Springfield and areas to the south, west and east are under a winter storm warning through early tomorrow evening. Areas to the north are under a winter weather advisory.
Several inches of snow are expected before the storm moves through.
Gene Hatch is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Office in Springfield.
"In the areas where we have the winter storm warning out currently, we've expanded," he said, "we are expecting the potential of between maybe three and seven inches of snowfall across a good portion of the area. North of that area, which is essentially kind of north of I-44, we have a winter weather advisory in those areas, and the expectation is for maybe two to four inches, maybe up to as much as five inches in some areas along and north of I-44."
According to Hatch, the cold temperatures over the last few days mean snow will quickly stick to roadways.
The storm could also bring with it banded snowfall, he said.
"Essentially, those bands are areas where we could see higher intensity snowfall rates. The difficult part with those is it's going to be very difficult to forecast those until they actually begin to develop, kind of similar to what you might expect during the spring when you have pop-up thunderstorms," he said. "We don't know exactly where they're going to occur, but when they do they're going to have impacts in those areas."
He said areas under those bands of heavy snowfall will see visibilities drop to a quarter-mile or less at times.
Snow will continue to fall through mid to late morning Friday and then taper off Friday afternoon.
