Unlike the big Pacific storms that slammed the West Coast last week, thisfellow is likely to be pretty harmless as it crosses the Southwest Wednesday.Thursday, the storm will tap into a warmer air mass over the Gulf of Mexico,and that is when it will start picking up some steam. Thursday is the time itwill start snowing pretty hard across the southern Plains.
The southern track of the storm is made possible by the low-latitude jetstream. If you remember back to a week ago, the jet was coming acrossCalifornia then turning abruptly northward toward Canada. In fact, the stormtrack has shifted so far south, that this storm could blow through the centralAtlantic region Friday and Saturday and completely miss most of Pennsylvania,upstate New York and New England.
Story by AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist John Kocet.
