THE ICEMAN COMETH

The National Weather Service in Cleveland has issued a WINTER STORM WARNING for Northeast Ohio – the WARNING will be in effect from Midnight tonight until 4 p.m. Friday.

Snow will move northeast into the region this evening and then change to a mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain. The wintery weather is expected to continue through Friday afternoon.

Temperatures at the surface are expected to slowly warm through the night but will remain below freezing. The precipitation that falls after midnight will likely be in the form of freezing rain. A quarter inch of ice accumulation can be expected overnight into Friday morning before possibly changing over to all rain for a brief period in the morning. Snow and sleet accumulations of 1 to 3 inches can be expected through Friday.

The mixed precipitation is then expected to change back to snow during the late afternoon hours on Friday.

The Lorain County Emergency Management Office participated in a conference call with the National Weather Service and about a dozen or more County EMA officials across Ohio and part of Pennsylvania this afternoon to receive an update on what we can expect this weekend. Tom Kelley, Director Lorain County Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security: “Whenever the Weather Service feels that there might be a significant weather event they always give a briefing by way of conference call to the County EMA Directors and in turn we invite Police, Fire and road crews to participate in the briefing. We are told to expect snow over the next couple of days but the concern is with the threat of an ice storm that may arrive Saturday into Sunday. The possibility is there for us to get 1 quarter to a half inch of ice during that time – that’s a lot of ice.”

The exact track of that ice storm will not be certain until about 6 hours out – Kelley said that although the Weather Service has been wrong in the past, they were dead on this last Valentines Day when we got smacked with 22 inches of snow.

Kelley said that with the trees not having leaves on them a quarter inch to a half inch of ice could cause problems. “The branches will be more brittle so we could have problems with the trees and that in turn will bring down power lines.”

The first storm is expected to roll into the area around 6am Friday morning.

A WINTER STORM WARNING is issued when severe winter weather is expected. Heavy snow and or ice will cause hazardous. Heavy snow and or ice will cause hazardous driving conditions. If you will be traveling in the warning area you should choose an alternate route if possible, or you should use extreme caution if travel is unavoidable.