By DANIEL MANZO, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — For a second consecutive week, the weather is looking quite turbulent as we head toward a major holiday.
A new storm system is bringing heavy rain, gusty winds and thunderstorms to Southern California Monday and will move across the country this week.
Winter weather alerts from California to Wisconsin have already been issued.
This is the first big rainmaker so far this season for Southern California, where up to 2 inches of rain could fall Monday. This could cause debris flows and flooding, especially on recent burn scars.
In the Southern California mountains, over a foot of snow could fall, making it dangerous to travel.
Once this storm slides into the Central U.S. by Tuesday evening, it will become better organized and a large swath of snow will move across the Northern Plains and into the upper Midwest.
Snow, heavy at times, may fall in major Midwestern cities like Des Moines, Iowa, Chicago and Minneapolis, Tuesday night into Wednesday. Up to 8 inches of snow may fall — the heaviest likely being in central Iowa and southwest Wisconsin.
The forecast is a little more tricky on the southern side of the storm, which where states will likely experience cold rain and possible snow. This could make roads quite slippery in parts of Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma Tuesday night into early Wednesday.
By Wednesday, most snow from the storm will be falling in Canada, but the lingering cold front will bring a wide line of rain and a bit of snow from Michigan to Texas.
Some major cities could face abrupt weather changes, and roads could become slippery on Wednesday evening.
Then, as we enthusiastically welcome the start of 2021, a new storm will quickly move into the South, and race toward the North and East.
This storm will likely be even more impactful, and will bring a wide swath of mixed precipitation from the Southern Plains all the way to the Northeast. This will likely cause dangerous travel conditions on New Year’s Day.
At this time it is too early to know how much snow will fall, but it’s safe to say travel will be treacherous for much of the country during the end of the holiday week.
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