(NewsNation Now) — West Coast mountain ranges continued to experience significant snowfall Sunday while the majority of the country’s southern and eastern regions saw anomalously warm temperatures.
A pair of storms emerging from the Rocky Mountains will eventually become disruptive winter storms in the upper Midwest, according to the National Weather Service.
One major Christmas weekend storm caused whiteout conditions and closed key highways amid blowing snow in the mountains of Northern California and Nevada, with forecasters warning that travel in the Sierra Nevada could be difficult for several days.
A winter storm system that was building steam in South Dakota Sunday has prompted weather alerts in eastern North Dakota, northern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin, the National Weather Service said.
The Sierra Nevada, which already has received heavy snowfall, is expected to accumulate another 2 to 5 feet through early Tuesday.
In the Los Angeles area, residents are likely to see rain and mountain snow for the next week, according to the National Weather Service, with temperatures significantly below normal through the middle of the week.
The San Diego region should see scattered showers, with heavy snow in the San Bernardino and Riverside County mountains, with precipitation possibly going into Thursday.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Bay Area is predicted to have rain showers through Monday before cold and drier conditions arrive through the middle of next week, the weather service said.
The southern part of the country has maintained remarkably warm temperatures that will continue into the first half of next week, according to the weather service.
The combination of unusually warm temperatures, low humidity and windy conditions has prompted the weather service’s Storm Prediction Center to warn of the critical risk of fire in the central High Plains and both the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles.
Unusually warm temperatures are anticipated across the South and into the Mid-Atlantic Sunday, ahead of a passing cold front that will cool down part of the Mid-Atlantic on Monday, according to the National Weather Service.