Winter is tightening its grip on much of the eastern United States, and forecasters warn the next round of weather could be more severe than the previous one—if a rapidly strengthening coastal storm lines up with the coast rather than moving offshore.
Meteorologists said subfreezing temperatures are expected to spread deep into Florida after days of brutal cold elsewhere. At the same time, they are watching a new system that could form off the Carolinas Friday night into Saturday and potentially intensify into what forecasters call a “bomb cyclone,” described as a quickly intensifying winter storm.
“A major winter storm appears to be coming to the Carolinas,” meteorologist Peter Mullinax of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Prediction Center said. Forecasters said that system could bring snow to the Carolinas, northern Georgia and southern Virginia, and then potentially sweep into parts of the Interstate 95 corridor late Saturday into Sunday, threatening travel and further disrupting communities along the East Coast. Another possibility, meteorologists cautioned, is that the storm could deliver only a glancing impact, striking areas such as Cape Cod more than inland metro areas.
Even as the overall threat remains on the radar, forecasters said the exact storm track is still uncertain enough that planners face different scenarios. “The confidence is much higher that in the coastal Carolinas and Virginia that there will be significant snowfall this weekend,” James Belanger, vice president for meteorology at the Weather Channel and its parent company, said. “The real question is going to be the trajectory it takes” from there.
AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski said small changes in the storm’s path could drive big differences on the ground, saying it may be hard for the southern mid-Atlantic to avoid some kind of snow whether it is a little or a lot. Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, described the mid-Atlantic and north as a “boom or bust” setup: “If it happens (to go along the coast) it’s going to be a big-time event.”
Forecasters also said this weekend’s storm is expected to differ from the previous one, which had relatively limited wind. Meteorologists said the new system is likely to generate high winds even in areas that do not see the worst snow, with gusts that could reach 40 mph (65 kph) and wind chills plunging to near subzero Fahrenheit readings. Mullinax said the new storm could generate gusty winds for everyone, including inland areas such as Pittsburgh, where temperatures might drop from the teens toward below-zero “feeling” temperatures due to the wind.
“This is what we’d consider more of a classic nor’easter,” Belanger said, describing a storm forming around the U.S. Gulf Coast and then crossing into the Atlantic before moving up the U.S. coast. Meteorologists said the storm’s strength could be boosted when colder Arctic air meets warmer ocean conditions, including waters in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic’s Gulf Stream.
Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist for the nonprofit Climate Central, said warmer-than-normal water in the Gulf of Mexico—partly from human-caused climate change—can help a storm draw in more moisture. She said, “When that happens the storm ‘pulls in more moisture and it gives it more strength.’” As the storm’s core nears the Carolinas, forecasters said its pressure could drop rapidly enough to qualify as “bombogenesis” or “a bomb cyclone,” producing hurricane-like effects in winter, including huge winds.
If the storm comes ashore, Maue said the winds and extra snow could also create massive snow drifts. Pydynowski said the broader cold pattern is also expected to hold steady, with Arctic temperatures continuing through mid-February, including only slight warmups that remain below normal. He said the coming weekend storm is “going to take that cold and it’s going to spill right down the heart of the Florida peninsula.”
Meteorologists said Florida’s outlook is cold enough to raise concern for agricultural impacts, including damage to citrus and strawberries. “We’re going into a brutally cold period,” Maue said. Beyond the weekend system, Maue said long-range models show another storm possible at the end of the first week of February.
For now, forecasters said the key variable is the storm’s trajectory—from a track that could bring major coastal snowfall to one that stays offshore with less impact to the inland Northeast. “East Coast snowstorms don’t happen too often, but ‘when it happens, it happens in bunches,’” said former National Weather Service director Louis Uccellini, who has written meteorology textbooks on winter storms.