Major winter storm threatens eastern USA this week

Editor’s note: There are two winter storms expected to impact the US Midwest and Northeast through this weekend, The Weather Channel reports. This will result in scattered power outages and tree/limb damage from the Mid-Atlantic to far Southern New England, but also raises the potential for blizzard conditions to be realized where heavy snow and strong wind intersect – particularly in Central/Eastern New Jersey to Long Island. The “bulls eye” for snow will be in northern Virginia and areas north where they could see close to 2 feet of snow.

This major snow maker is likely to start out causing a chance for severe thunderstorms in the South when it begins to develop there Thursday. (The bolds are theirs.) Capital Weather Gang puts the chance for eight or more inches of snow at 20 percent.

Areas from near Washington, D.C., to around New York City are within the swath most likely to receive the heaviest snow from the storm. The big concern for the Shore will be coastal flooding due to the full moon coming up as well as strong winds.

The planets have gathered in the twelfth house of rest, the fox is pawing at the scorpion’s tail, and the hunchback has emptied his spittoon: a powerful winter storm is brewing, and it looks increasingly likely that New York City is in its path. The storm isn’t slated to move off of the east coast until Friday night or Saturday morning.

The exact track of this low as it progresses up the coast will be the key as to whether the precipitation along the I-95 corridor remains as all snow, or whether we see a changeover to sleet, freezing rain or rain.

Assuming heavy snow does falls later this week, it would be the first significant snowfall of the winter season in much of the Northeast.

If it continues tracking the way it is, he expects Virginia and the Washington, D.C. area to get hit the hardest.

The snow will be north of there, stretching from Kentucky and southern OH over to Virginia and Maryland. Snow will diminish to flurries across the mid-Atlantic during the morning, but snow and blowing snow is expected into the afternoon from Southern New England, including Boston, to eastern NY and Pennsylvania.

All those things aside, this is looking very much like a classic nor’easter, one that may paralyze parts of the mid-Atlantic for a time later Friday into the weekend.