Another weekend, another winter storm? As much of the Eastern United States continues to dig out from last weekend’s widespread snow and ice, another storm could bring significant snow to much of the East Coast on Saturday and Sunday.
But much about this next storm’s forecast remained in flux early Thursday, according to meteorologists at the National Weather Service. Here’s a look at what they’ve said so far.
Look for snow in the Carolinas.
The closer a storm’s arrival date, the more certain meteorologists can be, and Thursday will be a key moment in understanding what could happen this weekend. So, more details soon.
What’s pretty certain is that the storm should form on Saturday off the Carolina coast and then move into the Mid-Atlantic and New England on Sunday. What’s not? Its path. Depending on how the storm moves, especially as it heads north, two very different scenarios could unfold: In the first case, a shift to the east, the storm (and most of its snow) would largely stay out to sea. But if it moves a little farther west, major East Coast cities could see the snow pile up.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, most weather models had the storm forming in what Frank Pereira, a meteorologist at the Weather Prediction Center, called a “prime spot” offshore, a scenario that could bring heavy snow to parts of eastern South Carolina, North Carolina and southeastern Virginia. In this case, a moderate chance of snowfall would be expected across a larger stretch of the coast from northern Georgia to New England.
It still will be very cold.
Cold air plunging south from the Arctic has made much of the Eastern United States feel frigid since last week, and that’s expected to continue — and get worse — into next week in many places, even if they are spared additional snowfall.
The Weather Service said that spots in the Ohio Valley and the Mid-Atlantic could set records for low temperatures by Friday, conditions that will spread into the Southeast on Saturday; places as far south as Tampa, Fla., could record some of their coldest temperatures in 15 years.
It’s not just how cold it will get that concerns meteorologists and emergency officials, but how long it will stay that way. The Weather Service in New York said the city could go more than nine straight days without temperatures rising above freezing. At least 10 people died in New York during and after last weekend’s storm, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that most had showed signs of exposure to the cold.
Deep into the South, as temperatures continued to plummet this week, emergency workers were racing to restore power that had been knocked out last weekend. By late Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses, mainly in Tennessee and Mississippi, were still without power.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Sarah Hoffman, who works at the Food Bank of Northeast Louisiana, told The New York Times this week. “It’s been pretty devastating for our community.”
It might be a “bomb cyclone.”
Forecasters have been discussing the possibility that the storm could become a bomb cyclone, which basically means it will intensify very quickly.
“This is the kind of pattern that would allow for it,” said David Roth a meteorologist at the Weather Prediction Center. He noted that the atmospheric ingredients were in place for the storm to strengthen quickly as it moved offshore on Saturday.
That process is known as bombogenesis. Like a hurricane near the shore, it means stronger winds that could knock out power lines and cause other destruction, as well as a greater potential for coastal erosion. The Atlantic coastline in the Carolinas is especially susceptible to beach erosion,
Nazaneen Ghaffar is a Times reporter on the Weather team.
The post 3 Things to Know About the Next Winter Storm appeared first on New York Times.
