Nor'easter due in Morris on Saturday

A messy nor'easter is expected to dump snow, sleet and rain on Morris County.

"People may wake up Saturday morning with some rain, sleet or snow falling and then at some point during the day, it may turn over to sleet and rain," said David A. Robinson, the New Jersey state climatologist. "There's some thought of it going back to snow at the end, so it's going to be a messy storm, looks like."

"They are talking about an event that could very well bring the plows out," he said, adding that it will be a nuisance.

The National Weather Service predicts snow, mainly after 1 a.m. on Saturday, with a low temperature around 25. The chance of precipitation is 80 percent and new snow accumulation of less than one half inch is possible before daybreak.

Snow will continue to fall until about 1 p.m. when it is likely to switch over to rain, snow, and sleet, which is expected to fall until about 4 p.m. before it switches back to snow. The high temperature during the day is expected to be near 37 and how warm it gets will be key.

"It's going to be one where we're going to have to watch the thermometer," he said. "It's going to take place near the (freezing) point, if not a little above."

The total amount of snow and sleet accumulation should be somewhere between 2 and 4 inches of snow.

After dark, it will be snow mainly before 7 p.m. but less than half an inch is in the forecast, which calls for an end to precipitation after that.

"Given what we've seen so far this year, it's going to still be an event to be, I would say, reckoned with," he said.

AccuWeather.com says the snowstorm may be the biggest so far this season from Philadelphia to New York City.

An AccuWeather.com map shows as much as 3 to 6 inches of snow falling in New Jersey and 6 to 12 inches in parts of New England and elsewhere.

Last winter featured six storms that dumped at least 10 inches somewhere in the state.

The big cities have all received much less snow than usual this winter: 5.5 inches in Boston, 3.2 inches in New York City and about 3 inches in Washington, according to the National Weather Service.

"The potential is there for a classic nor'easter, and with the current track and magnitude, we could see significant snow and very gusty winds," the Weather Service in New York City said Wednesday in an online forecast discussion.

The Weather Channel has named the storm Iola, which comes from Greek mythology and is a variant spelling of Iolë, a beautiful woman who Hercules wanted to marry but could not

Round three may arrive on Sunday night into Monday, possibly bringing accumulating snow, according to a Hazardous Weather Outlook from the Weather Service.