Boston’s Getting Snow for April Fool’s Day

Forecast from one of the hi-res models indicating best chance of prolonged snow through tonight will be north of the Pike. pic.twitter.com/RMJANhDfB1

— NWS Boston (@NWSBoston) March 31, 2017

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Boston is poised to get some snow for April Fool’s Day this year, on the 20th anniversary of a storm that is among the most memorable cold-weather events Massachusetts has ever seen.

No, we won’t see a repeat of the walloping the region got during the April Fool’s Day Blizzard of 1997, when a weather system dropped several feet of snow late in the season, left hundreds of thousands without power, and has stayed fresh in the minds of meteorologists everywhere ever since.

“For many of us it’s still a pretty vivid memory,” says Bob Thompson, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, adding, “It is, after all, the 20-year anniversary of the storm. But it does not look like it’s going to produce anything close to those amounts.”

He says Boston should expect some rain, sleet, and possibly a bit of snow today and tomorrow, with accumulations of no more than a couple inches. Areas north of Route 128 could see more, he says.

This storm, which by mid-morning on Friday had brought only some light sprinkling, could make the evening commute messy, he says. Winds could gust tonight as high as 30 miles per hour.

So raise a glass of cocoa to the April Fool’s Day Blizzard, if you must, but don’t worry about a repeat.