A massive winter storm is stretching from the Rocky Mountains to Maine, affecting all of the Ohio valley with heavy rain, heavy snow, sleet, freezing rain, and damaging ice.
For Cincinnati, the situation is complicated since a mixed bag of precipitation is expected. Initially, there will be a lull in precipitation for a time overnight before the next round kicks into gear.
Don’t let forecasts of 1-3 or 2-4 inches fool you. Much of that will be sleet. Sleet is essentially snow at 10:1, in other words, 1 inch of sleet has the mass of 10 inches of snow. It is very likely that, even with lower total accumulations, the large amount of sleet will necessitate plowing of roads and other paved surfaces.
Sleet is extremely heavy and hard to move so clean up will be slow. It may take quite a while for roads to be cleared since bitter cold arctic air will follow the winter storm. Temperatures Saturday morning will likely be near or below zero Saturday morning in much of the Ohio valley.
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