While hazy sun greeted morning commuters, the scene will be quite different for the evening commute today.  A fairly vigorous storm system is moving across the Great Lakes while cold, dry High Pressure has anchored itself to our northeast.  The result will be a lot of moisture and warmth colliding with cold air and leading to a burst of wintry weather.

It’s not so much the amount of snow/sleet that will be the headline with this storm, but rather the timing.  We’re still looking for snow to arrive by mid-late afternoon and turn steadier and heavier by evening.  Initially, the pavement and late February stronger sun will prevent accumulations, but as night falls the snow is expected to begin sticking–even to the roadways.

During the evening hours and into tonight a wide variety of weather can be expected, depending on your location… the coast will begin to change to rain, while a wintry mix of snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain are likely in the metro area and in northern suburbs the accumulating snow will continue.  Eventually, the warmer air is expected to win out with all areas changing to rain and freezing rain through the night.

I feel pretty comfortable with a coating to 2″ of snow for most areas…. higher totals will be in northern suburbs–generally 2-4″ with isolated 5″ amounts possible if the snow is slower to mix with/change to rain.

By the way: the storm system has already made headlines…. bringing blizzard like conditions to parts of the northern Great Lakes to deadly tornadoes last night in the plains and  Midwest.