EVANSVILLE – The Evansville area could see as much as quarter-inch of ice and over four inches of snow and sleet when a winter storm charges through the area Saturday night into Monday morning.

That information was included in an urgent bulletin from the Paducah, Kentucky, office of the National Weather Service on Thursday afternoon. It warned of potential power outages and tree damage due to ice.

“Travel,” it says, “could be nearly impossible.”

The Tri-State is now under a winter storm watch. NWS meteorologists have been warning about the looming system for several days, but hadn’t been able to offer specifics on total precipitation until now. It will sweep in from the west, dumping snow on locales north of Evansville and rain on Southwestern Kentucky and Tennessee. Evansville likely will fall in the middle, leaving it susceptible to a wintry mix.

NWS has the storm arriving as early as late Saturday, with the heaviest precipitation slated for Sunday. That timing, and the forecast itself, could change in the next couple of days.

Any talk of ice storms and power outages evokes visions of the 2009 disaster that killed 35 people across the Midwest and left around 700,000 people without power in the region.

That storm, however, brought 1.25 inches of ice – about an inch more than what’s forecast now. And earlier Thursday, NWS meteorologist Rachel Trevino told the Courier & Press their models don’t show anything in line with 2009.

Still, she said, people should “be prepared.”

Whatever we get will hang around. After the system trundles out Monday morning, it will usher in days’ worth of frigid air. Lows will plunge as far as the single digits, with even colder wind chills.

“Monitor the latest forecasts for updates on this situation,” Thursday’s bulletin says.

Evansville weather radar

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: How much ice and snow will Evansville get this weekend?