The second in a line of nasty storms is forecast to sweep across a 2,000-mile stretch of the United States, from Colorado to New England, cutting power and snarling traffic for as many as 100 million people.
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It’s a “significant” snow storm, said The Weather Channel’s Kevin Roth. “There may be more than 12 inches (30 cm) from central New York into New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts overnight Tuesday.”
The storm could dump more than 12 inches of snow on Kansas and Nebraska on Tuesday before moving north to dump between five and eight inches on Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis and Detroit, Roth said. Schools across Kansas and Missouri, states expected to bear the brunt of the new round of snow, have closed—and flight cancellations are mounting. Flight disruptions are slated to cost $2.5 billion.
The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings across 15 states early Tuesday from the Rockies to southern Maine, and another 12 states were placed on a winter weather watch
In southeastern Oklahoma, ice accumulation could be heavy enough to affect power lines, Weather.com said.
Ice could also accumulate in western Pennsylvania, western Maryland, northwest Virginia, and eastern West Virginia and threaten power outages starting Tuesday.
In Ohio, the storm dropped as much as 10 inches on Monday. In New York City, even snowplows got stuck.
Across the Plains and Midwest, temperatures are expected to be 15 to 25 degrees below average for this time of the year, according to the National Weather Service. Some 60 million Americans can now expect their heating bills to soar by more than 50 percent, a 4.5 billion-dollar hit.
Americans facing heating bill costs.
A third storm is also likely to form over the weekend according to Guy Walton, a forecaster with The Weather Channel, although it is too early to tell the orientation or path of the storm.