Major snowfall snarls post-Thanksgiving travel, with another storm coming

Major snowfall snarls post-Thanksgiving travel, with another storm coming

A major winter storm brought a foot or more of snow and snarled travel during the post-Thanksgiving weekend, after the system trekked through the Corn Belt, Upper Midwest, Great Lakes and Midwest — crippling major interstates and leading to cascading airport delays. And it’s not over yet, as another hefty snowstorm looms for parts of the Northeast.

Deteriorating road conditions triggered a 50-vehicle pileup on Interstate 70 in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Saturday afternoon. Several tractor-trailers jackknifed on Interstate 65. The same storm caused 104 crashes and more than 120 spinouts in Minnesota.

In terms of snowfall, Bear Lake in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, an hour southwest of Traverse City, had among the highest tallies, picking up more than 25 inches. Much of that stemmed from days of lake-effect snow preceding a main event. Lake-effect snows continued Sunday as chilly air poured southeast in the storm system’s wake, leading to additional accumulations east of Lakes Erie and Ontario.

In New York, Westmoreland, east of Syracuse, had also tallied 25 inches as of Sunday morning, and Ellicottville, south of Buffalo, was up to 19 inches.

The next storm system, meanwhile, is already beginning to come together.

An upper-air disturbance over the Great Basin of Nevada is swinging southeast toward the Four Corners and will be met early Monday by moisture wafting north out of the Gulf of Mexico. It will morph into a winter storm over the Ohio Valley during the latter half of Monday before trekking up the Appalachians, bringing a cold rain to the Eastern Seaboard and a mix or snow to the west.

More than a foot of additional snow is possible in northern New England.

What to know about the next storm

Light snow is possible by lunchtime Monday in Kansas or Missouri, with some mixed precipitation in northern Arkansas — including freezing rain or light sleet. By evening, steady rain is likely in Mississippi, Alabama and western Georgia, with continued mixing in Arkansas and snow near the Ohio River in Kentucky.

Overnight, snow will overspread Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, with freezing rain in the Alleghenies and Appalachians of western Virginia and eastern West Virginia. On Tuesday, locally significant ice accretion on the order of 0.25 to 0.5 inches is possible, making for dangerous travel that day on Interstate 81.

Snow will thump Tuesday across interior New York state and most of New England west of Interstate 95, while the immediate coastal corridor will see predominantly rain. Significant accumulations of a foot or more are possible in central/northern New England before precipitation winds down Tuesday night.

Totals so far from the first storm

Here’s a roundup of some snow reports thus far from the winter storm that hit Friday and Saturday:

• 25 inches in Bear Lake, Michigan
• 25 inches in Westmoreland, New York
• 25 inches in Waters, Michigan
• 20 inches in Alba, Michigan
• 19.8 inches in Ellicottville, New York
• 19 inches in New Hartford, New York
• 18 inches in Oneida, New York
• 17 inches in Utica, New York
• 15 inches in Fort Dodge, Iowa
• 14.3 inches in Stout, Iowa
• 14.3 inches in Callender, Iowa
• 14 inches in Aplington, Iowa
• 12.7 inches in Sullivan, Wisconsin
• 12.3 inches in Dubuque, Iowa
• 12 inches in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
• 12 inches in Freeport, Iowa
• 12 inches in Gaylord, Michigan
• 11.7 inches in Geneseo, Illinois
• 11.5 inches in Rochester, Illinois
• 11 inches in Southington, Ohio
• 10.6 inches in Davenport, Iowa
• 10 inches in Granger, Indiana
• 10 inches in Valparaiso, Indiana
• 10 inches in Hannibal, Missouri
• 10 inches in Plymouth, Indiana
• 9.9 inches in Lincoln, Illinois
• 6.8 inches in Lakewood, Ohio
• 4.6 inches in Dearborn Heights, Michigan

The same system brought dozens of lightning strikes in central Illinois around Springfield. While most thundersnow features intra-cloud lightning, numerous cloud-to-ground strokes occurred. Thundersnow presents the same dangers as ordinary warm-season lightning; in January 1990, a bolt of lightning from a thundersnow storm in Crystal Lake, Illinois, struck and injured a dozen people shoveling or pushing stranded motorists.

There was a small amount of regular instability, or thunderstorm fuel, encouraging air to rise. But there is also some conditional symmetric instability, which supports tubes of air rising diagonally through the atmosphere and sparking charge separation.