I Might Get To Experience One Nasty Winter Storm Twice. Oh Joy!

By Monday, the big storm will be affecting everywhere from
the Dakotas to New England and down along the East Coast.

That large storm slated to cross the nation this weekend still looks like it's going to be a humdinger, and a huge area of the nation will be affected.

Already, a broad stripe of the United States from Arizona to Minnesota is under a variety of winter storm warnings, watches and advisories.

Blizzard conditions could well envelop the western half of the Dakotas down into western Nebraska by Saturday or Sunday.

At this point the heaviest snow looks like it will come down from in central and northeastern South Dakota, southeastern North Dakota and western Minnesota, where a good 18 inches might accumulate.

A stripe just to the east of the potential blizzard zone will probably get a lot of mixed precipitation, then snow and wind.  I'll be in Yankton, South Dakota still at that point, so that will be fun. The forecast is especially uncertain where I am, since we will be right on the edge of the snow/mixed precipitation line.

This will be a long lasting storm in the central and northern Plains starting late tonight and coming in waves through Sunday night. Precipitation rates will ebb and increase repeatedly, with the worst of the weather expected Saturday night and Sunday.

I'm allegedly traveling back to Vermont Monday, but there will still be near ground blizzard conditions in the Dakotas then, lots of wind in the Midwest, and a potential messy storm in Vermont. That'll be fun!

It's unclear just how messy things will be with this storm in Vermont.  It could be light precipitation, it could be a mix, or it could  mainly snow in some spots.

There is expected to be a sharp contrast between very chilly air in the north and balmy air to the south, with Vermont being in the transition zone.  That means it's anybody's guess what will fall from the sky.  We probably won't know exactly what to expect even up to the time the storm arrives.

One run of the European computer model gave us sort of a worst case scenario with up to a foot of snow in parts of central Vermont and enough ice to cause tree and power line damage in southern Vermont.

Take that forecast with a GIGANTIC grain of salt, as these forecasts tend to be all over the place and wrong days ahead of the event. This is just to give you an idea that this has a chance to be pretty bad, but there's no sense in panicking now. It very likely won't be as bad as this Euro run.