Winter storm to hammer the Midwest with snow and ice this weekend

More than 31 million Americans face the potential for icy weather from Jan. 4-6.

Transcript

00:00Let's take you out to the weekend, because we have some big weather on the way here, too.

00:05Not every day you get thundersnow at Chincoteague there in Ocean City, Maryland. Pretty wild stuff.

00:10Well, we have one big storyline for the weekend.

00:13A winter storm will be intensifying over the Mississippi Valley.

00:16And here it comes. The big dip in the jet stream races across the Rockies.

00:20And late Saturday into Saturday night, it plows into the plains.

00:23If you're east of that big swirl, you have extra lift.

00:26And that means the air is going to be rising, producing more clouds, more precipitation.

00:30And for some, that means rain or snow or ice.

00:33It all depends on the thermal characteristics over your head.

00:37But here we have widespread snow into areas around Scotts Bluff and into northeast Colorado Saturday evening.

00:43And it begins to expand east into Omaha as well.

00:46It's pretty quick, the eastward expansion of the snow.

00:49It's not going to necessarily move in. It's going to develop over your heads in some areas here,

00:53like we see into central Illinois into early Sunday.

00:56To the south, we'll be concerned about strong and severe thunderstorms there into Mississippi,

01:00and especially into Louisiana as well.

01:03But overall, widespread snow lifts up into the mid-Atlantic states with significant icing.

01:08A major ice storm will be in progress into places like Lexington, Kentucky,

01:12with heavy snow developing Sunday into Cincinnati.

01:15Your average high in Cincinnati is 40.

01:17We only make it to 27 on Sunday afternoon in Cincinnati with the snow building in.

01:22So here we are, and in Cincinnati itself, we're looking at 6 to 12 inches of snow.

01:27Off to the west, there's an area with 12 or more inches in our forecast for St. Joseph, Missouri.

01:32Kansas City, looking at a pretty hard hit.

01:34Indianapolis, specifically there, 3 to 6 inches of snow.

01:37You just rounded out your warmest year on record,

01:39and we're beginning the new year with some extreme cold this next week

01:42and a decent snowstorm to kick this off here.

01:44Look for that AccuWeather Wintercast feature on the AccuWeather app and AccuWeather.com.

01:49Millions will also face some ice,

01:51and some of these areas here in Missouri will face significant freezing rain.