BLOG: Winter Storm Heading Our Way UPDATED
There is another winter storm heading our way, and it's going bring more than snow. There is a Winter Storm Warning in effect until noon Tuesday.
The clouds and cold air are in place, now here comes the storm. The storm is coming in two pieces, one from the south and one from the Midwest. The southern piece will be the bigger player for us. It will initially move into the colder air, causing some light snow to break out this evening. Unlike the last few storms, the cold air will not be as deep and dominant - so the "warmer" (above freezing) air will eventually win out and change everything over to rain. However, this does not happen immediately. It's a process that the atmosphere will have to go through that will change snow to sleet, then freezing rain before changing over to plain rain.
The sleet and freezing rain will take place for a few hours during the overnight. Then, the plain rain will take over from southeast to northwest across the state during the morning hours. So, it will become all rain along the Eastern Shore before Baltimore and then take even longer for places northwest of I-95. Temperatures are going up to near 40 degrees tomorrow, so this is definitely going over to rain.
Rain will continue on and off tomorrow night until the storm pulls away on Wednesday. That's when the Midwest storm will swing by. It doesn't have a lot of moisture with it, but will push in a new round of bitterly cold air for the second half of the week. There is another storm that will be moving across the Gulf Coast late next week and could make a turn up the coast toward us Friday or Saturday.
This may not be the biggest storm moving our way tonight, but you never want to mess around with any ice. If you have to head out during the overnight hours, take it slow and be careful.
10:45 pm
We are now upgraded to a winter storm warning for Baltimore, Harford, Carroll, Frederick, Howard, and Montgomery Counties through noon Tuesday.
The changeover from snow to sleet happened about 2 hours earlier than we thought in the city. By 9:30 pm, the snow/sleet mix was already starting to pile up in the Baltimore metro area while sleet was falling in Annapolis and Easton. Meanwhile, it is all rain in Ocean City at 40 degrees.
Since it's still 27 degrees at BWI-Marshall at 10 pm, we have a good 5 or 6 hours before we get out of the icing threat. That takes to the early morning commute. North and west of the city, that will take even longer.
Check back in with WJZ and WJZ.com. We are going on early Tuesday morning, with Don and Marty starting at 4:30 am.
