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Winter Storm To ‘Bomb Out’ Along East Coast
An East Coast storm this weekend will intensify into a bomb cyclone, with heavy snow, strong winds and coastal flooding from the nor'easter from the Carolinas to New England. A small portion of North Carolina could also see blizzard conditions.
This latest storm has been named Winter Storm Gianna by The Weather Channel.
As often the case with East Coast storms, there remains a few uncertainties. So, check back with us at weather.com for updates to this forecast.
Winter storm watches and warnings are in effect for a large part of the Southeast, and parts of the mid-Atlantic and New England.
Significant snowfall is possible in some of these areas this weekend. Travel could become dangerous and power outages and closures are possible. Wind gusts closer to the North Carolina coast could drop visibility significantly.
In general, the worst weather will be where blizzard warnings or winter storm warnings are in effect on the map below.
Extremely cold air will come down from Canada and the Upper Midwest behind Gianna. Such brutal Arctic air has already proven fatal earlier this month.
Alerts for this cold air are already in place across a large section of the South. In general, temperatures are expected to be most dangerous in areas on the map below highlighted in darker blue. Communities in these extreme cold warnings could see temperatures cold enough to cause hypothermia in less than half an hour and injury to pets, along with freezing pipes and other infrastructure.
- Friday night: Snow will spread out of the southern Appalachians into lower elevations of the southern Virginias, eastern Tennessee, North Carolina, northern South Carolina and northern Georgia as low pressure organizes off the Southeast coast.
Cities that could see snowfall: Atlanta, Charlotte, Asheville, Knoxville
- Saturday and Saturday night: The storm gains strength along the Southeast coast with snow, heavy in spots, along with increasing wind. The snow could spread as far south as the Lowcountry of South Carolina and parts of eastern Georgia, especially Saturday night.
Overnight, some snow and increasing wind may spread farther up the Eastern Seaboard as far north as southeast New England. Blizzard conditions are possible in the Outer Banks, possibly into northeastern North Carolina or southeast Virginia. Wind gusts could reach 70 mph close to the coast.
Cities that could see snowfall: Atlanta, Charleston, Charlotte, Raleigh, Knoxville, Columbia, Virginia Beach
- Sunday: While the offshore low reaches its peak intensity, snow may end by midday from the Delmarva Peninsula southward to Virginia and the Carolinas. Heavy snow is possible in parts of eastern and southern New England. High winds and coastal flooding at high tide are also possible along parts of the East Coast from North Carolina to New England.
Cites that could see snowfall: Wilmington, Virginia Beach, Boston, Providence
- Sunday night and Monday: After lingering in at least parts of eastern New England Sunday night with snow, strong winds and coastal flooding at high tide, the storm moves away by Monday.
The best chance of heavier snowfall accumulations from Winter Storm Gianna is in two areas:
1. From southern Virginia to North Carolina and parts of South Carolina
2. Parts of eastern New England, potentially including areas that picked up over 20 inches of snow from Winter Storm Fern last weekend
Forecast guidance has come into better agreement that this will be a major snowstorm for North Carolina and the Virginia Tidewater region, where over 6 inches of snowfall is increasingly likely. Roads in these areas may become increasingly treacherous, if not impassable, by later Saturday or early Sunday, and may remain so through at least Monday morning with cold air spilling behind the storm.
One lingering question is regarding Boston's snowfall. It's still not clear whether the offshore low — or combination of lows — will pinwheel far enough offshore to keep any heavy snow potential pinned to Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, or may pivot heavy snowbands farther northwest into Boston.
The map below is the current snowfall outlook from Gianna. Areas in the purple contours have the best chance of heavier snow.
Given the intensity of the storm (more on that later), there are two other threats this weekend, though the exact details remain yet to be resolved.
Winds: There is a threat for strong winds, capable of power outages and some tree damage, along at least parts of the East Coast from the Outer Banks of North Carolina to New England. Wind gusts could reach 70 mph in eastern North Carolina. These winds may also combine with snow to produce blizzard conditions, at times, in parts of eastern North Carolina, southeast Virginia and eastern New England.
Coastal flooding: Coastal flooding at high tide is likely Sunday morning and Sunday evening along parts of the East Coast, particularly in the Virginia Tidewater, northern Outer Banks and southeast New England where strong winds will be most onshore, pushing water toward the coast. Compounding this is the lining up of this storm with Sunday's full moon, meaning tides will already be high.
Low pressure off the Eastern Seaboard will become intense by Sunday.
It will wind up fast enough to be deemed a "bomb cyclone" a term for rapidly strengthening low pressure.
It's a scary sounding phrase, but it turns out bomb cyclones happen about once a year off the East Coast in the colder months, feeding off the sharp contrast between cold air over land moving over the warmer ocean.
This East Coast storm will also become a nor'easter, a term for an East Coast storm in which the winds ahead — to the north — of the storm come from the northeast.
(MET 101: Bomb Cyclones | Nor'easters)
Check back with us frequently at weather.com for the very latest updates on this forecast.
Rob Shackelford is a meteorologist and climate scientist at weather.com. He received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Georgia studying meteorology and experimenting with alternative hurricane forecasting tools.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
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