The Daily Blog

Back-to-Back Storms, More Subzero Cold This Week.

Back-to-back storm systems and widespread cold will bring more harsh winter weather to the eastern two-thirds of the nation this week.

One storm will spread snow and rain along a path from the Tennessee Valley to the Northeast from today through Tuesday, while the next storm will bring significant snowfall to the central and southern Plains from late tonight into Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a new blast of arctic air will spread southward and eastward, with subzero low temperatures extending over a large area from the Plains to the Northeast on Tuesday night.The first storm will be too disorganized to produce the type of intense snowfall that has been common so far this winter, but snow — or rain changing to snow — will occur from Arkansas to New England. Some travel delays may occur, especially from Arkansas to western and northern Kentucky, where communities do not have as much snow removal equipment, and in interior New England, where snow will accumulate up to several inches.Sharply cold air will follow the passage of the storm, setting the stage for widespread bitter cold by Tuesday night and the likelihood of a significant accumulation of snow fairly far south into the Plains by Wednesday, including the Dallas region.

Winter storm watches are in effect in northern Texas and much of Oklahoma. Up to 10 inches of snow is expected in Oklahoma, where strong winds will create drifts of 2 to 3 feet. Wind chill temperatures are expected to approach minus 30 in western Kansas from later Tuesday night into Wednesday.

Accumulating snow is likely to occur as far south as north-central Texas by Wednesday, marking the third accumulating snowfall in this region in the past two weeks.Accumulating snow will likely spread eastward into Arkansas and northern Louisiana during the day Wednesday, and light snow or flurries are possible from northern Mississippi to the Carolinas Wednesday night as the storm weakens.

The cold air currently across the northern Plains and northern Rockies — high temperatures today will remain below zero in parts of Montana and North Dakota — will become more widespread across the Plains, upper Midwest and Northeast during the next couple of days.Low temperatures on Tuesday night will be below zero from western Kansas to northern Illinois, including Chicago, and many locations in Nebraska and Iowa will have low temperatures of at least minus 10. In the Northeast, temperatures will approach minus 15 in the coldest locations in interior New England and upstate New York, with temperatures in the teens in New York City.

The colder than normal weather will continue from the Plains to the East through at least Thursday, with a significant warming trend across the Plains by late in the week. Warmer air will begin to move into the Northeast late in the weekend or early next week.

Massive Winter Storm to Sweep Much of Nation This Week.

In a winter that’s becoming known for its powerful storms, the one that’s about to form might be the most impressive of all in terms of the size and scope — affecting much of the eastern two-thirds of the country during the first half of the week.

Heavy snow, ice, rain, thunderstorms and bitter cold will occur along the storm’s path, with the likelihood of widespread travel interruptions, power outages and property damage.

The storm has yet to become organized, but the ingredients will be in place for rapid formation once the low pressure system begins to emerge from the Rockies on Monday. The huge temperature difference between the northern Plains and Gulf Coast will be fuel for the storm as two systems merge in the middle of the country.By early Tuesday, precipitation will likely extend from the eastern Rockies to the northern mid-Atlantic coast, with the most intense portion of the storm developing in the southern Plains. This low-pressure system will track from the Missouri Valley on Tuesday evening to off the New England coast by Wednesday evening.

More than a foot will fall on the northern and western sides of the storm, from the Plains and Missouri Valley through the Midwest and into northern New England. A corridor of accumulating ice will occur near the track of the storm, from the Missouri Valley through the Ohio Valley and into parts of the mid-Atlantic region.

As of Sunday morning, winter storm watches extended from Oklahoma to southern Michigan, including the cities of Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit.The precise track of the storm will determine the type of the precipitation for the major cities along the Eastern Seaboard, which have been pounded with several storms already this season. The National Weather Service is currently expecting a mixture of snow, ice and rain in New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., with a mixture of snow and ice in Boston.

Bands of rain and thunderstorms will occur south of the storm; the thunderstorms have the potential to reach severe levels, perhaps producing isolated tornadoes along the Gulf Coast on Tuesday and Tuesday night. The strong thunderstorms should remain to the north of central Florida, which was hit with damaging thunderstorms last week.

Winter weather advisories, warnings and wind chill warnings are currently in effect from Montana to Iowa and Minnesota for the northern part of the storm.

The very cold air in the northern Rockies and northern Plains — temperatures will approach minus 30 in northern Montana on Monday night — will move into the western part of the storm on Tuesday. Temperatures will be in single digits in the western Plains on Tuesday.

Temperatures will drop into the lower 20s even in Dallas by Tuesday night, with highs barely above freezing on Wednesday and Thursday. Temperatures late last week were in the middle 70s.

The bitterly cold air will not push as far south in the eastern part of the country, but by the second half of the week, sub-zero low temperatures are possible in parts of the Northeast.

Police Arrest 2 Men in 1975 Slaying of Elderly Woman.

LOS ANGELES — On Dec. 17, 1975, 80-year-old Alice Lewis was raped and strangled inside the beach-area home here where she had lived most of her life. Her body was discovered the next day by a nurse who made regular visits.

Detectives worked diligently to solve the senseless slaying of a devout Christian grandmother who had outlived her husband and children, spending her days reading and living in solitude on a quiet street. But 20th-century forensics were no match for the killer, and the case went cold for 33 years.”Back then, the way fingerprints would be useful in a crime scene is if you identified a suspect and then made a match,” said Detective Tim Marcia, who works for the Los Angeles Police Department’s Cold Case Unit. “We didn’t have a database like we do now.”

Nor did earlier detectives have a database for DNA samples. Now police have one, and it is routinely updated with new samples from jailed California inmates. Marcia picked up the Lewis case in 2003, thinking he may find in the database a match to semen from the rape.Now, 35 years after the slaying, two men who were teenagers back in 1975 have been charged with committing the rape and murder during the course of a burglary. One defendant, Kevin Michael Shanahan, is jailed in Minnesota. He appeared in court today and waived an extradition proceeding, so he will arrive in California next week.

“It’s sad, a travesty to see an elderly person brutalized,” Marcia said. “They broke into the residence with the sole purpose of stealing objects and sexually assaulted and killed her.”

Solving the case took some pretty innovative detective work.

When he started looking at the case, Marcia was dismayed to learn that the physical evidence kept in the police locker had been destroyed. On a hunch, he went to the coroner’s office to see if it had any forensic records.

He was lucky -– a vaginal swab existed and it was tested for DNA. The results were entered into a database but had no hits.

Six years later, in 2009, Dennis Vasquez, 52, was arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen property. While he was in jail, his mouth was swabbed for a DNA sample that was placed in the database. Marcia then got a phone call –- he was told he had a match to Lewis’ killing.

Vasquez’s fingerprints were checked against those found at the crime scene and matched as well, Marcia said.

By the time all of this was processed, Vasquez had served time in jail and was back at home in Los Angeles when Marcia knocked on his door with an arrest warrant.

“He acted surprised, but he was extremely nervous,” Marcia said. “During the interview with him, he asked if he was the only person going to jail on this case, and that gave us a clue that more than one individual partook in the crime.”

Vasquez didn’t confess and asked for a lawyer.

Marcia went back to the file and found a set of fingerprints from the crime scene that had no match. So he pored through high school records and identified friends Vasquez hung out with back when he was 17.”Shanahan’s name popped up,” Marcia said.

At the time of Lewis’ slaying, Shanahan was 15 years old and lived near Vasquez — and not far from the victim. The extra set of fingerprints was entered into a law enforcement database and matched Shanahan, who had been arrested for a Colorado bank robbery in 1988, Marcia said.

Shanahan was charged with murder on Dec. 12. Vasquez is awaiting trial.

“It’s very satisfying to solve a case that once was thought to be unsolvable,” Marcia said. “Technology has played a major role in today’s crime fighting, and this case proves it is working well.”

Widespread White Christmas Expected Across US.

For the second consecutive winter, a cold and stormy December has set the stage for a white Christmas across a significant part of the U.S. While snow cover is not likely to be quite as extensive as it was last year, a late-week storm might cover the ground in a magical white in parts of the East by the end of Christmas Day.

The depth of the current snow cover will guarantee a white Christmas in the Rockies and interior parts of the West, as well as in the northern Plains, much of the Ohio Valley, the Great Lakes and interior parts of the Northeast.Snow cover is spotty or completely lacking in parts of the mid-Atlantic region and coastal Northeast, but meteorologists are watching a late-week storm that could change that. Computer models are projecting a storm to move from the central Plains on early Friday to along the New England coast by later on Saturday, spreading snow along its path.

If this storm track materializes, fresh snow would be dumped from Iowa to parts of the Virginias, with a brand-new snow cover a possibility for the major cities along the Eastern Seaboard, from Washington, D.C., to Boston.Early-week storms moving through the West will increase the snow cover in the mountains of the West and Desert Southwest, expanding snow cover into some regions that are bare.

Even with the additional snow this week, snow cover was a little more extensive last Christmas when the combination of Arctic cold and a southern storm produced an abundance of snow.

Snow cover on Dec. 25, 2009, extended farther to the south in the Southwest and Plains than it will this year, with snow on the ground as far south as Dallas. Snow cover was also deep in the Virginias, Maryland, Delaware and southern New Jersey, following the first of a couple of monster snowstorms in what turned out to be the snowiest winter on record.Typically, a white Christmas is a virtual certainty in the high mountains of the West, the extreme northern Plains and interior parts of northern New England, with a likelihood of greater than 90 percent. The likelihood drops to just 5 to 10 percent along a line extending from the Texas Panhandle to southern Virginia.

This year, a white Christmas is likely in much of the region, where there is just a 26 to 40 percent chance on average.

A white Christmas is generally defined as having an inch or more of snow on the ground.

Weather Extremes in 2010 Shattered Slew of Records.

(Nov. 5) — Government forecasters highlighted the potential for “another winter of extremes” in the U.S. in their recently issued 2010-11 winter outlook, and that seems an appropriate assessment coming off a year in which numerous all-time records have been set, ranging from winter cold and snow to summer heat to thousand-year rainfall events.

Winter Snow and Cold

The combination of an active southern storm track and occasional arctic blasts from Canada resulted in a remarkable 2009-10 winter across much of the eastern two-thirds of the United States.All-time seasonal snowfall records were established in the mid-Atlantic region, including in Washington (56.1 inches at Reagan National Airport and 78.7 inches at Dulles International Airport), Philadelphia (78.7 inches) and Atlantic City, N.J. (58.1 inches). February alone resulted in nearly two dozen all-time monthly and single-storm snowfall records.The snow was not limited to the mid-Atlantic region. On Feb. 12, every state except Hawaii reported at least a trace of snow on the ground.

While snow was the focus in February, it was widespread cold that stole the weather headlines from December into early January, when arctic blasts from Canada resulted in bouts of extreme cold.

In early January, high temperatures remained below zero in parts of the northern Plains, and low temperatures plummeted well below freezing even into central Florida. West Palm Beach, Fla., experienced its coldest 12-day stretch since at least 1940, according to the National Weather Service.

The winter was one of the top 10 coldest on record in many Southern states, and it was the coolest December through March on record in Key West, Fla.

Summer Heat

The cold and snow were followed by intense summer heat, the result of a persistent and strong high-pressure system in the upper levels of the atmosphere, which was centered farther to the east than during a typical summer. In a dramatic turnaround, many of the places that had extreme winter cold experienced extreme summer heat.

June through August was the hottest on record in 11 states, from Mississippi to Rhode Island, and 35 of the 48 continental U.S. states had one of the top 16 hottest summers on record. Cities with all-time record-breaking summer heat included Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.

The summer was normal or cooler than average in the Pacific Northwest and California, but a fall Western heat wave resulted in the hottest day on record in downtown Los Angeles. The temperature soared to 113 degrees on Sept. 27, breaking the old record of 112 set on June 26, 1990.

Flooding

Flooding is a common weather hazard in the U.S. every spring and summer, but a couple of events in the past year were particularly noteworthy.

The epic flood in Tennessee in early May is considered to be a 1,000-year event, which means the type of weather event that should occur only once per millennium. Nashville, having sustained more than $1 billion in damage on its own, is the defining location of the two-day storm that dumped about 40 percent of the average annual rainfall in two days. Massive flooding also occurred in much of western and central Tennessee, as well as in parts of Kentucky, northern Mississippi and Arkansas.Arkansas was also the site of a deadly flood a couple of weeks later, when over 10 inches of rain, most of which fell during the overnight hours, resulted in a torrent of water sweeping through campsites. It’s believed that 20 people were killed in the flood.

Possible Winter 2010 Extremes

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration based its winter prediction of more extremes largely on the presence of a La Nina, which is a cooling of sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific that influences global weather patterns.

Across the United States, the most common extremes during a winter with a La Nina include heavier than normal rain and mountain snow in the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies, drought conditions in the southern tier of the country and colder and stormier than normal weather in the northern Plains.