The cyclone could spawn snowfalls of a half inch (1.25 cm) per hour and howling winds gusting to 60 mph (97 kph) from the Upper Midwest to the interior Northeast, producing blizzard conditions and near-zero visibility, the weather service said. Combined with the arctic cold, wind-chill factors as low as 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 40 Celsius) were forecast in the High Plains, the northern Rockies and Great Basin, the NWS said.
can you give us a sense of the bigger picture and how this storm is moving? yeah, so the storm started last night as a small cluster of clouds of the coast of florida. it moved rapidly north east, developing and fuelled by the powerful contrast between this arctic air mass it was 5a below zero fahrenheit up in quebec a couple of days ago and the cold air is moving south, smashing into this rich tropical moisture coming up from the bahamas and that is how you re able to get this prolific snow to accumulate here in parts of coastal massachusetts. the storm actually stalled out its motion a little bit after moving really quickly yesterday and that is how we have been able to get the snow to accumulate for so many hours today, prolonging the impacts from this historic blizzard. we ve heard this phrase bomb cyclone or bombogenesis storm, can you tell us what that means? yeah, so that s a term that means the storm s pressure, it has to do with how fast
this is nbc nightly news with lester holt. good evening, everyone over 60 million of us woke up this morning to windchills at or below zero this evening, two-thirds of the country suffering beneath an arctic air mass and heading into a brutal night, including rare ice storm warnings this evening in parts of the eastern carolinas. places that rarely see such a threat. the weather service pulling no punches widespread power outages likely further south, cities including baton rouge, new orleans and boloxie under freeze warnings our emilie ikeda has details. reporter: tonight another winter wall line up pummelling the northeast. a january freeze in half the country sends temperatures plummeting 20 degrees below this time of year s average. i need all of my layers up, even the mouth and nose. reporter: 12 million are under winter alerts.
derek van dam to explain all of this. i mean, how rare is that in a place like virginia beach, to be seeing 4 inches? virginia beach? we use the words rare on a require occasion and that would be one of them. i think it s fitting. we had snowflakes, i believe, all the way down to myrtle beach as well and charleston. this is just incredible stuff. and it s newsworthy, right? and i m going to show you some images coming out of the wilmington area that was hit hard by ice and sleet. but in the meantime, behind that arctic air mass, we re left with extremely cold temperatures. a hard freeze warning in effect for the central florida peninsula. my grandparents actually used to own orange and citrus farms within this area, so they would always be concerned when temperatures dropped below freezing. i would imagine it s more of the same right now. now, the hard freezing warning extends to the gulf coast states. all the way down to the gulf coast in new orleans, for instance. they had a hard
off the coast of florida. it moved rapidly north east, developing and fuelled by the powerful contrast between this arctic air mass, it was 5a below zero fahrenheit up in quebec a couple of days ago and the cold air is moving south, smashing into this rich tropical moisture coming up from the bahamas and that is how you are able to get this prolific snow to accumulate here in parts of coastal massachusetts. the storm actually stalled out its motion a little bit after moving really quickly yesterday and that is how we have been able to get the snow to accumulate for so many hours today, prolonging the impacts from this historic blizzard. we have heard this phrase, bomb cyclone or bombogenesis storm, can you tell us what that means? yeah, so that s a term that means the storm s pressure, it has to do with how fast the storm is intensifying. the intensity of a storm is measured by its minimum central pressure, if the storm s pressure drops more than 2a millibars in 2a hours at considered