The Daily Blog

Joplin Tornado: Officials Work To Identify The Deceased And Reduce Number Of People Missing.

JOPLIN, Mo. — Friends and family paid tribute to victims of the Joplin tornado on Friday, beginning the grim task of burying the dead as officials said the savage storm’s death toll had risen to 132 people.

As the first funeral began just over the Kansas border, city officials said the body count had gone up by six from the previous day. The state meanwhile worked to pare down the list of people missing and unaccounted for in the wake of the deadliest single U.S. twister in more than six decades.

The original list of 232 missing or unaccounted for residents had dropped to 156 by Friday, Missouri Department of Public Safety deputy director Andrea Spillars said, adding that at least 90 people on the initial list had been located alive.

But at least six others were identified as among the dead, and some new names had been added to the scroll of the missing. Authorities had cautioned for days that while they believed many on the list were alive and safe, others likely had been killed.

City manager Mark Rohr acknowledged during an afternoon news conference that there may be “significant overlap” between the confirmed dead and the remainder of the missing list. Still, search and rescue crews were undeterred, with 600 volunteers and 50 dog teams out again across the city.

“We’re going to be in a search and rescue mode until we remove the last piece of debris,” Rohr said.

Earlier Friday, hundreds of mourners packed Tennessee Friends Prairie Church in Galena, Kan., for the first funeral of the tornado’s confirmed victims.

Few mentioned the deadly twister, or even the circumstances under which Adam Dewayne Darnaby died four days short of his 28th birthday. Instead, they celebrated the life of a devout Christian who loved his wife of less than three years and was a favorite uncle to nine nieces and nephews.

Darnaby was described as a hunter, former high school football player and avid catfish fisherman who made fast friends. He watched little television because, in the words of a close friend, “he was too busy living.”

The funeral service concluded with a recording of “A Country Boy Can Survive,” a paean to rural life by Hank Williams Jr.

“That tornado was tiny,” said Wes Davis, pastor of Riverton Friends Church in southeast Kansas, which Darnaby attended. “It was no match for Adam Darnaby.”

Numbers describing Sunday’s storm are nothing short of numbing. The tornado – an EF5 monster packing 200 mph winds – was the deadliest since 1950 and more than 900 people were injured.

Tallying and identifying the dead and the missing has proven a complex, delicate and sometimes confusing exercise for both authorities and loved ones.

At least 19 bodies have been released to relatives, Spillars said, a small fraction of the overall count. Identification has been slow because officials have taken extra precautions since a woman misidentified one victim as her son in the chaotic hours after the tornado hit.

Authorities say their deliberate identification efforts are necessary to avoid more mishaps.

“It is important that we be absolutely accurate in this process,” Spillars said.

A federal forensics team of 50 to 75 disaster mortuary specialists has been at work in six refrigerated trucks, collecting DNA samples for testing, taking fingerprints and looking for tattoos, body piercings, moles and other distinctive marks.

Allowing relatives into the morgue to identify loved ones may not be necessary in many cases if those bodies “can be identified using other methods,” Spillars said.

Business leaders, meanwhile, have been tallying the storm’s bleak economic toll. The Joplin Chamber of Commerce announced Thursday that at least 300 businesses and 4,000 jobs were affected by the tornado.

One of the city’s largest employers, St. John’s Hospital, was destroyed. But hospital officials have vowed to rebuild and said they are committed to retaining the hospital’s 2,000 employees.

Home Depot and Wal-Mart, also large employers, say they will rebuild. Dillon’s, a grocery store also destroyed, has not made a commitment.

At Least 25 Dead After Deadly Storm System Rips Through 6 States.

RALEIGH, N.C. — A furious storm system that kicked up tornadoes, flash floods and hail as big as softballs has claimed at least 25 lives on a rampage that began in Oklahoma days ago, then smashed across several Southern states as it reached a new and deadly pitch in North Carolina and Virginia.

Emergency crews searched for victims in hard-hit swaths of North Carolina, where 62 tornadoes were reported from the worst spring storm in two decades to hit the state. At least a half dozen people died just in the Carolinas and Virginia and authorities warned the toll was likely to rise further Sunday as searchers probed shattered homes and businesses.Authorities said at least five people were killed in North Carolina and at least three more in neighboring Virginia during the storm’s passage Saturday before the sprawling, potent storm bands moved eastward over the Atlantic.

The storms claimed its first lives Thursday night in Oklahoma, then roared through Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Seven people each were killed in Arkansas and Alabama, two people in Oklahoma and one person in Mississippi, authorities have said. One of the dead was an elderly man whose trailer was tossed nearly a quarter mile across a state highway.In North Carolina, Gov. Beverly Perdue declared a state of emergency after reporting fatalities in at least four counties. But she declined to immediately confirm an exact number of deaths. She said the 62 tornadoes reported were the most since March 1984, when a storm system spawned 22 twisters in the Carolinas that killed 57 people - 42 in North Carolina - and injured hundreds.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with everybody in North Carolina who has been through this horrible day,” Perdue said.

Authorities in North Carolina said they would provide more details of the death toll later Sunday after checking on the reports of fatalities in at least four counties and in the capital city of Raleigh. Search and rescue teams operated through the night, Perdue said, with damage assessments starting in earnest Sunday after daylight.

“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done in these areas that are most heavily impacted,” said Doug Hoell, the state’s director of emergency management. “There’s a lot of debris out there that’s got to be cleaned up.”

In Virginia, disaster officials said one apparent tornado ripped more than 12 miles long through Gloucester County, uprooting trees and pounding homes to rubble while claiming three lives. Another person was confirmed dead and another remained missing early Sunday after flash flooding elsewhere in Virginia.

Scenes of destruction across the South looked eerily similar in many areas.

In North Carolina, rooftops were ripped off stores, trees were plucked from the ground and scores of homes were damaged, Hoell said.

At one point more than 250,000 people went without power in North Carolina before emergency utility crews began repairing downed lines. But scattered outages were expected to linger at least until Monday before power was fully restored..

Among areas hit by power outages was Raleigh, a bustling city of more than 400,000 people where some of the bigger downtown thoroughfares were blocked by fallen trees early Sunday.

The storm sweeping into North Carolina moved from the state’s western mountain reaches to the coast on Saturday amid utter devastation in some places.

Police and rescue crews began conducting house-to-house searches later Saturday at a mobile home park in north Raleigh, where the storm snapped some trees in half, ripped others out of the ground and tossed some trailers from one side of a street to the other.

In Sanford, about 40 miles southwest of Raleigh, a busy shopping district was pummeled by the storms, with some businesses losing rooftops in what observers described as a ferocious tornado. The Lowe’s Home Improvement Center in Sanford looked flattened, with jagged beams and wobbly siding sticking up from the pancaked entrance. Cars in the parking lot were flipped by the winds.

“It’s very, very bad here,” said Monica Elliott, who works at the nearby Brick City Grill. “We saw a tornado that just rode up over the restaurant.”

Remarkably, no one was seriously injured at the Lowe’s, thanks to a quick-thinking manager who herded more than 100 people into a back area with no windows to shatter.

“It was really just a bad scene,” said Jeff Blocker, Lowe’s regional vice president for eastern North Carolina. “You’re just amazed that no one was injured.”

Cindy Hall, a Red Cross volunteer and outreach minister at First Baptist Church in Sanford, said dozens of homes in the area were damaged.

“It wiped out our St. Andrews neighborhood, which includes about 30 homes,” she said.

To the west, hikers stranded by flash floods had to be rescued.In Virginia, Department of Emergency Management spokesman Bob Spieldenner, said an apparent tornado ploughed through communities of Gloucester County, destroying or damaging homes, uprooting trees in a quiet farming and fishing region along the Chesapeake Bay.

“I know it was a pretty long path,” he said of the reported tornado. “They estimated it was 12 to 14 miles” based on 911 emergency calls.

Authorities said at least three deaths had been confirmed in Gloucester County and at least 60 were injured, most with minor injuries. Spieldenner said one person was killed when a vehicle ran into flash flooding near Waynesboro and another person was missing and a third rescued.

He reported homes and mobile homes damaged and destroyed in a series of other Virginia counties and flash flooding west of Charlottesville that prompted water rescues - including four people rescued unhurt from a car that had plunged into deep water flowing over a street.

Dangerous Storm Threatens Thunderstorms, Tornadoes in Parts of US.

The second major outbreak of dangerous thunderstorms and tornadoes is poised to sweep across parts of the United States in the coming days, following quickly on the heels of a storm that produced more than 1,800 severe weather reports earlier this week, including 66 tornado reports.

The severe weather is expected to be most widespread on Sunday. The Storm Prediction Center, comprising the government’s thunderstorm and tornado forecasting experts, has outlined a large area from the Plains to the Midwest and parts of the South as a potentially dangerous region on Sunday and Sunday night.

The threat includes damaging winds, large hail and tornadoes.

Major metropolitan areas in the risk area on Sunday include Minneapolis, Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Dallas and Little Rock, Ark. The Storm Prediction Center warns of a moderate risk for dangerous storms in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and northern Illinois.Dangerous thunderstorms are also a threat across significant portions of the Plains and Southeast on Saturday, with one region of concern stretching from southern Wisconsin and southern Minnesota to eastern Kansas and a second ranging from the southern Ohio Valley to the Carolinas.

Isolated tornadoes are also a threat today and tonight from the Missouri Valley eastward in Kentucky and Tennessee.

The atmospheric factors contributing to the dangerous weather will be similar to the factors that produced the severe weather earlier this week.An intense north-to-south temperature contrast will combine with strong upper-level winds that can come to the ground in the form of damaging wind gusts. Atmospheric wind shear — which creates turbulence in planes — will provide the spin necessary for tornado development.

Warmer weather will precede the approaching storm system, with temperatures climbing well into the 80s in Little Rock on Saturday and Sunday and to near 80 as far north as Chicago and Des Moines, Iowa, on Sunday. And the change to cooler air behind the storm will be dramatic; temperatures will be 15 to 25 degrees cooler by early next week.The storm system will lose some of its punch by the time it moves from the eastern Ohio and Tennessee valleys to the Eastern Seaboard on Monday; however, dangerous thunderstorms are still a threat there. Temperatures will jump into the 80s along the Eastern Seaboard on Monday and then drop to the high 60s by the middle of the week.

The severe weather seen earlier this week was centered farther to the south and east than the expected weekend outbreak, but the regions will overlap in parts of the Midwest and South.

From early Monday through early Tuesday, 1,471 preliminary reports of severe weather were tallied, which is believed to be a 24-hour record. The reports remain preliminary and are therefore subject to change as more information arrives, and the records for such statistics have been kept only since 2000.

April Could Shower Some of US With More Snow.

Late-season snow has been fairly common from the western mountains to parts of the East Coast this year, and a persistent weather pattern of cooler-than-average temperatures and an active storm track means that more of the same is likely in the coming weeks.

In other words, it might be April snow — not showers — that brings May flowers for some of us.

A couple of late-season snow producers will be on the weather map this week alone, with the greatest threat being in interior parts of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast from Thursday night through Friday. A storm moving northward through this region has the potential to produce heavy, wet snow from West Virginia northward into parts of New York state and interior New England.This storm will follow on the heels of a storm that will track from western Kansas today to offshore of the mid-Atlantic region Wednesday night. It will be chilly enough for a little snow along the northern fringe of the storm; however, snow amounts will not be as impressive as they were with a weekend storm that took a similar track.

To the south of this initial storm, dangerous thunderstorms will once again be a danger today and tonight, with thunderstorms capable of producing large hail, damaging winds and isolated tornadoes in eastern Texas, Louisiana and southern Mississippi.Regardless of the amount of snow that these next two storms produce, the overall weather pattern will remain favorable for late-season snow through at least the first week of April.

The Climate Prediction Center is forecasting cooler-than-average temperatures across the entire northern tier of the country into at least the second week of April, with the likelihood of more precipitation than normal in the Pacific Northwest and northern Plains, as well as from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, including the mid-Atlantic region.

April and even May snowfall is far from unprecedented across the northern tier of the country, including the mid-Atlantic region and Northeast.

In Pittsburgh, the latest accumulating snow (3.1 inches) occurred on May 3, 1966. In Albany, N.Y, a trace of snow has occurred as late as May 28 (1902), and the April snowfall record is 17.3 inches, on April 6, 1982.

The overall weather pattern of chilly storms tracking across the northern half of the country is fairly typical of a spring with an on-going La Nina. The La Nina is a cooling of the water in the equatorial Pacific, which, in turn, influences global weather patterns. Across the United States, one the primary effects is a more active than normal northern storm track, which often persists into spring.

The current La Nina has begun to weaken in recent weeks, and government experts expect it to dissipate by June.

More Snow, Flooding, Dangerous Thunderstorms This Weekend.

If the months were assigned personalities, then March would most likely be labeled emotional and moody. It’s capable of prolonged periods of warmth and tranquility, but a fit of weather rage is just as likely.

A storm moving from the Rockies today to the mid-Atlantic region on Sunday will be fairly representative of a multifaceted spring storm, producing weather ranging from accumulating snow to dangerous thunderstorms to flooding.

New snow accumulations will locally exceed a foot in the mountains of Utah and Colorado today, where, combined with winds in excess of 25 mph, travel will be hampered. Meanwhile, the extremely heavy snow in the California Sierra will begin to wind down, but not before storm totals reach 2 to 4 feet.

Snow will spread into Plains tonight and Saturday, where late-March snow is not as common as in the mountains. And the snow will then likely streak eastward into the eastern Plains and northern Missouri Valley on Saturday, an area with average high temperatures in the lower 50s. Accumulations will not be impressive by winter standards, but a few inches of snow will accumulate on unpaved surfaces.By Saturday night and Sunday, accumulating snow is a possibility as far east as parts of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, Maryland and southwestern Pennsylvania, with a chilly rain or perhaps wet snow in the lower elevations, including the cities of Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Thunderstorms are often a greater danger to lives and property with spring storm systems than the snow, and strong thunderstorms are a threat in the Plains and the South today and Saturday.The region most likely to experience hail, damaging winds and isolated tornadoes today is eastern Oklahoma, northeastern Texas, Arkansas and northern Louisiana. The greatest risk for intense thunderstorms will shift eastward to Tennessee, northern Mississippi, northern Alabama and northern Georgia on Saturday.

The rain associated with the storm will generally not be extreme, but it will add to existing flooding problems in parts of the Plains, the mid-Atlantic region and the Deep South, where recent rain and melting snow farther upstream has resulted in rising rivers.

Much of the region with the most widespread, ongoing river flooding — eastern South Dakota, southern Minnesota and much of Iowa — will miss the heaviest precipitation. And the precipitation that falls will be mainly in the form of snow, which will not immediately flow into the rivers.

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.

Say It Ain’t Snow: Midwest, East to Get Socked Again.

A complex and intense winter storm will result in dangerous weather across a large portion of the country, from the Plains to the Eastern Seaboard, during the next couple of days, snarling road and air traffic, closing schools and causing power outages.

The dangerous weather will range from blizzard conditions in the Midwest, including Chicago, to a wintry mix in the cities along the Eastern Seaboard and dangerous thunderstorms along the Gulf Coast.

An initial band of snow, mixed with freezing rain, will race eastward through the Ohio Valley and mid-Atlantic region today and tonight, resulting in moderate accumulations of snow and some travel-related delays.The most intense snow and wind will occur from late tonight into Wednesday as the main part of the storm system gains strength and moves from the southern Plains into the upper Midwest. Snowfall will be more than 16 inches in some locations on the northern and western sides of the storm, where the combination of snow and wind will result in a full-fledged blizzard, with temperatures falling through the 20s.

The major cities in this corridor include Kansas City, Mo., Chicago and Detroit.Close to the track of the storm, a battle between the cold air to the north and unseasonably mild air to the south of the storm will result in a dangerous mixture of snow, sleet and freezing rain. A significant buildup of ice — locally more than .50 inches — will result in dangerous travel and the potential for downed trees and power lines.

This icy corridor will extend from the south-central Plains through the Ohio Valley into the mid-Atlantic and parts of the Northeast. The major cities along the Eastern Seaboard will be in the region where a mixture of precipitation will fall.

Washington, D.C., will have the least amount of icy precipitation, with an extended period of rain as temperatures race to near 50 degrees on Wednesday.

The precipitation will likely change over to plain rain for a time even in New York City, which established a monthly record for January snowfall with last week’s storm. The National Weather Service is expecting 2 to 5 inches of snow and perhaps a half-inch of ice before the changeover to ice and rain, however. Boston, being farthest north, is the most likely to have a mainly snow and ice event.From the Deep South to the Carolinas, the air will be much too warm for any frozen precipitation, but the storm will still pack a punch. Gusty thunderstorms — capable of producing flooding downpours, hail and damaging winds — will occur. Isolated tornadoes are even a threat, especially along the Gulf Coast on Tuesday through Tuesday night.

Bitterly cold air will accompany the storm in parts of the Plains and Midwest — daytime temperatures will be below zero as far south as western Nebraska on Tuesday afternoon, and temperatures will fall to below zero in Chicago by Wednesday night.

Subzero temperatures are possible in parts of the Northeast by Thursday night.

Here Comes More Snow, From Deep South to New England.

Winter storm watches and warnings are in effect from the Deep South to New England for another significant winter storm system, one that will spread snow, sleet, rain and strong thunderstorms along its path during the next couple of days.

Snow amounts might reach a foot in the hardest-hit areas in the mountains of West Virginia, northwestern New Jersey, southeastern New York and southern and eastern parts of New England, including Boston, Hartford and Providence. The major cities farther to the south along the Eastern Seaboard will be spared the highest accumulation of snow, but even there, snow and ice are likely to produce travel delays by the time the storm winds down.

A number of storms this winter have brought the worst conditions to the Eastern Seaboard, but a slightly more inland track, combined with milder air from the south and east, will shift the focus of the current storm farther inland, except across New England, where enough cold air is expected to remain in place to result in mainly snow.The accumulating snow will begin as far south as northern Mississippi, northern Alabama and much of Tennessee this afternoon and tonight as cold air pours into the ongoing storm. Rain will change to heavy, wet snow, accumulating as much as a few inches.

The storm will ride northward through the mid-Atlantic region on Wednesday and through New England from Wednesday night through Thursday.

Washington, D.C., New York City and even most likely Philadelphia will experience a complete changeover to rain, with sleet and rain possibly mixing with the snow in Boston for a time. Regardless, the National Weather Service is forecasting 8 to 12 inches of snow in Boston.For New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, the rain will change back to snow before the storm ends Wednesday night or Thursday, resulting in slippery roads. Any accumulation of snow will be light as far south as Washington, but a few inches of snow could quickly pile up in New York City.

The heaviest snow will occur where it will remain cold enough for snow during the entire event, and the combination of snow and wind will be fairly intense from northwestern New Jersey to eastern Maine as the storm begins to intensify on its northeastward track.

Along the Gulf Coast, the storm system will bring much-needed rain in the form of showers and thunderstorms. The thunderstorms, however, have the potential to produce damaging winds and isolated tornadoes, mainly across Florida this afternoon and tonight.

While a northwesterly wind following the storm will bring colder air into the Northeast and mid-Atlantic during the latter part of this week, it will not be as bitterly cold as it was last weekend through Monday, when numerous locations had low temperatures well below zero.

However, another bitter blast of Arctic air is likely to arrive during the first part of next week.

Messy Storm to Spread Snow, Ice and Rain Across East.

A mixture of snow, ice and rain from a complex storm system will interrupt travel and potentially cause power outages in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast from tonight into Wednesday.

The core of the storm will be much milder than the powerhouse snowstorm that hit much of the region last week, but with cold air in place, precipitation will begin as freezing rain or snow from Washington to Boston before changing to rain.

The snow and ice accumulation will be fairly light in Washington, but a few hours of icy roads and travel delays are possible early tonight.The mixture of snow, freezing rain and sleet will arrive later — and last longer — in Philadelphia and New York, with the potential for frozen precipitation to linger into Tuesday’s morning commute before changing to rain. The frozen precipitation will last well into Tuesday in Boston.

The snow, rain and ice are expected to exit northern New England on Wednesday.

The hardest-hit areas will be farther inland, where the cold air will be much slower to give way to the relatively mild air from the south. Snow accumulations will not be extreme, especially compared with recent Eastern snowstorms, but 6 inches of snow will accumulate in parts of upstate New York and northern New England.

A lighter accumulation of snow — generally 3 inches or less — will be followed by a light to moderate accumulation of freezing rain and sleet from northeastern Pennsylvania to western Massachusetts. Not only will travel be difficult, but the accumulation of freezing rain on power lines and trees raises the prospects of power outages.

The overall weather pattern that will create the complex storm this week is similar to the one that produced the intense Northeast snowstorm last week. One storm will ride northward along the Atlantic Coast while a second crosses the Midwest into the East. This time, though, the storms will not mergeThe western part of the storm system — also not as intense as last week’s — will produce some snow and mixed precipitation. Light snow, generally under 3 inches, will occur from the northern Plains to the upper Midwest, including Minneapolis and Chicago, from today into tonight. A light mixture of precipitation will move through the Ohio Valley tonight into Tuesday.

Generally, light rain will occur as far south as Tennessee and parts of the Deep South, regions slow to recover from the recent major winter storm.

Another shot of colder than normal air will follow the storm system into the Midwest and Northeast by the middle part of the week. High temperatures will most likely be no higher than the teens in interior parts of the Northeast by Thursday.  in time to produce as strong of a storm along the Eastern Seaboard.

Another Northeast Blizzard on the Way?

The storm that’s paralyzing parts of the Deep South will merge with another one moving through the Plains and Midwest today to produce an intense storm off the Northeast coast by Tuesday night and Wednesday.

The combination of snow and wind could result in blizzard or near-blizzard conditions from northern New Jersey to eastern New England, including New York City and Boston, disrupting air and road travel and closing schools. This is the same area that was pounded by the post-Christmas blizzard.

National Weather Service winter storm watches for this region warn of the potential for six to 12 inches of snow, with locally higher amounts.

A blizzard is a storm with a sustained wind (or frequent gusts) of 35 mph and visibility lowered to less than one-quarter of a mile in snow or blowing snow for a minimum of three hours. In other words, it is a reflection of the intensity of the storm, not the amount of snow that accumulates.The storm is expected to move through the Northeast too quickly for the kind of widespread 20-inch-plus snow amounts that piled up with the late-December storm. However, winds of greater than 35 mph will occur during the height of the storm in some areas, resulting in extremely limited visibility, dangerous travel conditions and severe blowing and drifting of snow.The worst of the storm will again bypass Washington and Baltimore, where lower amounts of snow — generally 2 to 4 inches — are predicted for Tuesday afternoon and night. These were among the cities that had record-breaking snowfall from the powerful storms that occurred last winter.

How bad conditions get in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey will depend on how quickly the storm strengthens Tuesday. The sooner the storm ramps up, the more intense it will be; however, it will not intensify quickly enough to result in snow accumulations approaching those of late December.

National Weather Service watches for this part of the northern mid-Atlantic region warn of the possibility of snow in excess of 4 inches, with visibilities lowering to less than one-half mile.

Before the system in the Atlantic comes together, the storms in the South and the Midwest will produce their share of weather problems.

Snow, freezing rain and sleet will result in dangerous travel and possible power interruptions across the Carolinas, Georgia and eastern Tennessee today, and travel conditions will remain dangerous in central Tennessee and Alabama even though the bulk of the precipitation there has ended. Cleanup operations will continue in Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Numerous weather watches and warnings remain in effect across the Deep South.The storm moving from the Plains through the Midwest today and Tuesday will leave a swath of accumulating snow in its path. The heaviest snow — approaching a foot — has already fallen in western and central Nebraska, and several inches of snow will extend through the Midwest and Ohio Valley through Tuesday.

Winter storm watches from the Midwestern storm are in effect as far east as western Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia.

It’s not uncommon for the energy from two storms to merge and rapidly intensify offshore as they move up the Atlantic Coast. The storms are typically called nor’easters because the counterclockwise flow around the storms results in strong northeast winds.