Fast Moving Snow, Rain Storm To Hug East Coast Tonight, Saturday

Snow forecasts for the Northeast for tonight
and Saturday. (Click on the map to make it
bigger and easier to see) Southeast
New England seems to be the most targeted.  

Winter weather advisories are up for a long, skinny stretch from the mountains of North Carolina northeastward into the Middle Atlantic States on into New England.  

Up in southern and eastern New England, the advisories become a winter storm watch for the potential or a more sizeable snowfall.

That storm we've been talking about is on its way, and will rocket up the coast Saturday.

It's moving faster than first thought, so it will start tonight and be pretty much over by afternoon roughly south of New York City by Saturday afternoon.

Up in New England, it will be a Saturday daytime event, over by night, except maybe lingering in eastern Maine.

Forecasts for snow are still in line with what they have been. The consensus is two to six inches of wet snow from northern Virginia, through western Maryland, the southeastern half of Pennsylvania, and southern New York.

East central Massachusetts, just west of Boston and on into southeastern New Hampshire and southeastern Maine, the areas under the winter storm watch, are due for four to eight inches of snow, and far eastern Maine could get up to 10 inches.

This is all going to be heavy, wet snow, mixed in some areas with sleet, freezing rain and rain. In fact, closest to the coast, there will be more rain than snow, probably.

It will be another mess driving in the Northeast tomorrow morning, but hopefull not as bad as last Sunday, when widespread freezing rain caused havoc.

At least this time it will be a sloppy snow and mix, and not smooth ice like you get in freezing rain. So the roads will be awful, but maybe not skating rinks this time.

Temperatures will be marginal, so there's a high bust potential with this. Some areas that are expecting quite a bit of snow might end up with rain if temperatures are a degree or two warmer than forecast, which could easily happen.

And places closest to the coast where we are anticipating more rain could get an unexpected snowstorm out of this. Nothing is set in stone here.

There will be a sharp cutoff to the snow northwest of the storm track, a sharper cutoff than usual for this type of storm. So northern New York, most of Vermont and the northern and western halves of New Hampshire and Maine will miss out on this.

After this goes by, a cold front blasts down from Canada, and the eastern United States is in for a long, nasty cold wave that will go into the second week of February in many areas, especially the more north you go.

There might be brief breaks in that long,  long cold spell, but the pattern features one Arctic high pressure system after another rolling down from near the North Pole.

It's also a dry weather pattern. An Alberta Clipper might create a moderate sized snowstorm for the Middle Atlantic states Monday.

There will also be a very, VERY active storm track well off the East Coast. At this point, these far offshore nor'easters don't look like they'll hit the United States, but you never know if one or two will manage to curve further west and give some snow to East Coast as well.

Winter in the East is here to stay for awhile. Meanwhile, in the western United States, they're going to be asking, "What winter?" Some record high temperatures will be challenged in the western third of the nation between now and Valentine's Day.