Post-holiday travelers could see winter-like conditions across Midwest

The same storm that will unload 1-2 feet of snow on the Rockies into Friday will pivot across the Plains and the Midwest with winter-like travel conditions in store for a 1,200-mile-long swath of the central United States this weekend, AccuWeather meteorologists warn.

The season's first widespread and significant lake-effect snow will follow the storm early next week.

Even though the storm will be at its peak while over the Rockies, it will manage to pull in some moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and produce accumulating snow from Kansas and Nebraska to Illinois and Michigan soon after it completes its southward dip on Saturday morning.

"The heaviest snow east of the Rockies will fall on portions of Kansas," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson said, adding, "A pocket of 6-12 inches of snow is most likely to fall on the central counties of the state."

The snowfall accumulation is likely to taper down with the storm as it rolls northeastward. However, the zone from Topeka and Wichita, Kansas, to Kansas City is likely to pick up a general 1-3 inches of snow with locally higher amounts.

Because much of the snow is likely to occur at night, when air and road surface temperatures will dip, roads are likely to become slippery.

Temperatures will fall into the lower to middle 20s in much of the snow area and may drop as low as the upper teens in some locations. Bridges and overpasses will likely become icy first -- perhaps as soon as the snow begins Saturday evening.

As the storm continues to move along, snow will fall on a large part of the Midwest, mainly during the day on Sunday.

A general coating to an inch or two of snow will fall from Illinois and southern Wisconsin to the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, northern Indiana and northwestern Ohio.

Temperatures will likely hover near or just above freezing in the Midwest as the snow falls, which will be enough to make for mainly wet travel as opposed to snow-packed roads.

Still, motorists in the Midwest should be on the lookout for slushy and slippery spots, which can occur just about anywhere but may be more common in hilly areas outside of the downtown areas of major cities such as Chicago and Detroit.

At the very least, the snow will lead to poor visibility on the highways with blowing spray from other vehicles.

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The falling snow will accumulate on grassy and elevated surfaces, including on the wings of some aircraft. This means that de-icing operations will be required at the airports and may contribute to airline delays amid the post-Thanksgiving surge in travel.

Mostly rain will fall from the southern Plains to the mid-Mississippi Valley and in the Ohio Valley from the storm. Some areas near Interstate 44 in Missouri and near and north of I-70 in the Ohio Valley may have a mixture of rain, sleet and wet snow.

Similar to the central Plains on Saturday night, areas in the Midwest that were made wet and slushy by the snow from Sunday will tend to freeze as temperatures dip Sunday night. This can lead to sheets of ice that may be hard to distinguish from wet surfaces.

While a couple of flurries are possible around Minneapolis on Sunday, accumulating snow from this storm will pass by to the southeast of the Twin Cities.

The Midwest storm, a second storm near New England and a third storm from southern Canada will join up over Ontario and Quebec from Sunday night to Monday. This merge will cause winds to increase and cold air to be reinforced over the Upper Midwest.

From Monday to Tuesday, winds will howl around the Great Lakes with frequent gusts from the west and northwest ranging between 35 and 45 mph and perhaps some as high as 55 mph. The winds will lead to overwash along the windward shorelines. As temperatures plunge into the 20s and teens in some areas at night, the blowing spray will freeze on exposed surfaces.

The combination will trigger not only a penetrating gusty wind in the region, but as the cold air passes over the open waters of the Great Lakes, bands of snow will develop, known as lake-effect.

The potential exists for locally very heavy lake-effect snow from parts of northern Wisconsin and northern Michigan to western and the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan, northwestern Indiana, northeastern Ohio, northwestern Pennsylvania and western, central and northern New York state.

In some of the heaviest lake-effect bands, snowfall rates could exceed 2 inches per hour with locally white-out conditions. Roads could potentially close where the bands of snow persist and result in 1-2 feet of accumulation with blowing and drifting snow.

This lake effect will ramp up as early as Sunday night over the Midwest and may linger well into Tuesday around the eastern Great Lakes.

AccuWeather will have more details on the lake-effect snow and its impacts on travel in the coming days.