A potential megablizzard looms for this weekend, one that would make Monday’s blast of winter seem like a spring day.
The storm just emerging from the Rocky Mountains will pick up moisture from the Gulf and deliver a big snowy punch — somewhere, forecasters said.
“Yeah, it’s possible that someone will get a very significant amount,” AccuWeather meteorologist Tom Kines said. The “someone” could be upstate New York, western Pennsylvania or central New England, depending on the storm’s emerging pattern.
How significant? Social-media speculation on Tuesday raised concerns of a 30-inch downfall.
“There are some big question marks about that storm,” Kines added. Among those questions is timing: The storm’s arrival on the East Coast could range from Saturday to Monday.
The Weather Underground forecasting service sees scattered snow starting in the city Saturday night, real snow coming Sunday morning (one to three inches), followed by more later in the day (three to five inches) — and flurries on Monday.
That’s not quite 30 inches.
If a blizzard does hit New York City, the most likely time would be Sunday, according to Kines.
That scenario would make the storm a classic nor’easter. Winds would be fierce, pushing 20 mph and higher, and effects would linger into Monday with massive traffic gridlock and thousands of new flight delays at dozens of airports.
The storm could follow a familiar pattern: a huge mass of frigid air pressing down from Canada meeting warmer, moisture-laden air from the Gulf states. That could produce a blizzard that drops several inches of snow per hour on whoever is unlucky enough to suffer the brunt of it, making it the worst storm of what’s becoming known as “the terrible winter of ’14.”
If that proves to be the case, at least everyone in the potential path — including all the major cities of the Northeast and Midwest — will have time to prepare.
But five days out, it’s all far from certain. “I think we’re throwing darts,” Kines said.
The uncertainty comes as the fourth significant storm of 2014 was expected to move from the ravaged Midwest to the East on Wednesday and leave as much as a foot of white on the ground in some parts. The southwest “will be the only area of the country spared from this arctic blast,” the National Weather Service said.
Forecasters said the overnight storm could mean three to six inches in the city depending on when the wintry mix switches to sleet and eventually to all rain. Where the changeover to rain comes quicker, such as on Long Island, there could be less snow.
Daytime high temperatures should be around freezing until early next week, forecasters said, so whatever accumulates Wednesday on city streets may take a while to disappear.
“I don’t think it will be a rapid melt,” Kines said. But, then again, “There are so many things that could happen with this storm.”