Major Winter Storm Expected to Bring Heavy Snow

The snow is expected to start Friday night and continue into Sunday morning, according to the advisory issued late this afternoon.

“The combination of heavy snowfall and strong winds will produce whiteout conditions and extremely risky travel”, the National Weather Service said Friday morning as the agency upgraded the blizzard watches to blizzard warnings for most of the Garden State.

Gov. Chris Christie Won’t Come Back To N.J. Ahead Of Major Storm: Christie said he isn’t planning to come back to New Jersey this weekend because he’ll be campaigning for president. Places like Philadelphia and especially west and south of the city through Baltimore and Washington D.C. will likely see higher totals of a foot or more of snow.

Blizzard watches (in green) in New Jersey.

This image provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center shows an early computer model forecasting the chances of a windy, strong sleet-snow storm hitting the East Coast this weekend, January 22-23, 2016. Forecasters, however, expect the storm to be a risky one and say as much as a foot and a half of snow could fall in some parts of central and southern New Jersey.

Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Ocean counties will be impacted along with portions of Burlington County. Most of the viewing area won’t see any snow until after midnight. Lower amounts are expected closer to the coast because snow there could change to or mix with rain.

Snow totals are expected to be 4 to 8 inches, and winds will be up to 55 miles per hour on the coast and 15 to 25 miles per hour inland.

It’s not just the snow that has officials concerned.

While it would only take a 1.5-foot storm surge at the time of Saturday morning’s high tide to see flooding, they say the storm very well could cause a 2-to-5-foot surge and significant waves. Current storm surge projections for Saturday are three to four feet, and that comes on top of a high tide that will already be running about a foot above normal due to the full moon. Defenses elsewhere were weakened during a nor’easter in October, which caused severe beach erosion.