More Snow Targets Southwest to Northeast - NBCNews.com

Two separate storms this weekend threatened to hit New England, already covered in 1 to 3 feet of snow, with fresh snow, starting Friday night.

The brunt of the snowfall would hit Maine late Friday night into Saturday morning with up to a foot of snow, according to the National Weather Service, which has issued winter storm warnings for the entire state, as well as parts of New Hampshire and northeast Massachusetts. Winds gusting up to 40 mph in these areas could create dangerous conditions as existing snow and ongoing heavy snowfall is blown around, Weather.com warned.

Southern New England would likely only pick up 3 inches, but the winds could affect power lines, knocking out power for Nantucket residents, some of whom just were only just able to turn the lights back on for the first time in four days on Friday.

But another system was picking up steam Friday and has the potential to hit New England again on Monday, but not before making a cross-country trek. Parts of eight states spanning from Iowa and Missouri, and eastward to Pennsylvania were under a winter storm watch, and Utah, Colorado and New Mexico could see snow in the mountains on Friday and Saturday. Even eastern Arizona and New Mexico were under winter storm warnings.

But substantial snow accumulation was most likely from Nebraska and South Dakota through the southern Great Lakes and into southern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, according to Weather.com. "A solid 5-10" inches of snow was possible right in time for the Monday morning commute in cities like St. Louis, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, said Weather.com meteorologist Michael Palmer. From there, the storm could also drop snow on New York and then deliver more snow to a weary New England, but it's uncertain if the storm will reach that far north, Palmer said.

In some bright news, electricity was fully restored to the Island of Nantucket Friday, three days after the entire island of more than 10,000 people went dark after being lashed by hurricane force winds and an ice storm as this week's Nor'easter blew through. Utility National grid had restored electricty to much of the island by Wednesday night, but the company reported the last of its outages had been cleared by Friday afternoon.

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— Elisha Fieldstadt

First published January 30 2015, 5:10 PM

Source: southwest - Google News http://ift.tt/1BDLZI5