morning, december 7th, 2011. good wednesday morning. i m erica hill. i m chris wragge. nice to be sitting next to you again. good to be sitting next to you. boy, talk about the weather headed our way. yes. a winter blast headed for the east coast. at this hour, snow is falling as far south as memphis, tennessee. this is the same storm that caused a whole lot of trouble in the southwest earlier this week. it could drop half a foot of snow along parts of the atlantic seaboard from north carolina up to maine. areas that don t get snow will get a lot of rain. this is not going to be pretty. chief meteorologist lonnie quinn of wcbs is here this morning. let s get to the satellite and radar picture for the whole u.s. of a. only one game in town and it s on the eastern portion of the country. a lot of rain right now but showed you that picture from memphis. sure enough, memphis picking up light snow. i think you ll pick up a dusting to an inch or snow and by 10:00,
on the eastern portion of the country. a lot of rain right now but showed you that picture from memphis. sure enough, memphis picking up light snow. i think you ll pick up a dusting to an inch or snow and by 10:00, it s gone. then focus on the rain. it s rain right now, because my goodness look at the temperatures. in new york city yesterday, hit 61 degrees. you re not getting snow with 61 degrees. we have had all of this warm, muggy air in place. as of right now we take the temperatures up to around 50 degrees in boston, 55 for new york. that s not going to be snow. strictly rain. what happens is tonight, the cold air filters in and we drop down to the 20s and the 30s and we will be switching over on the tail end of this system. i got to be clear, this is going to be a big rainmaker first, all right? the last two, three, four hours of the storm it will turn over to snow. from roanoke to banger picking up at least an inch of rain and some spots around new york city will be cl