WEATHER ALERT: Winter Storm Iola To Slam New Jersey Saturday

Don’t put the shovel and salt away just yet.

Winter Storm Iola and its rain and snow could be making an appearance just in time for the weekend -- days after Sunday’s ice storm and Wednesday’s dusting.

An early Weather Channel forecast shows North Jersey getting the brunt of the storm with 5 to 8 inches of snow, the middle of the state getting 3 to 5 inches and South Jersey getting 1 to 3 Friday night into Saturday morning.

“Unlike many storms this winter, this particular one has the potential to bring a foot of snow to some locations, where rain fails to mix in,” said AccuWeather.com Chief Meteorologist Elliot Abrams.

How much snowfall versus how much rainfall the state will get depends “on the exact track of what will become a significant coastal storm,” AccuWeather reports. Iola will likely dump “enough snow ... to shovel and plow in this area.”

Although it is possible New Jersey gets all rain instead of snow, forecasters say ”roads will be slippery during much of the storm ... [and] airline delays are likely with the potential for cancellations.”

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Iola could potentially leave “a stripe of light to moderate snow from the Smoky Mountains through parts of the I-95 corridor, with the peak timing being Friday night through Saturday night” and near-freezing temperatures Saturday into Sunday, according to The Weather Channel.

Noting that it’s still too early to tell, the Weather Channel states “there is still a small possibility that this storm will produce relatively little snow in the East, and an equally small possibility that a stripe of even heavier snowfall could occur.”

Photo: AccuWeather

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