The big winter storm continues to pound away at the Southeast tonight with heavy rain, freezing rain and snow. Hundreds of thousands are without power while thousands of flights have been cancelled from Atlanta up to the major Northeast hubs.

While a mix continues around the Atlanta metro up into Columbia, SC, we’re starting to see an impressive canopy of snow now overspreading the DC metro and this will continue to push north, likely covering Philly even NYC by morning.

Here’s a look at the current satellite and radar from the CBC weather centre.

Note the moderate to heavy snow up over the North Georgia mountains through eastern Tennessee, upstate South Carolina, western North Carolina and pretty much all of Virginia. The west of Virginia has already seen upwards of 4-7 inches and there’s probably another near 24 hour period before precip winds down. Without mixing and with snow rates only going to increase, some spots over western VA, WV and western MD could see 18-24 inches easily, perhaps a local amount near 30.

Points west of Charlotte could well collect a foot of snow with Charlotte itself picking up between 4-8.

This was the scene earlier today around the Columbia, SC area.

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Through tonight, heavy rain, sleet, freezing rain and snow will continue impacting Alabama, Georgia on north.

The low currently over NW Florida will move northeast and will really start to intensify once positioned over the Outer Banks.

Look for a ‘decent’ 6+ hours of snowfall in the Big Cities as the low remains to the south but once it reaches Jersey, expect a change over to sleet and rain as warmer air gets involved but that mix may take place after 10 inches has fallen on Philly, 8 inches NYC and Boston, go 20 miles west of these cities and you could easily have over a foot of snow. Along the Jersey shore, much of Long Island, expect 2-4, locally 6 inches.

Here’s the latest snow chart from AccuWeather.

Good overview of how this play out.

Here’s a look at the ECMWF surface chart through the next 36 hours and note the intensification as it hugs the coast moving north.

24

36

By 48 hours this thing is a blizzard over New England with gusts over 60 mph on the coast.

Once that system finally clears we have another system dropping into the Tennessee Valley and Mid-Atlantic, this has the potential to drop 1-3 inches across a broad area Friday and Saturday.

There’s that system now spreading snow up into the Big Cities where 1-2 inches is possible.

Here’s the AccuWeather graphic to go with that system.

We continue to monitor the ice situation over the Great Lakes and I thought I would show you the latest percentage of ice cover.

Check this out! Yes, 87.1% and check out L Superior. Kinda appears to be ALL ice now… Only areas ice free is central L Michigan and much of L Ontario.

Light at the end of the tunnel??

Yes, eventually we see a strong Pacific flow and the northward kick of arctic air next week. I suspect however that colder weather returns in the 10-16 day period.

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Tags: ice storm, Mid-Atlantic snowstorm, Northeast snowstorm, Southeast icestorm