. ”I accept full responsibility for my actions last evening,” the majority leader said in his statement on Wednesday.

Tim White contributed to this report.

I think I can speak for both myself and Senator Reed when I say this is fantastic news:

Education Commissioner Deborah Gist may be a little distracted come the middle of April.

That’s because the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education has scheduled Gist’s final defense of her doctoral thesis for April 20 at 1 p.m. in Philadelphia. The commissioner has been working on her doctorate throughout her time in Rhode Island, where she arrived in July 2009.

Gist, a student in the Mid-Career Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership, has titled her dissertation “An Ocean State Voyage: A Leadership Case Study of Creating an Evaluation System With, and For, Teachers.”

The new evaluation system, which is one of the main ways Rhode Island is using its $75 million federal Race to the Top grant, hasn’t made Gist popular with many public-school teachers in Rhode Island. The National Education Association Rhode Island’s Delegate Assembly last week asked her to delay the system’s implementation.

Before coming to Rhode Island, Gist was the state superintendent of education in Washington, D.C. She already holds a bachelor’s degree in early-childhood education from the University of Oklahoma and two master’s degrees, one in elementary education from the University of South Florida and another in public administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

• Related: Watch ‘Newsmakers’ with Deborah Gist on education (Feb. 12)

An earlier headline on this post said Commissioner Gist is pursuing her Ph.D.; the degree is an Ed.D.

Yup… we are talking about it… the threat of a rain/snow mix to start the weekend.  It’s not unheard of to get snow in late March or even early April… in fact, one of the more memorable snowstorms in southern New England is the April Fools Day Blizzard of 1997 that brought about 2ft of snow.

Even last April 1st we saw a rain/snow mix with some slushy accumulations in northern RI.

And as we close out a month that has seen some record warm days… we have a shot at getting some wet snow and rain mixed in. Here’s how the surface map should look by Saturday morning.. with an area of low pressure (a storm center) moving from southern NJ over the waters to our south.

Wintry Mix Friday Night & Saturday

It looks to be close enough to bring a period of light rain and snow.  Accumulations aren’t likely as temperatures will only be marginally cold enough to support some wet flakes, and the pavement is so warm that the flakes should melt as they hit the ground.  Still it will be a raw, damp start to the final weekend of March.

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed comes across as a pretty straight-laced guy, but he’s got a humorous side – he’s an avowed fan of Will Ferrell, for example. He’s also got a 5-year-old daughter, who successfully suggested her dad utilize Hannah Montana’s theme song as his entrance music when Reed appeared Wednesday on CNN:

More substantively, Reed disputed the idea that this week’s Supreme Court arguments were a train wreck for defenders of the president’s health care law. “I’m confident they’ll uphold it,” he said, according to a transcript.

Reed suggested that a decision to strike down the law could jeopardize the constitutionality of Medicare, because it would allow opponents of the program to argue it is “an imposition of a tax for health care I don’t want or don’t need. That will pick up with greater fervor if this [law] is struck down.”

Good evening…

Radar image as of 630pm showing a few showers near Albany New York. A couple of these will pass by our area between 8 and 11pm Tonight…but brief…..Tony PetrarcaYou can bookmark our Live Radar Link…click here

The big headline out of Vice President Biden’s visit to Rhode Island last month was the revelation that the Obama administration asked U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse whether he’d be interested in being nominated for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, Whitehouse’s campaign related the story again in an email blast signed by his wife, Sandra, seeking donations ahead of the March 31 quarterly fundraising deadline. Here’s what she wrote:

A few weeks ago, Vice President Biden shared a little bit of a family secret with all of Rhode Island…

That’s when he told a crowd of Sheldon’s supporters that back in 2010, he’d approached Sheldon about a very different job — Supreme Court Justice.

And here’s what Sheldon told him right off the bat, “Sorry Joe, but my commitment to the people of Rhode Island comes first.”

Sheldon shared the news with me… and then got back to work on the issues that matter to you, to me, and to the people of Rhode Island. That clear commitment to Rhode Island and to our country is what makes him a senator we can all be proud of.

As it happens, the Supreme Court chamber isn’t a completely unfamiliar place to Whitehouse; as attorney general, he argued the property-rights case Palazzolo v. Rhode Island before the justices in 2001.

The incumbent senator had a 22-point lead over his Republican challenger Barry Hinckley in our WPRI poll last month, but Hinckley is doing his best to stay relevant, rapping Whitehouse most recently for his vote against the House’s JOBS Act and his absence at a rally in Washington held by New England fishermen. Not all incumbent senators are safe this year, either, though that appears to be a problem for Republicans.

With just under a month to go before Rhode Island’s April 24 Republican presidential primary, the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future has begun buying time to air television commercials in the state, Politico reports.

The Super PAC spent $13,615 to put pro-Romney ads on the local feed of cable network Fox News in Rhode Island, a GOP source tells Politico.

Separately, The Wall Street Journal interviewed Rhode Island Republican Party Chairman Mark Zaccaria, whose 2nd Congressional District bid received a $2,500 from Romney in 2010, about his support for the former Massachusetts governor. Zaccaria is a “superdelegate” to the party’s Tampa convention.

Romney “wrote a nice check for my campaign,” Zaccaria told the WSJ’s Washington Wire blog. “You could say, what a transparent move – he’s running for president. I would say, what a well-organized political move for a guy who’s running for president.”

While Romney is expected to win the Rhode Island primary in a walk, he isn’t the only Republican candidate with a presence here.

A campaign billboard supporting Ron Paul is now up on I-95 North that shows the Texas congressman’s face alongside crossed-out photos of President Obama and former President George W. Bush. It suggests voters should support Paul to elect a candidate who will really shake things up, unlike Obama and Bush.

• Related: RI’s GOP primary day could be a decisive one for Mitt Romney ( March 8 )

This post has been updated.

(screenshot via Red Dog Report)

The two leaders of the Rhode Island Senate both issued statements within the last 90 minutes addressing the majority leader’s DUI charge. Ruggerio said he accepts responsibility for what he did but it won’t impact his work; Paiva Weed said she’s concerned about what happened but confident in his continued leadership.

Read our updated story for more.

If you look hard enough, almost every story has some sort of Rhode Island connection. Here’s another example.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues are dominating the news this week as they hear arguments over the constitutionality of President Obama’s health-care law.

It turns out the chief justice’s wife of 15 years, Jane Sullivan Roberts, earned one of her two advanced degrees here in Providence: a master’s in applied mathematics she received from Brown University in 1981.

While her husband has the more high-profile job, Mrs. Roberts boasts an impressive resumé of her own. The Holy Cross graduate and native of the Bronx is a managing partner with the Washington office of law firm Major, Lindsey & Africa.

Update: A reader reports Major, Lindsey & Africa is a legal recruiting firm, not a law firm.

By Tim White

EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – My colleague Ted Nesi gave me a stern and characteristically snarky warning recently when I used the phrase “drop a dime” in a conversation.

“You show your age when you say stuff like that,” Ted said.

It surprised me that he thought people may not know what that refers to. More importantly, it saddened me the phrase “show your age” can now apply to me.

For those unfamiliar with the slang, “dropping a dime” is the act of tipping someone off to a hot scoop, which generates a large number of the investigations we do in the Target 12 unit. But the process can be frustrating for both the tipster and the reporter. So here are a few tips that might help see your “dime” go prime time.

Read the rest of this story »

By Tim White and Ted Nesi

BARRINGTON, R.I. (WPRI) – Senate Majority Leader Dominick Ruggerio, one of the most powerful politicians in Rhode Island, was arrested just after midnight on Wednesday for driving while under the influence of alcohol, WPRI.com has learned.

Read the rest of this story »

We’re waking up to temperatures that are about 10-15° warmer than yesterday, and without the biting winds there’s a noticeably change in the air.  As winds turn to the south-southwest today, milder air will flow in with highs back into the mid 50s for most of us.  Here’s a map that shows the temperature change from 24hrs ago:

Temperature Change

We won’t have as dramatic of a warm-up as the folks in Pittsburgh and Buffalo are seeing, but it will be a bit more comfortable to be outside.  There is a trade-off, though.  A weak low pressure center will slowly make it’s way across New England today and tomorrow… turning our skies mostly cloudy and bringing a few scattered rain showers at times.  You’ll want to throw an umbrella in the car, but you probably won’t need it most of the day.  Even when a shower develops, it will likely be widely scattered and fairly light.  We could use the rain as the rainfall deficit for the month is almost 3.5″ at TF Green!

We’ll have another shot at some rain to start the weekend.  Though, at this point, the details are very, very sketchy.  Our computer models are flip-flopping on the location of a storm system tracking from the Midwest and moving off of the East Coast.  About half of them this morning have the storm close enough to us to bring some rain, while the other half are far enough away that rain stays south of our area.  Hopefully, the computer models will come into better agreement later today and/or tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - The number of adult Rhode Islanders smoking pot rose sharply after the state legalized medical marijuana in January 2006, but there was no uptick in use of the drug among minors, researchers have discovered.

Marijuana use among 18- to 25-year-old Rhode Island residents increased by 3.5 percentage points following legalization at the same time it was decreasing in neighboring states where policies did not change, according to a study by Mark Anderson of Montana State University, Daniel Rees of the University of Colorado Denver and Benjamin Hansen of the University of Oregon.

“There was a substantial increase in adult marijuana use after Rhode Island’s [medical marijuana law] came into effect,” the researchers reported after analyzing data from the National Survey on Drug Use. “There is no evidence that marijuana use among minors increased after legalization in Rhode Island.”

The study also found evidence that the 13 states with medical marijuana laws experienced a nearly 9% decrease in traffic fatalities in the years after legalization, which they suggested was evidence of adults substituting pot for alcohol once it was more widely available.

(more…)

Latest computer guidance hinting that a Midwest Storm may draw closer (Further North) Late Friday Night into Saturday. Temps during the pre-dawn hours of Saturday may be cold enough for wet snow to mix in..its not “etched in stone”, yet but worth watching..stay tuned……Tony Petrarca