A dangerous winter storm will bring snow by the foot to the mid-Atlantic, including Washington, and tornadoes and thunderstorms to the South, threatening at least 50 million people on its path northward.
A dangerous winter storm will bring snow by the foot to the mid-Atlantic, including Washington, and tornadoes and thunderstorms to the South, threatening at least 50 million people on its path northward.
Washington and Baltimore have a good chance of getting more than a foot (30 centimeters) of snow. Philadelphia could receive almost as much, and New York may see 6 to 12 inches. Blizzard warnings and watches stretch from Virginia to Long Island, including New York and Washington.
“It has the potential to be an extremely dangerous storm,” Louis Uccellini, director of the National Weather Service, said Thursday in a conference call with reporters. “It is a potentially paralyzing storm.”
Snow will start in the Mid-Atlantic late Friday afternoon or evening and then progress up the East Coast, arriving in New York by Saturday morning, he said. Washington’s public schools will close Friday and non-essential district workers will be sent home at noon, the mayor’s office said in an e-mail.
Washington Metro will halt city buses at 5 p.m. Friday, while keeping rail service operating until 11 p.m., the transit agency said on its website. Both bus and subway services will remain shut through Sunday.
While the public focus is often on snow in the big East Coast cities, the storm is already having an impact, with severe thunderstorms and tornadoes in Texas and Louisiana. Ice storms are forecast in Kentucky and North Carolina and high winds and flooding are possible along the Eastern Seaboard from Delaware to New York.
Businesses Affected
The storm will affect industries such as airlines and power companies and tax emergency crews, said Uccellini, who together with Paul Kocin, a weather service meteorologist, wrote a textbook on winter storms.
As of 2:15 p.m. New York time, 559 Friday flights were canceled in the U.S., according to Houston-based FlightAware. Duke Energy had mobilized 3,200 workers in North Carolina and South Carolina to fight power outages, according to a company statement.
“It is a multifaceted storm in regards to its potential impacts,” Uccellini said. “Seven million people could be affected by icing.”
In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said trucks carrying rock salt will begin hitting the streets Friday with crews operating 12-hour shifts through the weekend. Virginia and Maryland have declared emergencies.
Boston Outlook
Boston may end up getting spared the worst of the storm as it passes to the south.
“Boston is one of the more difficult locations to forecast for this storm,” Patrick Burke, a meteorologist with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said in an interview. “Any kind of shift of the track of the storm could bring heavier amounts.”
Uccellini said there will be a fine line between where heavy snow hits and those areas that get almost nothing, as well as where precipitation falls as rain or sleet.
“We still have forecast challenges facing us today,” Uccellini said. “There is a very sharp gradient in the snowfall predictions just north of New York City. Any shift in that gradient can mean lots of snow for New York City or very little.”
A Miss
There was a similar problem last year when initial forecasts called for New York to get almost 3 feet of snow, he said. That deep snow missed the city and parts of Long Island, and New England bore the brunt of that system.
This storm should be over for most of the East on Sunday.
Uccellini said he was struck by how much the forecast models have agreed on this storm. The models started picking it up more than a week ago.
“We are certainly living in interesting times,” Uccellini said.
Having that much advance warning is a hallmark of the era. In years past, people wouldn’t get as much warning and storms like this could kill hundreds, he said.
“I would suggest that people pay attention to this system,” Uccellini said. “Could something go wrong with the forecast between now and tomorrow night? Yes.”
The chances of that happening are a lot lower than the potential danger from the storm. No one, he said, wants to be driving on Interstate 95 on Friday night in high winds and blinding snow.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Doan at ldoan6bloomberg.net Charlotte Porter, Stephen Cunningham