Winter Storm Chan To Bring New Snow To Midwest, Then Target Northeast Early This Week

A new winter storm, Winter Storm Chan, will bring more snow to the Midwest and Great Lakes after Winter Storm Bellamy impacted holiday travel. Chan will target the northeast, potentially bringing widespread icy and heavy snow to the region Tuesday into Wednesday morning.

Facility

Confidence is growing that Winter Storm Chan will have a significant impact on millions of people because all the ingredients are in place.

• Cold air (at the surface and at altitude)

• Abundant humidity arriving from the Gulf

• Low pressure area – which has the potential to strengthen and intensify off the East Coast

Punch for the Midwest and Great Lakes

Winter Storm Chan will bring another round of fresh snow to the Midwest and Great Lakes Monday into Monday evening. This comes after Winter Storm Bellamy dumped double-digit snowfall amounts across much of the Midwest on Saturday. Chicago O’Hare reported 8.4 inches of snow, making it the snowiest November day on record.

On the plus side…Chan won’t be a blockbuster storm for this region of the country. However, any additional snow will impact travel.

Good news for the kids…the snow will stick around for a while, as temperatures won’t rise above freezing for the entire week. The upper level pattern will feature enhanced blasts of cold air every few days, bringing a period of cold and unsettled weather for many people across the Midwest and Great Lakes.

(MAPS: US 10-day forecast, highs/lows)

Icing potential

There will be a transition zone established somewhere in the Ohio Valley Monday evening through Tuesday morning. This is where warm air aloft will replace cold air at the surface. This will result in a mix of rain, sleet and freezing rain. Right now, models are showing potential mixing in places like Little Rock, Louisville, Paducah, Lexington, but the best chance for widespread icing appears to be in the central and southern Appalachians.

First measurable snow for I-95 towns?

This is definitely a possibility! Boston, Providence, New York and Philadelphia have already seen their first flakes of the season, but none of these cities have reported measurable snow (0.1″ or more) yet this season.

But there is still a lot of uncertainty.

What we know:

Models show an area of ​​low pressure developing along the Gulf Coast early Tuesday. This low is forecast to move northeastward and intensify off the mid-Atlantic coast Tuesday through Wednesday. Although Winter Storm Chan is likely to produce significant snowfall in the Northeast, there is still a lot of uncertainty about where the heaviest snow will fall at this point. It is common knowledge that northeast storms can be extremely difficult to predict.

(MORE: Why Northeast Winter Storms Are Hard to Predict)

What we don’t know:

The exact path and intensity of the storm. Models disagree on the strength of the low and its path, which makes a huge difference in where the rain/snow line lies – crucial for determining snow totals.

The European model shows the depression taking a more easterly direction and not becoming as strong, resulting in lower totals overall, with higher totals concentrated further south.

Meanwhile, the GFS model takes the low further north, which pushes the rain/snow line further north and the accumulated snow toward inland portions of the Northeast. This is where the I-95 corridor is missing.

What you should do

Stay up to date with the latest forecasts here and consider how you would prepare if snow arrives. Patterns will change over the next few days and the snowiest areas will also shift. Remember the saying: “the trend is your friend”. Once we see more consistency and agreement within the models, we will have a better idea of ​​where the worst impacts will be.

Tiffany Savona is a meteorologist for Weather.com with over 15 years of experience forecasting weather across the country.

Miriam Guthrie graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with an undergraduate degree in atmospheric and oceanic sciences and is now a meteorology intern at Weather.com while working on her master’s degree.