We might "escape" with heavy snow

Many people might look at the forecast of 4 to 6 inches of snow Monday in Charlotte as a big problem, and it will be.

But we might be getting off easy from the storm system expected to move across the South on Sunday and Monday.

A corridor farther to our south stands to get hammered by an ice storm that could knock out power to tens of thousands of customers. That area will stretch from northern Louisiana, across central Mississippi, central and southern Alabama, and southern Georgia.

Heavy snow could fall from northern Mississippi, across northern Alabama, northern Georgia and the western Carolinas.

We'll watch the development of this storm over the next few days, but it looks now (Saturday morning) as if the cities that could get the worst of the freezing rain and power outages would include Shreveport, La.; Jackson, Miss.; Montgomery, Ala.; Macon, Ga.; and possibly Columbia. Other big cities in the South -- Birmingham, Atlanta, Charlotte and Raleigh -- are more in the zone of heavy snow, rather than ice.

All this can change. Stay tuned.