The FOX Forecast Center is tracking a potentially dangerous storm system that’s expected to impact most, if not all, of the Lower 48 states next week with some form of precipitation, including the potential for severe weather, heavy mountain snow, and rain.
The action kicks off Sunday in the western U.S. and will eventually push across the country, where it will finally impact the East Coast by Thursday.
“We’ve got some energy, believe it or not, is way the heck up north of the Aleutian Island chain in Alaska,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Bob Van Dillen said. “But by next week is going to dive right down the coast of Canada into the Pacific Northwest, ultimately turning into a low-pressure region that will be north of the Rockies.”
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The FOX Forecast Center said the storm will be colder, which will cause snow levels to drop and allow snowfall to pile up across the western mountain chains in the U.S.
This is especially beneficial in the Northwest and will be the most significant storm since January. The snowpack there is hovering around 50% of average, so the snow expected from this storm could give that a boost.
More rain is also expected in California, and although the rain amounts are expected to be much lower than what the state just experienced from a multiday atmospheric river storm this past week, there will be a threat of additional landslides and mudslides because the ground is so saturated.
The FOX Forecast Center said that high winds are also expected across the interior West behind some cold fronts moving through the region on Monday and Tuesday.
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“It’s going to be a deep trough, which means it’s going to be just stacked up across the atmosphere,” Van Dillen said. “That allows for moisture and heat to come off the Gulf of Mexico.”
That will set the stage for the possibility of the development of severe thunderstorms on Tuesday and Wednesday.
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NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC) has already highlighted areas of concern on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week that have the potential for strong to severe thunderstorms to develop.
“The end of February is usually where we have a better chance of seeing an atmospheric setup that would produce a lot of severe weather,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Britta Merwin said. “So the timing, you know, not all that shocking. We’ll see how things hash out for next week.”
More than 21 million people from Chicago and Aurora in Illinois through St. Louis in the Midwest and into Little Rock in Arkansas and Tulsa in Oklahoma have been placed under a Level 2 out of 5 on the SPC’s 5-point severe thunderstorm risk scale.
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The severe weather threat shifts and expands by Wednesday and includes more than 30 million people from the Mississippi Valley and Southeast into the Ohio Valley.
The SPC has placed cities such as Indianapolis, Columbus in Ohio, Memphis and Nashville in Tennessee and St. Louis in a Level 2 out of 5 risk on Wednesday.
“When we have these day four, day five outlooks through the Storm Prediction Center, they usually end up getting a little more aggressive with their language as we get closer,” Merwin said. “And this is a setup we’ve been talking about behind the scenes for a little bit of time now.”
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And as the cross-country storm continues to move off to the east, there could be another area of concern for severe weather, but the SPC hasn’t issued such an outlook as of Thursday.
The system will then reach the East Coast by later in the week. And by that time, the FOX Forecast Center said most, if not all, of the Lower 48 states will have seen some form of precipitation from this storm system.