More than 50 million people had been warned of winter weather from Arizona to Maine.
“This system is expected to produce heavy snow over parts of the Ohio Valley and the interior of the eastern US starting Friday night and continuing through Saturday,” the Weather Prediction Center said. “Heavy snow, gusts of wind and severely reduced visibility make for dangerous to difficult driving conditions and travel, especially in the northeast.”
“Significant impacts from heavy snowfall and accumulations are possible from the Tennessee Valley through the Central Appalachians and much of the Northeast,” The National Weather Service reported this on Wednesday.
A wide swath of heavy snow has already fallen over much of Colorado and Kansas, with the largest totals of 8 to 13 inches over western Kansas, along Interstate 70. To the east, Topeka, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri had , to 3 to 5 inches from Thursday afternoon.
The NWS in Kansas City warned due to the snowy weather that the commute will be messy Thursday. In anticipation of those circumstances, schools in Kansas City announced on Thursday that they would close.
In Colorado, the Denver airport dropped to -7 degrees on Thursday morning, the coldest March morning since 1960 and an improvement of the previous record of March 10 by 4 degrees. This cold air will be widespread across the eastern US for the next few days.
Areas along the Eastern Rockies and Northern Plains will see temperatures 25 to 35 degrees below normal. Half a dozen other locations could end up with their coldest daily highs in the western US.
Storm moves towards Northeast and South
As the storm moves east, it is expected to strengthen into a bomb cyclone.
The winds, combined with heavy snowfall, will create blizzard-like conditions in the northeast interior, where a foot or more of snow can fall.
“All model guidance has a surface wave (the storm) rapidly intensifying as it follows somewhere between the I-95 corridor to Cape Cod, then along or just off the coast of Maine as a low of 970 millibars,” the National said. Boston Weather Service. †
A low of 970 millibars would equate to a Category 2 hurricane.
“We expect heavier wet snow. Widespread 6 to 12 inches with possible 15-inch totals,” Marvin Boyd, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Burlington, Vermont, told DailyExpertNews. “Our concern is the stress on trees. With winds expected to blow 35 to 45 mph, and this heavy sleet, we could see not only travel problems, but numerous power cuts as well.”
Behind this storm system, Arctic air will seep all the way south, a shock to the system for many.
On Friday, temperatures 20-30 degrees below normal will be seen everywhere from Minnesota to Texas. By Saturday, unusually cold air will stretch all the way from Michigan to the Gulf Coast. Cities like Birmingham, Alabama and Jackson, Mississippi are likely to wake up below freezing on Saturday morning.
The growing season has already begun for many of these southern states due to unusually warmer air in recent weeks. This could lead to agricultural damage from this weekend’s frost.
“Given the recent warm conditions we’ve had, the rapid return of freezing temperatures could put strain on plants and animals,” the National Weather Service (NWS) said in Birmingham.
“This is one of the dangers of the ‘longer growing seasons’ and ‘earlier spring’ caused by climate change,” said DailyExpertNews meteorologist Brandon Miller.
By Sunday, temperatures are expected to return to normal, or even above normal, in the central US, while the eastern US remains about 10-15 degrees below normal.
DailyExpertNews’s Caitlin Kaiser, Chad Myers, Jennifer Gray and Tom Sater contributed to this report.