It’s one storm after another for much of the US, but the next one’s path is uncertain

HOUSTON– HOUSTON (AP) — Winter’s brutal grip on the eastern United States isn’t letting up, with the next few days bringing subzero temperatures that will plunge deep into what was once a toasty Florida peninsula and a predicted powerful blizzard that could hit the Atlantic coast.

The deep cold is expected to last at least until the first week of February. Meteorologists are also monitoring what could become a “bomb cyclone” — a rapidly intensifying storm that is a winter version of a hurricane — forming off the coast of the Carolinas overnight Friday into Saturday.

“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.

This storm could dump snow – at least 15 centimeters (6 inches) in a whiteout situation – in the Carolinas, northern Georgia and southern Virginia. After that, it could turn around and use the Interstate 95 corridor Saturday night and Sunday to dump more snow from Washington to Boston, further crippling much of the country. Or, it could carry a glancing blow, mostly hitting places like Cape Cod.

Alternatively, it could simply veer harmlessly out to sea. Meteorologists and forecast models cannot yet arrive at a single result.

“Confidence is much higher than in the coastal Carolinas and Virginia and there will be significant snowfall this weekend,” said James Belanger, vice president of meteorology at the Weather Channel and its parent company. “The real question is going to be what trajectory it takes” from there.

Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, former NOAA chief scientist, said that for the Mid-Atlantic and the North, it’s a “boom or bust” situation. “If it happens (to go along the coast), it will be a major event.”

On Tuesday, forecast models were everywhere, from the sea inland toward Philadelphia. By Wednesday morning, they began to agree that “we’re probably going to see some form of powerful coastal storm somewhere in eastern North Carolina, off the coast of Delmarva, but they still disagree on where,” Mullinax said.

The chances of the storm moving completely away from the East Coast diminished Wednesday morning, but have not completely disappeared, Mullinax said.

Of all the options, “Washington DC all the way to New York is probably the foggiest,” Mullinax said. He said a difference of just 80 kilometers between the center of the storm would be critical. Dan Pydynowski, AccuWeather’s senior meteorologist, said it could be difficult for the South Mid-Atlantic to avoid some kind of snow, whether it’s a little or a lot.

This weekend’s storm will be different from the previous storm, which began with moist Pacific air combined with a deep plunge of Arctic air from an elongated polar vortex supplemented by more moisture from the south and east, meteorologists said. The last storm had little wind. This one will generate strong winds, even if snow misses the Washington area, generating gusts that could still reach 40 mph (65 kph), plunging wind chills near zero Fahrenheit (minus 18 Celsius), Mullinax said.

“It looks like a pretty strong, explosive storm, so everyone is going to get gusty winds,” Pydynowski said, even in inland places that are far from snowy like Pittsburgh. Strong winds could cause daytime temperatures in the teens to feel below freezing, he said.

“It’s what we consider more of a classic nor’easter,” Bélanger said, describing a storm forming around the U.S. Gulf Coast, crossing the Atlantic and moving up that coast.

In this case, warmer-than-normal water in the Gulf of Mexico — partly due to human-caused climate change — and the still-warm Atlantic Gulf Stream, said Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at the nonprofit Climate Central.

When that happens, the storm “draws in more moisture and gives it more strength,” she said.

Once the core of the storm approaches the Carolinas, its pressure will drop significantly, enough to qualify as “bombogenesis” or “a bomb cyclone.” That will give it the effect of a hurricane of moderate strength, including strong winds, but in winter, Maue and Bélanger said.

If the storm reaches the shore, those winds and additional snow could cause huge snowdrifts big enough to bury cars, Maue said.

What is more certain is that arctic cold in the Midwest and East will continue through mid-February, with only slight warming that would still remain below normal, meteorologists said.

And this new weekend storm “is going to take this cold and it’s going to spread all the way to the heart of the Florida peninsula,” Pydynowski said. Orlando is expected to dip well below freezing and have a high of just 48 F (9 C), breaking temperature records, while even Miami and Key West will flirt with cold records on Sunday and Monday, meteorologists said.

The outlook for Florida was cold enough to raise concerns about damage to the state’s citrus and strawberries.

“We are entering an extremely cold period,” Maue said.

After this weekend storm, long-range models will experience another one late in the first week of February, Maue said. Meteorologists see the East stuck in a cycle of bitter cold and snowstorms due to plunging Arctic air and warm water.

Snowstorms on the East Coast don’t happen very often, but “when they do, they happen in groups,” said Louis Uccellini, a former director of the National Weather Service who has written meteorology textbooks about winter snowstorms.

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