Storm will stretch 1,800 miles from Plains to Northeast

Another cross-country winter storm will develop this week on the heels of a system that caused havoc across much of the nation in recent days, leading to 13 deaths in the South and Northeast.

Snow will continue in California and other parts of the West as well as the Great Lakes area, and some areas will see temperatures below freezing.

Fears of flooding in California also were on the rise as forecasters warned that a warm rainstorm could hit portions of the state later in the week.

More than 200,000 homes and businesses remained in the dark nationwide as of Monday from storms over the past several days, according to Poweroutage.us. Kentucky had 118,000 outages, Michigan 26,000, Tennessee 19,000 and California 18,000. And the outages have dragged on – Kentucky’s storm hit Friday. Michigan has been battling outages for two weeks.

Minneapolis could see several inches of accumulating snow Thursday and Friday.

Snow was also expected to persist across northern Michigan before rolling into the interior Northeast Tuesday morning.

5 dead in storms across Kentucky, but ‘miracle’

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said 125,000 homes and businesses remained without power three days after a wall of tornadoes, thunderstorms and heavy winds swept across the state, killing five people. About 300 were without water, he said.

Beshear said he was encouraged by his visit to Fremont a day earlier.

“What happened in Fremont was a miracle,” he said. “An EF2 tornado landed, went basically down their main street a mile and half, (and) no one got hurt in this town.”

He said cleanup was in full force. Local officials and utility workers worked side by side with residents and volunteers.

“What I got to see was the best of humanity,” he said. “Like everything else we faced, we will face this together.”

All quiet for Boston, NYC, Philly this winter

California’s mountains and parts of the Midwest have been fending off a stormy winter, but much of the eastern United States has had little snow. Boston, known for nasty nor’easters and a blizzard last year that dumped nearly 2 feet of snow on the city, had seen just over 11 inches as of last week compared with an average of 38.6, according to data from the National Weather Service.

Philadelphia has gotten only 0.3 inches compared with an average of 19.2. New York, which typically gets over 2 feet of snow by now, has seen only 2.2 inches. Similar shortfalls have been seen in Providence, R.I.; Pittsburgh; Washington, D.C.; and parts of West Virginia.

“For the most part, it’s been a winterless winter” in the region, says David Robinson, a Rutgers University geography professor and the state climatologist.

Overall, it was the warmest winter (December-January) on record in the Northeast, according to data from the Northeast Regional Climate Center released Monday.

New storm could cause travel problems

AccuWeather said it was tracking a storm that is expected to spread snow along an 1,800-mile-long stretch that begins in the northern Plains and could wind up in the Northeast in the coming days.

“Forecasters say the upcoming storm is not expected to pack as much of a punch as its predecessor,” AccuWeather said. “But can still create enough wintry weather to cause travel problems.”

A winter weather advisory was in place for parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey until Tuesday morning.

The National Weather Service said the mid-Atlantic region will see rain and snow and some parts could experience freezing rain.