Another cross-country winter storm will develop this week on the heels of a system that caused havoc across much of the nation in recent days, leading to 13 deaths in the South and Northeast.
Snow will continue to fall in California and other parts of the West as well as the Great Lakes area on Monday, and some areas will see temperatures dip below freezing once again.
Fears about flooding in California were also on the rise Monday as forecasters warned about a potential warm rainstorm hitting portions of the state later in the week.
Over 200,000 homes and businesses remained in the dark nationwide as of Monday from storms over the last several days, according to tracking website Poweroutage.us. Kentucky had 118,000 outages, Michigan 26,000, Tennessee 19,000 and California 18,000. And the outages have dragged on – Kentucky’s storm hit Friday. Michigan has been battling outages since an ice storm struck two weeks ago.
Developments:
►In Minneapolis, the threat for several inches of accumulating snow continues to increase Thursday and Friday. Residents woke up to slick roads Monday from a storm Sunday night.
►Snow is expected to persist across northern Michigan for most of the day Monday before rolling into the interior Northeast later Monday into Tuesday morning.
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Kentucky Gov. Beshear said 125,000 homes and businesses remained without power Monday, three days after a wall of tornadoes, thunderstorms and heavy winds swept across the state, killing five people. About 300 remained without water, he said.
Beshear said he was encouraged by his visit to Fremont a day earlier.
“What happened in Fremont was a miracle,” he said. “An EF2 tornado landed, went basically down their main street a mile and half (and) no one got hurt in this town.”
He said cleanup was in full force. Local officials and utility workers worked side-by-side with residents and volunteers.
“What I got to see was the best of humanity,” he said, adding that “like everything else we faced, we will face this together.”
All quiet for Boston, NYC, Philly this winter
California’s mountains and parts of the Midwest have been fending off a stormy winter, but much of the eastern United States has had little snow. Boston, known for nasty nor’easters and a blizzard last year that dumped nearly two feet of snow on the city, had seen just over 11 inches as of last week compared to an average of 38.6, according to data from the National Weather Service.
Philadelphia has gotten only 0.3 inches compared to an average of 19.2. New York, which typically gets over two feet by now, has seen only 2.2 inches. Similar shortfalls have been seen in Providence, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C. and parts of West Virginia.
“For the most part, it’s been a winterless winter” in the region, says David Robinson, a Rutgers University geography professor and the state climatologist.
Overall, it was the warmest winter (December-January) on record in the Northeast, according to data from the Northeast Regional Climate Center released Monday.
New storm could cause travel problems
AccuWeather said it is tracking a storm that is expected to spread snow along an 1,800-mile-long stretch that begins in the northern Plains and could wind up in the Northeast in the coming days.
“Forecasters say the upcoming storm is not expected to pack as much of a punch as its predecessor,” AccuWeather said. “But can still create enough wintry weather to cause travel problems.”
A winter weather advisory was in place for parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey until Tuesday morning. Scranton, Pennsylvania, could see 5 inches of snow.
Parts of the Dakotas will be under a winter storm warning through Monday afternoon. The National Weather Service said the mid-Atlantic region will see rain and snow by Monday evening, and some parts could experience freezing rain.
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Parts of California under a winter storm warning as flood fears rise
A winter storm warning remains in place for parts of California through Tuesday. The Sierra Nevada Mountain range could get an additional 3 feet of snow by midweek, the weather service said, as the region continues to see snowfall totals above historical averages. Travel in the region will be difficult to impossible, forecasters said. Wind gusts up to 70 mph could drop wind chills as low as 25 degrees below zero.
The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab in Soda Springs said Sunday that it got 30 inches of snow over the weekend and has had over 46 feet of snow this season.
Forecasters, meanwhile, said the next Pacific storm arriving late in the week will be associated with a moderately strong atmospheric river.
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“An abundance of subtropical moisture will move inland over Central California along the southern periphery of this storm system Thursday night through Friday night,” the National Weather Service said.
Heavy rainfall and a mild air mass will cause rapid snowmelt in areas that have received several feet of snow recently, the service said.
UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain tweeted that the “odds of a warm storm of some magnitude around Friday/Saturday are increasing, especially Northern California, but magnitude and duration are highly uncertain. A modest event is most likely, but more severe storm can’t be ruled out.”
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Winter storm tracker
National weather radar
Contributing: Lucas Aulbach, Louisville Courier Journal
Follow Jordan Mendoza on Twitter: @jordan_mendoza5.
USA TODAY
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