If you are anything like me, when you think of the name Ezra, you think of the band Better Than Ezra.
While I would love to see them in concert someday and I could talk about them a bunch, I'll stay focused on the topic at hand.
Winter Storm Ezra is inbound across the Upper Midwest and Northeast, expected to bring snow, rain and wind to areas just impacted by Winter Storm Devin.
The storm will rapidly strengthen as it moves over the Upper Midwest on Sunday and will be a quick mover through the Great Lakes on Monday and reaching north of Maine by Tuesday.
The first flakes fell across the Rockies on Saturday. You can see where rain and snow are falling right now on the map below:
What to Expect
Ezra's impacts will begin as rainfall across the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes as temperatures are still on the mild side across the region.
Showers should begin for the Upper Midwest, including cities like Minneapolis, Des Moines, Chicago and Green Bay, before transitioning to a wintry mix and then mainly snow by Sunday night.
Day By Day
Let's break down each day:
By Sunday evening:
Upper Midwest: Precipitation will start as rain and quickly transition to a mix and eventually snow as the day progresses
Northeast: Ice will begin across interior portions of New England. Rain is expected across western New York. Rain is expected for major metropolitan areas by the evening.
Great Lakes: Western sides of the Great Lakes will see the transition to snow, but the eastern sides will still see rain through Sunday evening.
Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys: Across the southern end of Ezra, some severe thunderstorms are possible Sunday afternoon into the evening hours. The greatest chance of storms stretches from Arkansas to western Pennsylvania.
Monday:
Upper Midwest: Snowfall will begin to wrap up through the day on Monday, ending for Minneapolis by the morning and lasting into the afternoon for parts of Wisconsin.
Northeast: Ice will continue for interior portions of New England and rainfall wil continue for the major metropolitan cities.
Great Lakes: Lake effect snowfall will continue across western portions of the Great Lakes. For the eastern Great Lakes, rain will transition to snow through the day and could be heavy at times.
How Much Snow/Ice?
The heaviest snow will fall on the south side of relatively warm Lake Superior in communities like Marquette, Michigan. Multiple feet of snow could fall there.
Believe it or not, Marquette is over a foot below where they should be in December, so this snowfall could help the city end the month closer to average.
Elsewhere, 3-12 inches of snow is expected across the Upper Midwest, including the Twin Cities, Green Bay and Duluth, Minnesota. Lighter snow is possible throughout the northern Plains.
For parts of the interior Northeast, ice accumulation is expected to reach 1/10 of an inch Sunday afternoon into Monday. This ice will cause hazardous travel for the Monday morning commute and could also cause some power outages.
Big Chill Coming Down The Plains, Too
As someone who hates the cold, I have to have a section here for anyone in these areas that hate the cold as much as I do.
And I hope you have been outside these last few days because the warm Christmas temperatures that we've just gotten to know and love are about to come to an end.
This winter storm will open the floodgates, or should I say coldgates, for frigid air to come pouring down the Plains, Midwest and into the South and East over the next few days.
In some spots, temperatures will drop by 30-40 degrees.
Take Minneapolis and Des Moines, which have highs of 35 and 43 on Sunday, respectively. But by Monday, they drop below 20 for their highs.
Chicago will see a high in the 50s on Sunday, while St. Louis will see a pleasant high of 71. Fast forward to Monday, and both cities won't get out of the 20s.
The South, Too
Us in the South are not immune from the cold either.
Dallas and Atlanta have a high in the 70s on Sunday, specifically 79 in Dallas and 71 in Atlanta.
The cold air drops to the South on Monday, where Dallas won't get out of the 50s. Atlanta has one more day of warmer temperatures but Tuesday's high will barely climb into the 40s.
The cold air is short-lived for the south and temperatures will rebound by the end of the week, but the cold will remain for the North.
Rob Shackelford is a meteorologist and climate scientist at weather.com. He received his undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Georgia studying meteorology and experimenting with alternative hurricane forecasting tools.
