Today's Weather Outlook

There will be plenty of weather chaos by the midpoint of the month. Blizzard-like conditions to powerful thunderstorms will be sprinkled in as an early spring temperature clash sweeps in.

Today

A major wintry storm will blossom in the Ohio Valley by day’s end. An intensifying area of low pressure will move to near Lake Michigan late, with showers and thunderstorms rapidly growing ahead of the storm’s cold front from Illinois to the Ark-La-Tex region during the afternoon and evening. This activity will likely organize into a squall line, packing gusty, damaging winds and a few tornadoes.

The storm’s cold northern and western sector will squeeze out a bounty of heavy snow that will be whipped about by gusts up to 60 mph and blizzard-like conditions from the Dakotas and Iowa into the northern Great Lakes. Yardsticks will be needed to measure the snow by tonight, particularly from north-central Wisconsin to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A wintry mix will also lead to travel headaches across the central Great Lakes, with at least a glaze of ice accretion possible from Madison and Milwaukee, Wis., to Flint, Mich. Scattered snow showers and gusty winds will also dot the Wyoming and Colorado Rocky Front Range for a time this morning, which may make travel difficult, especially for high-profile vehicles.

Moisture will be tugged north by the same Lower Great Lakes storm from the Carolinas into Georgia and Florida to close out the weekend. Locally heavy rainfall may ruin outdoor plans during the afternoon and evening from Gainesville to Orlando and Miami, Fla., and Myrtle Beach, S.C., to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

The last wrinkle in today's weather plot will be found across the Northwest. The tip of a new storm will arrive in the Northwest late in the day, which will likely lead to mountain snow showers and valley and beach rain showers in Washington State. Snowfall totals up to an inch will be possible in the northern Cascades and Olympics by the time the sun sets.

Temperatures will be far different to end of the weekend than they began. Teens, 20s, and 30s will bury themselves into much of the northern and central Plains and up against the Colorado and northern Rocky Front Ranges. Seasonably cool 30s and 40s, with some 50s involved, will be found from Washington State and northern/northeastern Oregon into the Texas Panhandle and farther north into the Upper Midwest and northern Great Lakes.

The remainder of the nation will have near or above normal temperatures. Highs will be coolest in New England, with 30s in northern Maine to middle to upper 40s along the Interstate 95 corridor in Boston and Providence, R.I. Warm 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s will cover most of the rest of the nation, with middle to upper 80s, even a 100-degree reading, likely in the Texas Plains and Desert Southwest.