AP – A strong snow and ice storm followed by brutally cold conditions will soon smack the eastern two-thirds of the United States (US) as frigid air escapes the Arctic, plunging as far south as Florida, meteorologists forecast.
Millions of people are going to be hit by moderate to heavy snow from Kansas City to Washington – including a high chance of at least eight inches of snow between central Kansas and Indiana – the National Weather Service warned. Dangerous ice particularly lethal to power lines – “so heavy like paste, it’s hard to move”, said private meteorologist Ryan Maue – is likely to set in just south of that in southern Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and much of Kentucky and West Virginia. “It’s going to be a mess, a potential disaster,” Maue said. “This is something we haven’t seen in quite a while.”
National Weather Service meteorologist Alex Lamers said that the potential for blizzard conditions is increasing, particularly in Kansas and neighbouring portions of the Central Plains, and that wind gusts may reach 50 miles per hour at times.
As the storm moves out on Monday, hundreds of millions of people in the eastern two-thirds of the nation will be plunged into dangerous bone-chilling air and wind chills all week, government and private forecasters said. Temperatures could be seven to 14 degrees Celsius colder than normal as the dreaded polar vortex stretches down from the high Arctic bringing chilly weather, they said.
