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April Storm Could Bring Snow, High Winds and Power Outages

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We were hoping it was just an April fool or that it would go away if we ignored it. But it looks like we really are getting snow, sleet and rain over the next few days. 
 
The National Weather Service in Albany, N.Y., has issued a winter storm watch beginning Wednesday morning through Thursday night. 
 
North Berkshire and Southern Vermont could see up to 7 inches of snow and sleet and high winds gusting up to 60 mph. 
 
The NWS has "low to moderate" confidence in the snow accumulations but says travel could be difficult and strong winds and the heavy wet snow could mean downed tree branches and power lines. 
 
Accuweather says the nor'easter will bring 3 to 6 inches of snow for North Berkshire and 1 to 3 for Western Mass, but upwards of 2 feet for points north.
 
AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Joe Lundberg said this storm will have a harsher impact than the one in mid-March in terms of tree and power line damage because of the wet and heavy snow. 
 
The storm system will enter the region today with rain and precipitation isn't expected to end until Friday. The snow is expected to start overnight on Wednesday and through Thursday as the temperatures drop. Some predictions have the worst of the weather to our north but even so, expect at least rain and sleet and a cold spell into the weekend. 
 
Greylock Snow Day is predicting 2 to 6 inches of snow and a 45 percent chance of a snow day on Thursday. 

Tags: snow & ice,   

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North Adams School Project Awards $51M Bid

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Building Committee has awarded the Greylock School project to Fontaine Bros. Inc. of Springfield. 
 
Mayor Jennifer Macksey said she could "breathe a little better" with a bid contract that comes in nearly $2 million under budget.
 
The committee approved a bid of $50,498,544 on Thursday night that includes two alternates — the rebuild of the Appalachian Trail kiosk and the relocation and reconstruction of the baseball field. 
 
"I will say, all in all, for us to have overall the number of bidders that we had interested in our project, and especially to receive the GC bids that we did, the team Colliers and TSKP certainly did a good job attracting people to us," she said. "But this project ... really shows the testament of the good work that Colliers and TSKP and all of you have been doing throughout this process."
 
Fontaine had the low bid between Brait Builders of Marshfield and J&J Contractors Inc. of North Billerica.
 
The project had been bid out at $52,250,000 with three alternates: moving the ballfield, the kiosk and vertical geothermal wells. 
 
Committee members asked Timothy Alix of Collier's International, the owner's project manager, about his impressions of the bidders. He was most familiar with Fontaine, having worked with the company on a half-dozen school projects and noted it was the contractor on the Mountain View Elementary School in Easthampton that the Massachusetts School Building Authority has held up as an example school. He also had some of his colleagues call on projects that he had not personally worked on. 
 
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