Two winter storms will bring snow, freezing rain and arctic cold in a one-two punch to parts of the United States this week.
From coast to coast, more than 96 million people were covered Monday by winter watches, warnings and advisories. From Missouri to West Virginia, more than 26 million people were under winter weather advisories, which warn of light snow, travel hazards and slick roadways.
Alerts also focused on the central Plains, the Midwest, the Ohio Valley and the mid-Atlantic. They include winter storm warnings, winter storm watches and extreme cold and freeze warnings.
A third storm, this one a low pressure system spinning in the cold Pacific, was forecast to propel subtropical precipitation from Hawaii into California, with flooding, mud flows and debris flows possible for fire-scarred communities, earth scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said.
The first storm will take shape across the central Plains, with rain and light icing across Oklahoma and Arkansas. Come Tuesday, the storm will produce moderate snow from Kentucky to Maryland.
The mid-Atlantic will get the biggest snow totals, with 3 to 6 inches possible. Locally higher amounts of up to 8 inches can’t be ruled out. Washington, D.C., and Baltimore are forecast to pick up 4 to 6 inches of snow with a glaze of ice, and Philadelphia could get 2 to 3 inches.
New York City’s Emergency Management Department said in a weather alert Monday that 1 to 2 inches of snow is expected Tuesday and Wednesday, with 4 inches in some parts of the city possible.
“We also urge everyone to check on their neighbors, especially those who may need extra support in the days ahead,” NEmergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol said in a statement.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser announced in a statement that the city’s snow team, which uses 136 snowplows and 10 dump trucks, will charge into action at midnight to pretreat roadways with snow-dissolving salt.
The southern side of the storm system will bring the possibility of heavy rain Tuesday and Wednesday across the South, where 1 to 3 inches of rain, with locally higher amounts, is possible.
The National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center has issued a slight risk of excessive rainfall over parts of the southern Plains and the lower Mississippi Valley from Tuesday into Wednesday morning because of possible localized flooding. Cities to watch for possible urban flooding include Shreveport, Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; Atlanta; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Asheville, North Carolina.
Arctic cold air will also bring temperatures 25 to 40 degrees below average across the northern Rockies and the northern High Plains.
The weather service office in Boulder, Colorado, said that “the main chunk of arctic air” arrives Wednesday and that it will mean temperature highs in the teens. Meanwhile, the weather service office in Bismarck, North Dakota, said life-threatening wind chills as low as minus 55 degrees Fahrenheit are forecast Monday night into Tuesday morning.
The second storm will start with light snow Tuesday night across Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas. By Wednesday, it will produce moderate to heavy snow from Kansas to Michigan, with accumulating snow possible for the major metro areas of Kansas City, Missouri; Des Moines, Iowa; Chicago; Milwaukee; and Detroit.
“These storms are serious, and they could be dangerous,” Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas said at a news conference Monday. “So we ask you, particularly on Wednesday, when it looks like we’ll have the heaviest snows, if you don’t need to go out onto the streets … make sure you don’t need to.”
Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe on Monday signed an executive order his office said would help the state prepare for the weather. It includes relaxed regulations for shipping residential heating fuels, as well as authorization to call up the Missouri National Guard if necessary, according to a statement.
In Chicago, the heaviest snow is forecast to fall during the Wednesday evening commute. While it’s too soon to predict how much, “comparing the four models, we get anywhere between 4 and 8 inches of snow,” NBC Chicago meteorologist Alicia Roman said.
On Thursday, the storm will exit into Canada, bringing snow to northern New England and rain to the Interstate 95 corridor from Boston to Raleigh, North Carolina.
Some strong to severe storms will also be possible along the Florida Panhandle, southern Alabama, southern Georgia and coastal South Carolina on Thursday.
A wintry mix of sleet and freezing rain could lead to ice accumulation of one-tenth of an inch Monday evening into Wednesday in central/eastern Oklahoma into the Ozarks, according to the weather service’s morning advisory.
The agency warned that travel will become extremely hazardous, especially during the Tuesday evening commute, because of freezing rain as a winter storm spreads across the central Appalachians and the mid-Atlantic states Tuesday through Wednesday.
The midweek storm in California is likely to arrive Wednesday into Thursday in the San Francisco region and give its most rain Thursday morning as it pushes inland and reaches Southern California on Thursday afternoon into the night, federal forecasters said. It could be accompanied by wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph in mountain areas, they said.
“Let me summarize the week with a personal note,” National Weather Service meteorologist Dylan Flynn wrote in the San Francisco region’s forecast discussion Monday. “I coach the local high school track team, and we are planning to run through any rain Wednesday and Friday, but will certainly cancel practice on Thursday.”
Even as Los Angeles’ mayor announced Monday that a second phase of debris removal was expected to begin this week for the Pacific Palisades community devastated by the largest of last month’s deadly fires, the city’s emergency management department warned in a statement that burn scar areas are “vulnerable to dangerous flooding and even mudslides.”
The Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at Scripps designates the atmospheric river of precipitation as a moderate, AR-2 storm on a weak-to-strongest 1-5 scale, with flash flooding possible. It is likely to reach as far south as San Diego, where, the weather service office said, rain was likely arrive Thursday and Friday in the wake of a smaller, “inside slider” rainstorm Wednesday.
“This will be definitely our wettest storm period in the past year,” the San Diego office said in its Monday forecast discussion.
Because it was drawing relatively warm, subtropical precipitation, the Pacific storm was not expected to be a big snow producer, with an 8,000-foot snow floor for Southern California mountains Thursday, the weather service said. The highest reaches of the Sierra Nevada range to the north could get 2 to 4 feet, however, federal forecasters in Reno, Nevada, said.
The waves of weather come as much of the country is digging out from a big winter storm that swept through the Midwest and the Northeast over the weekend.
The weekend’s weather blanketed much of the Northeast in white. New York City’s Central Park was covered in a dusting of fresh powder, as was Boston’s skyline; Boston Logan International Airport logged 5.5 inches of snow in 24 hours by Sunday evening.
The weather also led to travel woes — including crashes on icy roads in multiple states, as well as more than 3,000 domestic flight delays Sunday, according to the travel tracker FlightAware.com.
