Christmas Week Storm Continues To Ramp Up

This British pooch encountered wind and rain
last Christmas. If he visits the U.S. East Coast this
Christmas season, he'll probably encounter the same thing.  

If you had a ski vacation in mind this Christmas week, it's Colorado's turn to shine.

A storm system marching across the country has hit Colorado's mountains, dumping more than two feet of snow in some areas.

That's all part of a big storm that has or will affect almost every corner of the country this week.

The storm has already caused flooding in the Pacific Northwest, but the worst of the rain has gotten out of there.

The storm, now that it has crossed the Rocky Mountains, will regroup in the Plains and along the Gulf Coast, causing a variety of hazards.

One piece of it, the part that brought all that snow to western Colorado, is now prompting high wind warnings for gusts of up to 65 mph in the plains of eastern Colorado.  Depending on where you are in eastern Colorado, the wind will cause highway problems with blowing dust or blowing snow.

Winter weather advisories and winter storm warnings are up for parts of Nebraska and the Dakotas for several inches of snow today.

The main storm will consolidate near the Gulf Coast today, bringing the risk of severe thunderstorms and maybe a tornado or two to that region later today.

The storm will move north, causing a wide area of rain, some of it heavy, in the eastern third of the nation today into Christmas Day.  Most of the East Coast rain will be on Christmas Eve, and will be departing New England Christmas Day.

The good news is the storm, though it will pack a lot of wind over a wide area of the East and Great Lakes region, won't be quite as windy as I first thought a few days ago. While downed trees, power lines and such will be scattered all across the the eastern third of the country, it won't be a devastating wind storm.

In Vermont, particularly, I had been worried about destructive downslope winds on the western side of the Green Mountains over the Christmas holiday, but now it doesn't look as intense as first forecast.

There will be strong winds, but nothing like the 70 mph downslope winds I had initially worried about.

Still, this is a strong storm, so expect a really stormy Christmas Eve in the East. Snow lovers in the Northeast will mourn, because warmth and rain will extend all the way into northern New England, which until now had enjoyed some deep snow and great conditions for skiers.

The timing is unfortunate.

Before the warmth arrives, some snow and mixed precipitation was falling Tuesday morning in northern New England. That could cause some travel problems, but the precipitation will change to rain this afternoon.

The exception is far northern New Hampshire and the northwestern third of Maine, where some freezing rain could continue to make driving tricky in spots into Wednesday morning.

Some flooding might occur in northern New York and in parts of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine over Christmas as the relatively deep snow cover melts pretty fast, and about an inch of rain falls amid the warmth.

It'll be mostly nuisance flooding, basements, low lying roads, poor drainage areas, that type of thing.  If you see a flooded road or street, don't drive through it. It's dangerous. And even if you do survive a Christmas flood in a car, do you really want to see the presents you bought for Aunt Marge floating away down the river?

There are some springlike characteristics to this storm. There might even be some strong to marginally severe storms in and near Ohio with this on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve, at night when Santa is pulling his sleigh, he'll probably break a sweat as dewpoints rise into the 50s in some spots, and temperatures will approach record high levels in a few East Coast cities.

In the Northeast, the precipitation will taper off Christmas Day, but the winds will continue to gust. So that giant blow up snowman in your yard might take flight, so be aware of that.

Good riddance to that I say, though.

Winter will make a comeback in the Northeast and Midwest, as temperatures fall to normal winter levels over the upcoming weekend. It already has turned colder in the northern Great Plains and it will stay that way for quite awhile.

But that's normal for them.

By the way, even Hawaii, where the Obama family is vacation, isn't escaping tough Christmas holiday weather.

A storm system unrelated to the one hitting the U.S. mainland is raising the threat of flooding and high surf in Hawaii over Christmas.