HOUSTON (AP) — Winter’s brutal grip on the eastern U.S. isn’t letting up, with the coming days bringing subfreezing temperatures that will plunge deep into what has been a parched Florida peninsula and a powerful blizzard forecast that could hit the Atlantic coast.
The deep cold is expected to remain through at least the first week of February. Forecasters are also watching for what could become a “bomb cyclone” — a rapidly intensifying storm that’s a winter version of a hurricane — forming Friday night into Saturday in the Carolinas.
“A major winter storm appears to be coming to the Carolinas,” said meteorologist Peter Mullinax of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Prediction Center.
That storm could dump snow — at least 6 inches (15 centimeters) in whiteout conditions — in the Carolinas, northern Georgia and southern Virginia. After that, it could turn and cross the Interstate 95 corridor late Saturday into Sunday to dump loads of snow from Washington to Boston, further paralyzing much of the country. Or it could provide a spectacular punch, especially in striking places like Cape Cod.
Alternatively, it could move harmlessly out to sea. Meteorologists and forecast models are still not settling on a single outcome.
“Confidence is much higher than in the coastal regions of the Carolinas and Virginia that there will be significant snow this weekend,” said James Belanger, vice president of meteorology at the Weather Channel and its parent company. “The real question will be the trajectory it follows” from there.
Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, said it’s a “bang-or-bust” situation for the mid- and north-Atlantic. “If it happens (to go along the coast), it will be a very important event.”
Models still don’t agree on the storm’s path
On Tuesday, the forecast models were all over the place, from the sea to inland toward Philadelphia. By Wednesday morning they were starting to agree that “we’re likely to see some form of strong coastal storm somewhere east of North Carolina off the Delmarva coast, but they still don’t agree on where,” Mullinax said.
The chances of the storm moving completely away from the East Coast had diminished entirely by Wednesday morning, but had not completely disappeared, Mullinax said.
Of all the options, “D.C. to New York is probably the most unclear,” Mullinax said. He said a difference of just 50 miles (80 kilometers) in the center of the storm would be critical. AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski said it could be hard for the southern Mid-Atlantic to avoid some kind of snow, whether it’s light or heavy.
This storm will blow harder than the last
This weekend’s storm will differ from the previous storm, which began with moist Pacific air that combined with a deep plunge of Arctic air from an elongated polar vortex supplemented by more moisture from the south and east, forecasters said. The last storm had some wind. It will generate strong winds even if the snow misses the Washington area, generating gusts that could still reach 40 mph (65 km/h), dropping wind chills to near subzero Fahrenheit (minus 18 Celsius), Mullinax said.
“It looks like a pretty strong, explosive storm, so everybody’s going to have some wind gusts,” Pydynowski said, even in inland places that won’t get anywhere near snow like Pittsburgh. Strong winds can make daytime temperatures in the teens there feel like they’re below freezing, he said.
“This is what we would consider more of a classic nor’easter,” Belanger said, describing a storm forming around the U.S. Gulf Coast that crosses the Atlantic and moves up that coast.
Cold air and warm water combine to make a strong thunderstorm
A key here is warmer-than-normal water in the Gulf of Mexico — partly due to human-caused climate change — and the ever-fresh Atlantic Gulf Stream, said Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist for the nonprofit Climate Central.
When that happens, the storm “pulls in more moisture and gives it more power,” she said.
Once the storm’s core approaches the Carolinas, its pressure will drop dramatically, enough to qualify for what meteorologists call “bombogenesis,” or a “bomb cyclone,” which will give it the effect of a moderate-strength hurricane, including huge winds, but in the winter, Maue and Belanger said.
If the storm makes landfall, those winds and additional snow could cause massive snowdrifts big enough to bury cars, Maue said.
The arctic cold is sticking around and moving further south
What’s more certain is that the arctic cold in the Midwest and East will continue into mid-February, with only slight warming that would still be below normal, forecasters said.
And this new weekend storm “is going to get so cold and pour right into the heart of the Florida peninsula,” Pydynowski said. Orlando is forecast to dip well below freezing to just 48 F (9 C), breaking temperature records, while even Miami and Key West will flirt with record cold on Sunday and Monday, forecasters said.
The outlook for Florida was cold enough to raise concerns about damage to the state’s citrus and strawberries.
“It’s entering an extremely cold period,” Maue said.
The storms keep coming
After this weekend storm, long-range models see another one late in the first week of February, Maue said. Forecasters see the East locked in a pattern of cold and snowstorms due to arctic air and warm water.
East Coast snowstorms don’t happen very often, but “when they do, they happen in droves,” said former National Weather Service director Louis Uccellini, who has written meteorology textbooks on winter storms.
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