If you are going out to dinner on Valentine’s Day… plan for the potential of 60 mph wind gusts, scattered power outages, brutally cold wind chills and a burst of heavy snow.
The arctic front will have plenty of dynamics in the mid and upper levels of the atmosphere to produce a possible squall line (what you would typically see in the summer time) but with heavy snow as opposed to rain.
The latest guidance suggests that the arctic front will pass through the DC Area between 4 and 7 PM on Saturday. Winds will howl out of the northwest 30 to 45 mph with gusts occasionally reaching 55 to 60 mph! Winds of this strength can pull down tree limbs and power lines causing power outages.
Latest Snowfall Accumulation Forecast: A dusting to one inch for most; isolated amounts of two inches possible.
Be prepared for possible power outages on Saturday evening. Temperatures will plunge into the lower single digits dropping wind chills between 15 and 30 below zero! These wind chills will cause hypothermia and frostbite to exposed skin.
A snow derecho!! I would not want to be driving when that is coming thru as visibilities will rapidly drop to 0 and roads could ice over very quickly. Not a big snowstorm, but potentially a very memorable event!