December 24, 2009
Mike Chesterfield, Lead Meteorologist
The Weather Channel
A dangerous and multifaceted winter storm will continue to rapidly intensify as it heads out of Texas today taking a position over the Missouri Valley by tonight.
This storm promises to bring widespread travel problems to a large chunk of the country just in time for the Christmas holiday.
Snow will fall to the north and west of the storm track with heavy snow likely throughout the Plains states along with the Upper Midwest.
Snow fall amounts by Friday afternoon in excess of one foot are likely from eastern Nebraska, western Iowa, the Dakotas, Minnesota and Northwestern Wisconsin.
Freezing rain will fall in eastern Iowa, central Wisconsin and western Lower Michigan today.
A wintry mix will be changing over to all snow from Tulsa to Kansas City to Des Moines with several inches of snow possible in these locations by Friday morning.
Winds will gust in excess of 50 miles per hour this afternoon into tonight across a large portion of the central United Sates.
By late tonight the strong winds will whip the snow around in a furry creating 5 to 10 foot drifts in an area that includes the Central and Northern Plains and the western parts of the Upper Midwest.
The heavy snow and extreme wind will create a recipe for blizzard conditions by Christmas morning making travel extremely hazardous if not impossible across the Central and Northern Plains.
On the warm side of this sprawling storm, rain, thunderstorms and wind will increase in coverage from the eastern Southern Plains to the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys during the day today.
Rainfall amounts in excess of 5 inches will be possible across the lower Mississippi Valley northward into Missouri and Illinois.
This rain will be falling on frozen ground to the north and saturated to the south which will likely create serious flooding problems from Arkansas north into Missouri and Illinois today and tonight.
A line of strong to severe thunderstorms will push eastward from Louisiana and southern Arkansas to southern Mississippi, southwest Alabama to the western Florida Panhandle by tonight.
This passage of this line of storms will bring with it torrential rainfall, strong winds and isolated tornadoes.
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