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Wednesday is a WRAL Weather Alert Day because we expect snow and sleet throughout our viewing area. During an emergency briefing Tuesday, Gov. Josh Stein declared a state of emergency. 

Schools closed, state of emergency declared: Winter storm ahead âï¸ WRAL Weather Alert Days issued Wednesday & Thursday

I'm WRAL meteorologist Ken Campbell in the WRALs Severe Weather Center. We have been going over all the new data and trends today, and then it looks like the winter weather will arrive just a little bit slower with the bulk of it moving in between about 10 a.m. and noon on Wednesday. The other new tidbit is that we may have just enough moisture as the upper level. swings through for a final band of snow early in the morning on Thursday, and this could put down just a light dusting, but it's not expected to be as significant as what we see on Wednesday. Let's take a look at our winter weather alerts. We've been upgraded from a watch to a winter storm warning in pink and a winter weather advisory in purple. The area is in pink, just a higher tier winters. Higher accumulations expected than the areas in purple. Let's take a look at the timing as well. Always important. It looks like we're going to be dry and quiet between 6 a.m. through about 9 a.m., but once we get to 10 a.m. to noon, that's when we start to run into some issues and that's when we really expect the winter weather to become widespread during that time frame. By 1 o'clock, pretty much everybody is seeing some type of winter weather, snow to the north, some sleet mixing in from Raleigh South, and freezing rain mixing in in our southern counties. And this will continue into the evening, but we should start to dry out between about 9 p.m. and midnight, or at least start to see more breaks in the winter weather. But we could see the upper level energy generate just some flurries as we head into the early part of the day, Thursday, that could put down just a little dusting of snow on top of what we get on Wednesday. The WREL snowfall forecast has been updated. A couple of changes to point out here. We've put Roxborough now in the 2 to 4 inch zone due to it being a little drier in the western part of our area. We've dropped the 1 to 2 inches of sleet and snow line a little farther south now, and then we've also dropped the up to 1 inch of snow and sleet a little farther south as well into Fayetteville and Cumberland County. So that puts most of. County in the 1 to 2 inches or even the airport north in the 2 to 4 inches. So let's talk about freezing rain. Still, the primary threat looks like it's going to be around Wayne County, but it's a little farther south into Samson County instead of Wilson County. So good news for Wilson County, a little bit more sleet there. Can you go sledding? A lot of kids want to know this. Looks like yes for the areas in green. For Raleigh, you're kind of in that maybe zone. I think sleet's really going to cut down on some of those snow totals and a low chance. In our southern counties, but this type of snow will be much different than the last that was very powdery. This is going to be a wet snow, and it's a lot easier to make snowballs, snowmen go sledding, things like that in that kind of snow for the areas that do see higher accumulations. Both Wednesday and Thursday are WREL weather alert days. Don't forget it's windy on Thursday as well. We should see good drying with sunshine on Friday, but by next Tuesday, high temperatures are back near 70 degrees.

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