If the storm grows to its full size, millions of people in the United States could receive the most snow of the winter.
Forecasters at AccuWeather say that a snowstorm next week could cause problems all the way from the southern Plains to the Interstate 95 region in the Northeast. Millions of people in the United States could get the most snow of the winter if the storm grows to its full size.
“There will be two important parts to the coming snowstorm,” said AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathon Porter. “Those being a fresh injection of Arctic air and the fact that it will be the caboose in the long train of February storms as the last storm in a series is often the strongest.”
The southeast of the country is still warm, but next week a cold front will come in from northern Canada and hit the Plains, Midwest, and Northeast. In some places, the cold air could be as cold as some of the coldest weather this winter so far.
Lake-effect snow will start to fall early next week because of the Arctic air that is moving in.
A storm at the level of the jet stream in the sky over the Midwest will be a big part of how the storm forms. It will snow a lot in the East if this storm joins with another storm that is moving from the Northwest to the Southern Plains early next week. Meteorologists call this pattern “phasing,” and it leads to some of the worst storms in the Northeast, with all the wind and rain that comes with a nor’easter.
Light to moderate snow is still expected to cover a stripe from the southern Plains to part of the Atlantic coast, even if the two storms stay apart. When and how much snow falls will depend on where the second storm starts up again after going over the Rockies.
“There appear to be two main areas where there is the potential for 6 or more inches of snow to fall,” he said. “One area is in portions of Kansas and Oklahoma due to the dry and powdery nature of the snow and the other extends from the central Appalachians to coastal areas of the mid-Atlantic and New England, where there will be plenty of Gulf and Atlantic moisture available.”
If the storm is weaker than expected, it will move more to the south. This could bring snow or a wintry mix, followed by a freeze-up, to places as far south as parts of the I-20 region in the Southern states.
In some parts of Oklahoma and Kansas in early to middle January, the storm could be as bad as the previous storms that brought mild to heavy snow.
As the storm moves away from the East Coast of the United States, it could bring strong winds and very cold weather from the Great Lakes to the Northeast later next week. If this happened, it would stop the trend of daytime temperatures going down which was mostly caused by the strong February light in the Central and Southeast states.
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