EVANSVILLE (Aiexpress)– It’s still too early to tell how things will turn out, but meteorologists are growing more worried that a possible winter storm that hits Evansville on Sunday and Monday could damage trees and power lines and make it hard for many people to get around.
All of that could cause power outages, which Derrick Snyder, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service, called “a very serious situation.”
In the early hours of Wednesday, the NWS office in Paducah, Kentucky, sent out a new storm warning. Storms are expected to hit the area on Sunday morning and last until Monday morning. The “worst of the storm” is likely to happen Sunday night.
The weather alert had a “first guess graphic” that showed sleet, snow, and freezing rain for Evansville and Henderson. Up north, it’s more likely to snow. Down south, it will rain and freeze.
“As is typical with winter storms in our region, it appears a good part of the area will be in the ‘battle zone’ between different precipitation types (snow, freezing rain, sleet, and plain rain),” Snyder said. “This means significant accumulations of snow, sleet, and freezing rain are all possible, and we are getting more confident that we will see travel impacts even if we are not sure what type of precipitation will occur just yet.”
The biggest problem, though, is that the power could go out. It could bring down power lines and tree branches if it freezes rain for a long time.
The ice doesn’t look like it will melt any time soon. With lows in the teens or single digits and wind chills close to zero, the NWS says a “wave of bitterly cold arctic air” will follow the storm.
Snyder said that makes the chance of power outages even more dangerous.
The bulletin says over and over that none of this is official.