From Texas to Maine, this weekend will be icy and dicey for 230 million Americans. One of the country’s most notable meteorologists, The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore, explained to The Daily Wire the impact and consequences of this weekend’s forecasted winter storm and frigid temperatures.
Much of the country will experience three different types of precipitation from this storm: snow, sleet, and freezing rain, according to Cantore.
“In Dallas, they’re gonna have multiple precipitation types. They’re going to start to snow, maybe go to freezing rain, and then end with the snow again,” Cantore said. “Nashville starts to snow, sleet, freezing rain. Then ends as snow or freezing drizzle. Washington D.C. starts to snow, heavy snow, goes to sleet, then freezing rain, maybe even a little rain just east of D.C., and then back to cold behind this cold front.”
The three types of precipitation are why Cantore says the forecast for the storm, officially named Winter Storm Fern, has fluctuated over the last week.
“All those cities I just mentioned are going to have different precipitation types at different times,” Cantore explained. “Exactly how much time you spend in the sleet, the freezing rain, the snow, it’s hard to forecast that. But at the end of the day, if there’s a two-inch liquid equivalent of all of that, that’s the pie. So how you cut up that pie into sleet, freezing rain, snow, rain — sometimes you can’t do it until the day of the actual event.”
Cantore says the worst part about the storm forecasted to cover more than half the country is that everyone affected will likely see ice, which can be the most dangerous form of precipitation.
“An inch of freezing rain in parts of Northern Louisiana, maybe even North Texas, in Northern Mississippi is a disaster because timber is one of their major economic inputs. So they have huge amounts of timber in Mississippi, and now you’re talking about one inch or two of ice — so they’re gonna lose trees, they’re gonna lose power lines. Two inches of ice on a power line weighs about 2,250 pounds. Even if they get an inch and a half, that is bad enough. That’s still 800 to 1,300 pounds, a tremendous weight on those lines.”
Cantore said it doesn’t take much ice to have severe consequences.
“You can have power loss with a 1/4 inch of ice. You can get more extensive power loss with a 0.5-inch [of ice]. Severe widespread power loss with 3/4 of an inch, and once you get over one inch of ice, now you’re talking about bringing the lines down and trees down,” Cantore said.
Areas affected by more than an inch of ice could be without power for more than a week, according to Cantore. The time frame to restore power depends on how quickly the ice thaws, which may not be immediate. The meteorologist explained that an arctic cold front follows Winter Storm Fern. For the South, Cantore estimates a thaw to begin sometime Tuesday or Wednesday.
The unpredictability of the storm and cold front calls for preparedness. Friday is almost too late, according to Cantore, but he suggests getting a generator if one is available, having a gas grill for cooking if power goes out, and stocking up on blankets and firewood to stay warm.
Cantore will ride out the storm in New York City, where the city could break its record for most consecutive days below freezing, which currently stands at 14.
“This is a big deal. We will likely have hundreds of thousands of people without power because of this large area of freezing rain potential, and that is a huge concern,” Cantore said.
.png)
.png)
