Winter’s about to deliver another major wallop.
A storm from the Midwest is expected to merge with another nor’easter tomorrow – and then converge on Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Northern Delaware.
“Explodes Wednesday” are the words over this area on an AccuWeather.com forecast map.
Before the region can finish digging out from the deepest February snow on record, much more could be on the way, starting tomorrow night.
Likely is at least foot of snow, according to a National Weather Service chart. For Philadelphia, the chance of at least 9 inches of snow is 90 percent, 12 inches 75 percent.
But there could be more.
“Numbers up to 2 feet are not out of the realm of possibility,” reads a morning discussion out of the NWS’s Mount Holly office.
It then mentions “a starting point of 14 to 18 inches over central and northern New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania.”
But those are just preliminary estimates. “It’s too early to talk about that kind of number one way or the other,” cautioned NWS meteorologist Mark DeLisi.
The Midwest storm has only reached Illinois as of this morning, and the North Carolina storm has yet to develop.
Still, it’s unlikely this “double-barrelled system” will prove to be a dud. “The scenario where we get nothing is one of the less probable ones,” he said.
With possibly strong winds, especially at the Shore, blizzard warnings could be issued, as they were for coastal Delaware and New Jersey before the last storm arrived Friday afternoon.
That “Snowmageddon” dumped more than two feet of snow at Philadelphia Internation Airport, and the surrounding counties all the way to the Shore saw a foot and a half or more.
This time, counties farther north aren’t likely to be spared. The storm watch in effect tomorrow night to Wednesday night extends from Washington, D.C. and Baltimore past Scranton
For more on the forecast, go to http://go.philly.com/forecast.
By Peter Mucha
Inquirer Staff Writer
