We are continuing to track the major winter storm impacting the northeastern United States tonight through Saturday night.

U.S. storm impacts millions, will Canada dodge the bullet?

Find Your Forecast Search for a location

Brad Rousseau

Meteorologist

Saturday, January 23, 2016, 12:12 PM - We are continuing to track the major winter storm impacting the northeastern United States tonight through Saturday night.

So far this system has prompted severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings across eastern Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi on Thursday and has brought severe thunderstorms for parts of Florida and Georgia on Friday.

As the low takes a northeast turn along the Atlantic coast it will collide with the cold air pushing south from Canada where it is forecast to bring anywhere from 10 cm of snow to 30-90 cm of snow for the Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Virginia, through Philedelphia, New Jersey, New York.

Below shows the latest watches and warnings across parts of the eastern U.S.

Through Saturday night into Sunday, the low will continue to track northeastward where it is threatening Atlantic Canada with the potential for stormy conditions, but nothing significant is expected for the time being.

Forecast models continue to jump around, but the latest guidance has trended north some with the snow but still only giving a glancing blow to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland as shown below.

Latest model runs show the ECMWF (European) bringing more snowfall to the Atlantic coast than the Canadian model.





Below we have the updated forecast that shows the ECMWF bringing up to 10 cm of snow to the extreme southwest of Nova Scotia through Sunday. In addition, the southern Avalon and Burin Peninsulas in Newfoundland could see 10 cm as well. Meanwhile, the Canadian model only shows trace amounts for both Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

The Canadian model keeps the heaviest swath of snow farther out to sea than what the ECMWF. Not shown is the American GFS model but it is also trending more with the ECMWF model.

Environment Canada has issued a special weather statement for parts of Nova Scotia in anticipation of the snow.

"While many parts of the province will escape the brunt of this system, southwestern-most parts of the province and counties along the Atlantic coast will experience periods of snow and strong northeast winds beginning late overnight and continuing on Sunday," EC reports. "At this time the system is expected to remain just far enough offshore to keep amounts below warning criteria for these regions."

However, it would only take a slight northward shift in direction to increase snowfall accumulation significantly, EC highlights.









The take away from all this still remains that forecast models continue to adjust the final outcome from run to run but remain consistent with marginal impact from this system for Atlantic Canada.

Tune in: We continue to monitor how this system, so be sure to check back at The Weather Network for how this storm will evolve.