Snowstorm could wallop East Coast on Saturday

Doyle Rice | USA TODAY

A storm that is likely to restrengthen and take a turn up the East Coast by Saturday could dump the heaviest snow of the season across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

"Unlike many storms this winter, this particular one has the potential to bring a foot of snow to some locations, where rain fails to mix in," according to AccuWeather chief meteorologist Elliot Abrams.

The storm dumped snow on the Southwest and Texas on Wednesday and is forecast to drench much of the South with rain the next couple of days before pummeling the Interstate-95 corridor this weekend.

Accumulating snow is possible Saturday into Saturday night for the 50 million people along the I-95 corridor from Washington and Baltimore to Philadelphia, New York City and Boston, AccuWeather predicts.

The big cities have all received much less snow than usual this winter: 5.5 inches in Boston, 3.2 inches in New York City and about 3 inches in Washington, according to the National Weather Service.

"The potential is there for a classic nor'easter, and with the current track and magnitude, we could see significant snow and very gusty winds," the weather service in New York City said Wednesday in an online forecast discussion.

Strong winds will be a factor as the storm moves into New England.

"Given the storm is expected to undergo rapid bombogenesis, (we are) concerned for a period of strong to damaging winds along the southeast New England coast," the weather service in Boston said.

Bombogenesis is a combination of cyclogenesis, which describes the formation of a cyclone or storm, and bomb, which is pretty self-explanatory. Basically, it refers to a storm that rapidly intensifies as its center moves out over the ocean, which forecasters predict for Saturday's snowstorm.

The Weather Channel has named the storm Iola, which comes from Greek mythology and is a variant spelling of Iolë, a beautiful woman who Hercules wanted to marry but could not.