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WeatherBell

A large-scale storm system rolling across the central states is delivering both a wintry wallop and a taste of the<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/03/19/tornado-season-forecast-plains-south/" target=_blank> incoming severe thunderstorm season</a>. Areas from the Upper Midwest to the Colorado Front Range are slated to see wind-swept snow, while a few possibly strong tornadoes could swirl through the Southern states.

Blizzard warnings are in effect from south-central South Dakota through central Nebraska and to the Kansas-Colorado border. That’s where winds gusting up to 55 mph will whip up freshly fallen snow, causing near-whiteout conditions.

“Travel should be restricted to emergencies only,” wrote the National Weather Service in North Platte, Neb. “If you must travel, have a winter survival kit with you. If you get stranded, stay with your vehicle.”

The storm system has already produced up to 8 inches of snow around Minneapolis.

For those across the Lower Mississippi Valley, meanwhile, severe thunderstorms could generate damaging winds and spawn tornadoes. Leftover downpours and thunderstorms that erupted in the Plains on Sunday are expected to intensify to a squall line that sweeps across parts of the Southern states Monday. The Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center has drawn a Level 3 out of 5 risk of severe weather on its outlook map for Jackson, Greenville and Meridian in Mississippi and Alexandria and Monroe in Louisiana.

Behind the storm system, a wedge of bone-dry desert air should blow across the southern plains of Texas on blustery southwesterly winds. That presents a critical threat of a rapid fire spread in southwest Texas in the Rio Grande Valley.

The active weather will probably take a breather before a series of low-pressure systems swing east across the Lower 48 into next week.

The ongoing storm follows a weekend storm in the Northeast that dumped up to 30 inches of snow in the mountains of New England and glazed locations closer to the coast in a thick coating of ice.

A slow-moving low-pressure system was near Kansas City on Monday. Lows spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, meaning that a strip of Gulf of Mexico moisture and warm air was being swirled north ahead of it. Some of that moisture was then being pinwheeled back to the northwest in a “wraparound,” where it falls as wind-swept snow on the cold side of the system.

A general 3 to 5 inches of snow has already fallen across much of the Dakotas and the Upper Midwest, including as far south as the Illinois-Wisconsin border just northwest of Chicago. But a few locations had recorded double-digit amounts.

Accumulations thus far reached down to extreme northwest Kansas, where Blakeman, just a few miles from the Nebraska border, had picked up 2.5 inches.

In Minnesota, the Twin Cities area received 4 to 8 inches before the snow flipped to rain early Monday. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport posted 8.2 inches; until Sunday, it had received only 17.4 inches the entire season, among the lowest amounts on record.

Some other snowfall totals in the region:

As the storm lifts northward but draws cold air south on its western flank, another inch or two is possible in the Oklahoma Panhandle as well as west-central Kansas. Central Nebraska, which is under a blizzard warning, could see at least several more inches of snow, and more-significant accumulations, likely of 5 inches or more, are forecast for eastern South and North Dakota and most of central and northern Minnesota. A winter storm warning in effect in the eastern Dakotas extends into northern and western Minnesota, where up to 8 additional inches could fall.

In Minneapolis, rain on Monday and Monday night is expected to turn back to snow on Tuesday as freezing air returns.

In addition to the snow, widespread wind gusts of 35 to 55 mph are expected across the Dakotas, Nebraska and northern Kansas on Monday; in Kansas, gusts have already reached up to 60 mph. While the winds should ease somewhat Tuesday as the storm reaches the western Great Lakes, gusts could still reach at least 30 to 40 mph in much of Minnesota, causing snow to blow and drift.

In the South, the concern instead is for severe weather. Thunderstorms formed along a dry line — the leading edge of dry air from the Desert Southwest — in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and northwest Texas on Sunday. A few brief tornadoes touched down in mainly rural areas of the High Plains, and there were sporadic reports of hail and winds of over 60 mph. On Monday morning, decaying thunderstorms and showers were rumbling through East Texas and Arkansas.

NOAA/SPC

But forecasters are concerned that these storms could intensify into the afternoon and evening as a strip of warm, humid air is tugged north out of the Gulf of Mexico. A squall line could form with embedded rotation that spins up quick-hitting tornadoes. If a rogue supercell, or lone rotating storm, sets up ahead of the main line, the environment could support a strong tornado.

The threat will be greatest near Interstate 20 from Monroe, La., through Jackson, Miss., and in areas to the south. By late evening, the storms are forecast to weaken as they outrun the energy-laden environment that is giving rise to them.

While some storms could flare up in the Midwest and along the Gulf Coast on Tuesday, the system will be losing some of its punch, so instances of severe weather are expected to be more isolated.

New England cleans up after heavy snow and ice over the weekend

The storm slicing through the central states comes in the wake of a weekend winter storm that dumped up to 30 inches or so of snow in the mountains of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. It also left behind a thick glaze of ice near the coast of Maine, as well as southern New Hampshire and parts of interior New York south of the Adirondacks.

As the ice snapped trees and power lines, the online tracker Power Outage U.S. <a href="https://twitter.com/PowerOutage_us/status/1771864468940615917" target=_blank>reported</a> over 350,000 customers without power in New England on Sunday morning. Over 200,000 of them were in Maine.

On Monday morning, there were still over 80,000 customers without power in Maine, nearly 20,000 in New Hampshire and over 10,000 in New York. Above-freezing temperatures this week should allow much of this region to thaw out.

<i>Jason Samenow contributed to this report.</i>

Harvard University, B.A. Atmospheric Sciences

Matthew Cappucci is a meteorologist for Capital Weather Gang. He earned a B.A. in atmospheric sciences from Harvard University in 2019, and has contributed to The Washington Post since he was 18. He is an avid storm chaser and adventurer, and covers all types of weather, climate science, and astronomy.

Matthew Cappucci

Strong storm system bringing blizzard, severe weather to central U.S.

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Coverage of weather forecasts and weather event updates from across the nation and the world, including extreme weather and analysis of weather patterns.

Strong storm bringing blizzard, severe weather to central U.S.

There’s even the risk of a strong tornado or two in the South