A Winter Storm Watch has been issued for all of Northeast Illinois and most of Northwest Indiana ahead of a massive winter storm system expected to bring blizzard conditions to the region later this week.
TIMELINE, SNOW PROJECTIONS, AND CHRISTMAS TRAVEL IMPACTS AMID BLIZZARD-LIKE CONDITIONS
According to the FOX Forecast Center, there remains uncertainty in how far east the snow will spread, with some indication that it might reach as far as Wisconsin by sunset. However, the snow should remain relatively light, with only a few inches expected.Wednesday night, the snow will continue to spread south and eastward ahead of the cold front, potentially reaching as far south as Oklahoma and as far east as Michigan by early Thursday.
That will allow heavy snow, fueled by moisture from the Great Lakes, to bury portions of the Midwest. The dangerous combination of high winds and falling snow could reduce visibility to near-zero at times, which would make travel virtually impossible for some parts of the region in the days leading up to Christmas weekend.
More than a foot of snow is likely across portions of northern and southeastern Wisconsin, northeastern Illinois, northern Indiana and western and northern Michigan. This could potentially include the cities of Chicago and Milwaukee. At least scattered power outages are expected, and more widespread outages are certainly possible. Again, this would be a dangerous situation with the bitterly cold temperatures and wind chills arriving Friday night and continuing through Christmas weekend.In addition to the wind, between 1 and 3 inches of rain is expected to soak the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, with localized totals exceeding 3 inches not ruled out.
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