Midwest braces for ice storm risk

An icy storm will make for treacherous travel for the Midwest from Wednesday to Thursday morning.

Transcript

00:00This storm is just jam-packed here from the central to the eastern United States

00:04and they pretty much go in order of significance. So I think the ice is going to be the biggest

00:08concern with this especially across parts of the northeast. Power outages and dangerous travel

00:14will go hand in hand there with the ice. There will be some thunderstorms. Those could be strong

00:18enough to produce hail and damaging wind. Overall a smaller area from Kentucky to Tennessee down

00:22into northern parts of Mississippi and eastern Arkansas and a few inches of snow but most of

00:27the snow is going to be in areas that are very well equipped for the snow. Regardless of course

00:32snow can still cause some tricky travel. Highest elevations could get six inches or more after the

00:36local storm acts up to nine inches. Behind the precipitation there's going to be some cold and

00:41gusty winds to follow the storm 40 to 50 miles per hour. So maybe you're more of a visual learner

00:47and a map is more helpful. I mean this map pretty much shows exactly what all those bullets did with

00:52all of the different areas of snow from Bismarck, Minneapolis and a large area where we're going to

00:57get mixed precipitation. Mostly some ice here causing concern and then farther south of the

01:03storm track where we'll have thunderstorms and areas of rain. Those thunderstorms as I mentioned

01:07strong to severe. Bowling Green, Kentucky, Nashville, Tennessee over into Memphis where risk for the

01:14severe weather. That's some risk meaning severe thunderstorms possible in parts of the area.

01:18A hail and damaging wind would likely spark any kind of severe thunderstorm warnings. But the ice

01:23I think that's what's going to be remembered most here from this storm and actually the second storm

01:27that Bernie was tracking into California that will take a similar track and also cause icy

01:31concerns. Indianapolis, Peoria, Des Moines localized ice as we head into Thursday morning across

01:39Pennsylvania into North Jersey. That's where we do believe the ice will be more significant.

01:44Cleveland, Ohio I mean it only takes a little bit of ice to be very slippery on sidewalks and

01:49untreated roads. About a 500th of an inch up to a 15th of an inch of ice from seven o'clock on

01:55Wednesday into early on Thursday morning. Let's follow future radar as things unfold here a bit

02:01more really wide perspective. But it shows you pretty nice here the areas that are going to be

02:05dealing with the rain and the storms versus the ice. And I think the timing of this should be

02:09beyond the evening commute in Chicago for Wednesday night. But we could still have lingering problems

02:14by Thursday morning. Detroit a rough Thursday morning. I expect delays if not cancellations

02:20here across the northeast with the ice and then what could start off as snow for some of us

02:25and then changing over to ice as we head into later in the morning before things be able to

02:30clear out later in the day on Thursday. And temperatures come back up. Snow amounts highest

02:35in the higher elevations but Burlington down into Hartford could get one to three inches of snow.

02:40We'll follow the exclusive Accurather 70 forecast in Cleveland where it's Wednesday

02:44into Thursday with ice. Friday's a break and then Saturday more icy concerns.