CNN's Flip Spiceland: Southern Plains gets a break, but storm could slam Northeast

Flip Spiceland

CNN Weather Anchor Flip Spiceland talked about the severe weather in the southern Plains; where it's heading next; and the outlook for winter.

Q: Update us on the situation in the southern Plains. When is the precipitation going to end there, and is another storm looming?

SPICELAND: It's virtually over for now, although there are still pockets of precipitation that are still frozen. Temperatures are well below freezing in most of that area. The storm itself, however, has moved into the Southeast, where temperatures are above freezing, and it looks as though we're going to be out of the woods in the Southeast as far as anything frozen. Just a little bit of freezing rain, possibly some snow on the tail end of it. The next storm is due in possibly the early part of next week. But this one was so volatile and changed with such rapidity that we won't talk about that next one until we get a little bit closer to it.

Q: What's going on in Texas as far as snow accumulation?

SPICELAND: In Amarillo, they have had more than 16 inches of snow, and out of this next storm they'll get at least four more inches of snowfall. Dallas has had a little bit of freezing precipitation this morning, a little bit of ice has been occurring. They escaped most of it yesterday and the day before. It was rainfall for the most part.

Q: Where is the bad weather heading? Explain the track of these two storm systems.

SPICELAND: Well, what we thought would happen is the one coming across the northern Plains states now would by this time have dipped down into the South, feeding more cold air into this system that's now in the Southeast. Consequently, we thought that there would be snow and freezing rain and ice in the Southeast. The storm on the northern track did not take as much of a southerly dip and is still expected to dive to the south. But now the two storms will merge at a later date and at a point farther up the East Coast. So we still think there could be a very, very bad storm in the Northeast as we go through the weekend. Of course, what's critical is, will the center of that storm be onshore or offshore? If it's just onshore, it will not be nearly as ferocious as if the center of the storm were just offshore, feeding in all of that windy, wet weather off the Atlantic as it moves up the East Coast.

Q: This has been a brutal first week of winter in a lot of places. What's the outlook for the rest of winter?

SPICELAND: The National Weather Service and National Climatological Center tell us that this is a normal winter. It's been so long since we've had normal winters that we've all forgotten that this is what winter is. Very cold and snow-covered areas. That having been said, however, most of the South, most of the nation are running well below normal, temperatures of anywhere from seven to 10 degrees below normal. So I would suspect that not within the next two weeks but after that, temperatures should get back closer to normal. Still, that would mean a lot of frozen precipitation, snow and ice across much of the country.

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