Winter storm targets East Coast for Thanksgiving Eve

A storm will bring driving rain and heavy snow to the East Coast on Wednesday, stressing out the millions of people headed home for Thanksgiving by air or car on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

A separate, much weaker storm will also bring about an inch of snow to portions of the north-central U.S., leading to travel problems there.

In anticipation of the eastern storm, nearly every big U.S. airline moved to waive rebooking fees to cities in the storm's path.

Dozens of cancellations and hundreds of delays are possible at some of the nation's busiest airports Wednesday, including New York JFK, New York LaGuardia, Newark Liberty and Philadelphia.

Fortunately, the Eastern storm will be over by Thanksgiving morning, with just some leftover snow likely in northern Maine. The rest of the weekend also looks fairly quiet for the return trip.

Though the precipitation will start as rain early Wednesday, as much as a half-foot of snow is possible in the New York City area, according to the National Weather Service. Totals for the other big cities include 1-3 inches in Boston and Philadelphia and maybe an inch in Washington, D.C.

But much more snow is forecast just to the north and west of the big cities: "Heavy snow is likely to begin in the central Appalachians early Wednesday morning, spreading northeast through the interior Mid-Atlantic into New England by Wednesday night," the weather service reports.

The storm will bring mostly snow to the I-81 swath in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, I-84 in southeastern New York state, as well as much of interior New England, where a general 6-12 inches of snow are forecast.

Winter storm watches and warnings have been issued for much of the eastern USA, all the way from the mountains of North Carolina to northern Maine, a distance of more than 1,000 miles. About 20 million people in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast are under some form of winter weather alert.

"In most cases, the worst time to travel in the mid-Atlantic and New England due to the storm will be on Wednesday and Wednesday night," said AccuWeather meteorologist Elliot Abrams.

"I would pack your patience," said Robert Sinclair of AAA New York. "Unfortunately, the storm is scheduled to hit right in the middle of getaway day." He said an estimated 41.3 million travelers were expected to hit the nation's highways for the holiday weekend, which is a 4.3% increase over last year.

The storm is forecast to develop off the coast of the Carolinas early Wednesday and strengthen as it moves rapidly up the East Coast Wednesday into early Thursday, according to the weather service.

The Weather Channel has dubbed the storm Winter Storm Cato.

The weaker storm in the central U.S. will deliver about an inch of snow to portions of the Midwest and Plains Wednesday, causing slick driving conditions in and around cities such as Fargo, Omaha and St. Louis.

Snow is also forecast for the northern Rockies on Wednesday.

Contributing: Ben Mutzabaugh, USA TODAY; The Associated Press