By Beacon Staff
Burlington didn’t have anything close to a white Christmas this year. But New Year’s Day is looking to make up for it.
Forecasters with the National Weather
Service are calling for 8 to 10 inches of snow Saturday, Jan. 1 specifically for Burlington, with a slightly lower estimate of 4 to 7
inches for the surrounding counties.
A Winter
Storm Watch will be in effect from 6 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 1 until 12 a.m. Sunday, Jan. 2 for most of southeast Iowa, including Burlington, Wapello,
Fairfield, Mount Pleasant, Keosauqua, Fort Madison, and Oquawka, Ill.
The entire area affected includes portions of northeast Missouri, east
central and southeast Iowa and north central, northwest and west central
Illinois.
For now, the watch is calling for heavy snow for that broad area, accumulating anywhere from 4 to 7 inches.
The
more detailed, local forecast for Burlington is a bit nastier, calling
for 5 to 10 inches of snow. Shortly after revelers ring in the new year,
there will be a forty percent chance of snow and freezing rain after
midnight.
There’s an eighty percent chance the snow
and freezing rain will continue into the daylight hours of Saturday,
turning to all heavy snow after 8 a.m. The high temperature won’t get
above 24 degrees, and conditions will be blustery. By nightfall, there
may be 4 to 8 inches of snow on the ground.
There’s a 50 percent chance another inch or two of snow will fall after midnight, bringing an end to the winter storm.
The
sun will be out by Sunday morning, and the high will have dropped to 12
degrees, with a low around zero. No further precipitation is expected for
daytime Sunday or the rest of the week. Temperatures will climb back
into the 20s and 30s on Monday, and will stay in that range for the
remainder of the week.