Historic winter storms on both coasts to begin 2017

By Jesse Ferrell

1/06/2017, 9:53:27 PM

Parts of the Carolinas and Virginia will get more snow than they have this century, while California faces the most rain and snow in 20 years. Sound crazy? It's just how we're starting off 2017.

AccuWeather.com Headlines 1/6

First, we're predicting over a foot of snow from Charlotte, North Carolina to Norfolk, Virginia.

That would make for a Top 10 storm for those locations. Top storm totals for snow are 20.3 inches for Raleigh RDU and 18.6 inches for Norfolk. While we may not break those, this will be the biggest storm since at least the Boxing Day Blizzard of 2010 (and in Raleigh's case, the biggest storm since the year 2000 -- while there was more than a foot of snow to the northeast of the city, the Boxing Day Blizzard only dropped about 7 inches on the airport at RDU).

Following the snowstorm this weekend, temperatures will bottom out to levels not seen since 1996, while threatening "coldest day" records back to 1970, and establishing new record lows for the first half of January.

On Wednesday, the U.S. GFS Forecast Model predicted an area of temperatures below -10 in eastern North Carolina Monday Morning!

Here are some specific numbers to compare:

GFS Forecast | Record Low 9th | Record Low 1st-15th
Fayetteville, NC: -11 / +9 / +7
Raleigh, NC: -11 / 0 / 0
Goldsboro, NC: -9 / +8 / 0
Charlotte, NC: 0 / 4 / -1

Now to California. Our story says this could be the worst flooding since 1997. We're literally predicting 16 inches of rain and 10 feet of snow for parts of the state from Saturday to Tuesday. I'm not sure in my 20 years at AccuWeather that I've ever seen us put numbers that high on a map!

Who knows, by the end of the season, Mammoth Mountain could challenge their record snow season of 2010 which was 668 inches (55.6 feet). They have already seen 140 inches in the first six days of the month ) 84 inches in three days this week) and the January record is only 182!

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of AccuWeather, Inc. or AccuWeather.com

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