Storm’s arrival brings accumulating snow, treacherous travel to Virginia and West Virginia
A quick-moving swath of accumulating snow and slippery travel will focus along much of the interstates 64, 81 and 85 corridors of Virginia into Monday evening.
Even if you’re confident in your snow driving abilities, it can never hurt to brush up on what will keep you and other drivers safe this winter.
A quick-moving storm is bringing snow and slippery travel to start the workweek for parts of Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina, forecast to last into Monday evening. In the wake of the snow, plunging temperatures will cause wet and slushy areas to freeze, adding to travel woes Monday night into Tuesday morning.
Even though the storm began as a rain event east of the Appalachians, a change to snow will occur as the main body of the storm heads offshore and colder air presses in from the north and west. The cold, dry air will keep accumulating snow away from Washington, D.C., and should keep Philadelphia and New York City dry for the event.
The snow will fall on areas that received snow and experienced wintry travel late last week.
The heaviest snow is forecast to fall over the southwestern part of Virginia to northwestern North Carolina, the northeastern corner of Tennessee and the southeastern part of West Virginia. In this zone, between 3 and 6 inches of snow could pile up on the backside of the storm with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 10 inches. Blacksburg, Virginia, may be close to the heaviest snowfall from the storm.
Farther east, from 1 to 3 inches of snow is forecast in southeastern Virginia to the northern tier of North Carolina. This includes the cities of Richmond, Norfolk and Danville, Virginia. A coating to one inch of wet snow is forecast in Winston-Salem and Raleigh, North Carolina, from the storm.
Motorists should be aware that wet roads at the early part of the storm will quickly transition to wintry conditions, due to the press of cold air and the change to snow that is likely to fall at a moderate to heavy rate.
Farther south along Interstates 77, 81, 85 and 95, rain will fall in cities such as Charlotte, Fayetteville and Asheville, North Carolina, as well as Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee.
But, even where all rain falls from the storm, not all wet areas will have a chance to dry off before temperatures dip below freezing Monday night. As a result, some areas that appear to be wet may be a thin sheet of ice.
The next storm in the sequence, an Alberta Clipper, will mostly affect areas from the Midwest to the Northeast interior. However, snow is forecast to fall on the southern part of the Appalachians as colder air sweeps in behind the storm later Wednesday to early Thursday. Motorists planning on utilizing segments of Interstates 64, 68, 75, 77, 79 and 81 in the region are likely to encounter some wintry conditions along the dozens to hundreds of miles of their travels.
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