By Victoria Cavaliere
Dec 25 (Reuters) - A winter storm pushing across the Rockies
on Thursday was expected to drop a foot of snow in some areas as
it fanned eastward, threatening soggy conditions and potential
weekend travel delays across a wide swath of the United States,
forecasters said.
The storm was one of several predicted to produce snow,
rain, fog and other treacherous conditions in the coming days as
millions of travelers head home after the Christmas holiday, the
National Weather Service said.
Residents in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado awoke to a white
Christmas on Thursday, with 3 to 5 inches of snow expected to
fall by early Friday in Salt Lake City and 4 to 6 inches
possible for Denver. Accumulations of more than a foot of snow
were forecast for higher elevations, according to the Weather
Service.
As the storm tracks eastward, the Midwest is expected to see
a light layer of snowfall, cold temperatures and messy road
conditions, forecasters said. Heavy rain with possible flash
floods were predicted for Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia,
meteorologists said.
"For people traveling by ground or air across the Southeast
portion of the country, rain and thunderstorms will be the
inconvenience this weekend," AccuWeather meteorologist Brian
Edwards said.
More than 98 million Americans were expected to journey 50
miles or more from home during the year-end holiday season, with
nearly 6 million people traveling by air, according to the
American Automobile Association.
A separate cold front descending on the Pacific Northwest
from the north is expected to bring rain to western Washington
state and Oregon on Saturday, with the Cascade Mountains due for
a significant band of snow, Edwards said.
"This storm will usher in a very cold air mass as well,
turning rain to snow at lower elevations on Saturday and
Saturday night with rapidly increasing travel problems," he
said.
The East Coast has been drying out after several days of
soggy weather, as a storm system that swept the mid-Atlantic
states and New York pushed out to the Atlantic, the National
Weather Service said.
A band of Arctic air early next week will send temperatures
plunging across the Western and central United States before
heading east, promising a chilly New Year's Eve in New York and
Washington, AccuWeather said.
The Arctic chill is expected to push temperatures in Las
Vegas below freezing for the first time since December 2013, the
weather forecaster said.
(Reporting and writing by Victoria Cavaliere in Seattle;
Editing by Steve Gorman and Mohammad Zargham)
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