Cold weather in place across central, eastern US with snow on the way

A pretty significant spring cold blast still has quite a grip across parts of the central and eastern U.S., and now an organized snowmaker is beginning to track across the country from the Rockies to the Northeast.

Wind chills are in the teens Thursday morning across the Upper Midwest and Northern Rockies. It feels like the 20s from Denver to upstate New York with even the major northeast Interstate 95 cities feeling like it's in the low 40s. The Carolinas, Georgia and Mississippi also feel closer to winter with wind chills near or below 40 degrees just a few weeks away from May.

There is a little burst of snow moving through the Northeast on Thursday morning, but that will clear out rather quickly. Attention turns to a new storm developing in the Rockies that will track east across the country in the next 48 hours.

Snow has already moved into parts of Denver; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and western Nebraska. Any essential travel Thursday on Interstate 80 and Interstate 25 in the region could be slippery and dangerous.

The storm will quickly move off toward the Midwest later Thursday and into Friday, with snow moving into parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. Snow will accumulate once again in Chicago by Friday morning. Some of the heaviest snow will cover a region from Peoria, Illinois, to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Then, as the storm nears the East Coast on Friday evening, there is some decent agreement in the forecast models that snow will move into parts of New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. This system is likely to cause at least some accumulating snow in the region. Perhaps any essential travel ongoing in the region could become somewhat treacherous due to snow and slush.

The results of this snowmaker is locally 1 to 2 feet of snow in Rockies from Colorado to Wyoming. A nice band of 3 to 6 inches of snow Is possible for the higher plains of Nebraska and eastern Colorado.

In the Midwest, there is the potential to see just over 6 inches of snow in parts of Iowa and western Illinois. Meanwhile, there's a decent chance of seeing 1 to 4 inches of snow in a stretch from Missouri all the way to New York.

It is important to remember that daytime heating is inevitable in lots of these places so any snow that does fall will have some trouble accumulating, and likely melt pretty quickly when it does so. However, that also adds a potential hidden danger in rogue slippery spots.

April snow is not unusual, but it is notable. Hartford, Connecticut, for instance, has recorded at least a tenth of an inch of snow as late as April 25, when it did so in 1971.