Weather forecasters warn there is an increasing chance that a winter storm will hit millions of people in the U.S. East Coast this week, the biggest in years, NBC News reported Tuesday.
The intense northeaster is threatening to bring tons of snow, powerful winds and the risk of floodwaters to parts of the region around Wednesday or Thursday.
The most populous cities that will be affected include New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Boston.
It has been almost five years since New York city has seen more than a foot of snow in one storm, when Central Park registered its largest snowstorm with almost 28 inches in January 2016. The last storm to blanket the city in at least 6 inches was in November 2018.
The storm, which will eventually become a northeaster, was still 3,000 miles from the area as of Monday and was to hit the Pacific Northwest with heavy snow in Washington and Oregon.
Damp air coming from the Atlantic Ocean will bring heavy snowfall to the northern part of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland by Wednesday afternoon. These urban areas will see several inches of snow soon after.
Snow is anticipated in the central Plains and the Rockies on Tuesday, along with scattered rains and storms across the southern Plains all the way to the Southeast, the National Weather Service announced.
A high-pressure buildup is currently monitored over the Great Lakes, which will cause a low-pressure system to gain strength as it nears the Appalachians.
Forecasters noted that what makes this storm significant is a strong, cold high-pressure system emerging from Canada that's seen to keep cold temperature in place in the Northeastern part of the U.S.
According to Tyler Hamilton, a meteorologist at The Weather Network, Arctic air that will flow down to the U.S. through Canada will be like "lighting a match to the system."
