A late-winter storm is expected to dump as much as a foot of additional snow on the northern Rockies — including Montana, where the governor has declared a flood emergency — before pounding the Northeast later this week.
Forecasters say parts of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana will all get significant snow through Wednesday.
The storm will exacerbate flooding that began over the weekend in Montana and Wyoming, where warm weather melted snow quickly. Floods washed out roads, and rivers swelled enough to block bridges, and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock mobilized the National Guard.
In Roundup, Mont., a town of 2,000 people, 30 homes were evacuated Monday and more were warned to get ready to leave as the Musselshell River began to overflow its banks.
“It just kind of happened overnight,” Tara Gates, a volunteer with Musselshell County Disaster and Emergency Services, told Reuters. “At first we had water slowly coming in, and then everything that could break loose did.”
Forecasters from The Weather Channel say the storm will sweep east Wednesday, dumping heavy snow on Chicago and the Great Lakes, a band of ice from Maine to Kentucky and heavy rain in the big cities of the Northeast.
Through Thursday, snow totals could exceed 2 feet northern New England.
