Heavy snow looks more likely for Upstate NY from coastal storm

Syracuse, N.Y. -- A nor’easter is expected to form and roar up the East Coast this weekend, potentially bringing heavy snow to Upstate New York.

“There may be a widespread, impactful snow event late Sunday night through Monday,” said the National Weather Service’s Buffalo office, which forecasts for Western New York and counties along Lake Ontario.

The weather service’s mid-range forecasting arm, the Weather Prediction Center, predicts heavy snow this weekend from Missouri to Maine.

The storm system formed in the northern Pacific Ocean and is just arriving in the Pacific Northwest. Once it reaches land, it’s expected to dip south and then head east. That path through the South will allow the storm system to pull in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and drive it up to the Northeast, where it will crash into cold pushing down from Canada.

Nor’easters often hug the East Coast and deliver the most snow there, but this one is expected to be nudged inland by a large high pressure system off the New England coast that would block the storm’s coastal route.

“Storms of this nature have a history of generating widespread snow throughout all of western and north central New York,” the Buffalo weather service office said.

The likelihood of heavy snow has increased as new data is fed into computer weather models, forecasters say, but they’ll have a better idea of how the storm will play out after it reaches land. There are more weather monitoring stations on land than in the ocean.

While most of Upstate is likely to get snow, cities along the coast and into the lower Hudson Valley could see a mix of sleet and freezing rain.

Once the storm pulls out into the Atlantic Ocean, it is likely to drag cold air across the Great Lakes. That means some areas downwind of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario could see lake effect snow into Tuesday, on top of what the nor’easter brings.

The storm’s impact will be blunted somewhat because Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when schools, governments and many businesses are closed.