A late-season winter storm has made its way from the South to the Northeast, dumping snow along the way and bringing freezing temperatures to the South Sunday morning.
Parts of northern Missouri, Alabama, and Georgia saw accumulations between one and four inches, and totals increased as the storm tracked north, the National Weather Service reports. As of Saturday night, six to twelve inches were documented in parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and parts of interior New England.
At around 3:00 p.m., Pennsylvania State Trooper Megan Ammerman tweeted that there was a 73 car pileup on Route 581. Ammermann said 10 individuals sustained “minor to moderate” injuries and that 43 vehicles were damaged.
The storm has brought howling winds, leaving 100s of thousands without power, the Weather Channel reported. A possible tornado may have touched down in Ocala, Florida, and winds in Charleston tossed a container off of a truck and onto a police car while also knocking over multiple tractor-trailers.
The storm is a bomb cyclone, NBC News reported.
Winter storm expert Judah Cohen of Atmospheric Environmental Research, based outside of Boston, spoke to the Associated Press about the storm before its arrival:
A bomb cyclone has nothing to do with explosions, except in how explosive a storm develops. It is when a storm intensifies rapidly by losing pressure quickly, dropping at least 24 millibars in 24 hours. In this case, computer models forecast this storm to drop from around 1006 millibars in Alabama, be down to around 976 in Boston and in the 960s by the time it hits Canada, Cohen said.
“With this bomb cyclone, maybe what’s the biggest concern is how late in the season its coming and that it’s traveling over inland areas,” Cohen told the outlet.
Cohen’s concern is rooted in the freezing temperatures expected in the south Sunday morning that will pose a severe threat to budding plants.
“These cold and potentially record breaking temperatures could pose a threat to sensitive vegetation and unprotected outdoor plumbing in the Southeast,” the National Weather Service reports.
The Weather Channel forecasts the following lows:
- Atlanta, GA – 20 degrees
- Charlotte, NC – 21 degrees
- Memphis, TN- 27 degrees
- Nashville, TN – 19 degrees
- Tallahassee, FL – 25 degrees
Knoxville, Nashville, Raleigh, Atlanta, and Mobile will all flirt with record lows, according to the Weather Channel.
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