Fire up your generator or “find a friend who has one” because tomorrow night’s winter wallop could morph into a limb-snapping ice storm that has the potential to cut off power and force Patriots fans to miss Sunday’s AFC Championship tilt on TV, the nation’s top storm chaser warns.
He said there’s going to be “epic skiing up north,” but a lot of ice could coat southern New England.
And that includes Greater Boston where come 6:40 p.m. Sunday all eyes will be on Tom Brady and the Patriots as they take on Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs with a Super Bowl bid on the line.
And that could be right in the city.
“This storm will start Saturday night with really intense snowfall for all of this region,” he said.
“But there is potential for power outages if we get freezing rain Sunday rather than sleet.
Cantore said there’s a “fine line” for southern New England to be hit with the worst-case scenario — or have 4 to 8 inches of snow and then some sleet that will stick to the ground but nowhere else.
“People are going to have to prepare,” said Paul Walker, a meteorologist at AccuWeather.
“Gas up the car.” Already, people are rushing to their local hardware stores to grab snow shovels and ice melt.
Merchants have placed special orders to prepare for the winter storm rush.

In Texas, the city of Austin’s water utility has issued a citywide boil water notice as it struggles with the impact of debris from flooding on its water treatment capabilities.
"The high level of debris, silt and mud requires extended filtration that slows the process of getting treated water into the system," Austin Water said in a press release.
The city is telling residents to reduce water use overall and to boil any tap water intended for consumption for at least 3 minutes in order to kill any bacteria that may be in it.
"This isn’t a conclusion we came to lightly," says Austin City Manager Spencer Cronk.
"Unfortunately, this is simply a case of Mother Nature throwing more at the system than the system can currently process."
All three of Austin Water’s drinking-water plants are currently running at 1/3 to 1/4 of the capacity they would normally run.
"It’s been a real struggle," Meszaros says.
Austin Water will lift the boil water notice once they are able to stabilize the treatment systems.
We’ll just have to take this day by day and hour by hour to see [how] our plants perform," Meszaros says.
Austin Independent School District is encouraging students to bring water bottles with them.

A day after asking Austinites to reduce water usage, the city has issued a boil water advisory for all customers of Austin Water until further notice.
At a televised press conference at 6 a.m. Monday, Austin City Manager Spencer Cronk said Mother Nature has thrown more at the system than the system could take, causing the first-ever boil water advisory for all users of the water system.
Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros said all three of Austin’s drinking water plants are unable to meet desired water clarity levels for customers.
While safe for showers, laundry and other household uses, any water used for consumption should be boiled for three minutes before being used.
The city said all restaurants, food establishments and schools have been notified and inspectors will be available to provide assistance where needed.
Meszaros said the water looks like chocolate milk due to mud kicked up with all of the storm water flowing through the water system, but he doesn’t think it is a bacterial issue at this point.
Residents are asked to continue to restrict water usage where possible, including a ban on watering lawns.

Mother Nature was mercurial this week in South Dakota: just as serious drought conditions expanded in a diagonal across the state’s midsection — including Hughes and Stanley counties — in the week ended Tuesday, heavy rains hit parts of the state Wednesday and Thursday, especially in the southeast, flooding homes and roads.
Severe drought returned to Haakon County, just to the west of Stanley County, where some crops have been cut for feed, rather than later-maturing grain, because of the dry conditions, according to the latest news release Thursday from the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which also issues the weekly Drought Monitor Maps.
Meanwhile, the area of moderate drought expanded to include much of Hughes and Stanley counties in the week ended Tuesday, Sept. 18, Drought Monitor officials in Omaha reported on Thursday.
The area of the state under severe drought increased from 2.07 percent of the land to 3.56 percent and the area in moderate drought increased from 9.55 percent a week ago to 12.94 percent in the week ended Tuesday.
Those drought conditions came out of, mostly areas that had been classified for weeks as merely abnormally dry but not yet in actual drought; that category of “abnormally dry” shrank from 27.19 percent of the state’s area a week ago to 23.37 percent as of Tuesday.
The area free of either abnormally dry conditions or drought conditions remained mostly unchanged, at 60.13 percent of the state, compared with 61.19 percent a week ago, according to the Drought Monitor Map.
Pierre received 0.57 inch of rain on Thursday by 5 p.m., bringing its 2018 precipitation total to 14.23, which still remains 2.16 inches below normal for the period.
Pierre, in fact, had received less than 25 percent of its 30-year-norm for rainfall over the past two months, before Thursday’s rains came.
Rapid City, with 0.53 inch of rain Thursday by 5 p.m., now totals 24.25 inches of precipitation in 2018 so far, 7.53 inches above normal for the period, according to preliminary statistics from the weather service.
North Dakota had seen only 30 percent of normal rainfall the past two months, as moderate and severe drought conditions expanded in the west parts of the state.

The rain is finally coming down here, but the question is, will it be enough to save the harvest?
After going months without any significant rainfall, Furlin has seen 4 inches in two weeks.
It’s nice for soil conservation, but Furlin says it’s too little, too late for this year’s harvest.
Let’s revisit some staggering numbers.
Furlin says last year, he harvested 185 bushels of corn per acre, and it was a down year.
But when you’re faced with the worst drought in 30 years, Furlin says you take rain when you can get it.
"And this will get us to start going into next year."
No, it hasn’t been an easy summer for southern Iowa farmers, but this is a welcome sight.
"We could still use some rain," Furlin said.
"You’re not out of the woods, but the days are looking brighter."

“This drought, that’s Mother Nature and we have no control over that,” he said.
“Primary production across this country, the prices are way too low and we are seriously getting affected,” he said.
“The most effective way people can support farmers like Jason is through campaigns like the buy-a-bale program we are running, because it consolidates the money which can be used to buy fodder, groceries or provide the mental health support our farmers need,” Charles Alder, the founder of Rural Aid, told Today.
He said Rural Aid had raised almost $1 million in the past week to help farmers like Mr Maloney.
John Haycock is a third-generation farmer in Dubbo, NSW.
NSW is virtually out of hay and we’ve got a pre-order to get grain for us and we can’t find it.
It’s just being sold overseas,” he said.
Today Woolworths announced it would invest $1.5 million into the buy-a-bale program which directly helps farmers in need.
Mr Haycock said the government looked after the framers during the bad drought of 1982.
“A lot of these guys and girls are really lonely,” he said.

Would you like your water sparkling, from the tap or hauled out of an unsterilized river upstate?
For proponents of the expensive new drinking trend known as "raw water," the choice is as clear as a Poland spring.
According to a New York Times article published last week, a growing number of American hydration connoisseurs are turning off their taps and switching to unfiltered, untreated water from natural sources, shelling out up to $36.99 for a 2.5 gallon jug of the "raw" stuff.
Even America’s most pristine-looking springs can harbor natural contaminants that make drinking their waters a sickly mistake, said Vince Hill,chief of the Waterborne Disease Prevention Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.It’s hard to say without an intimate knowledge of where your water comes from, what’s in it, and who handles it on its journey from spring to bottle — this is why water gets filtered in the first place, Hill said, and why the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforces strict quality guidelines on America’s public water providers.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), contaminated drinking water is one of the most dangerous preventable health risks facing the world.
"Contaminated water can transmit diseases such diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio," the WHO says, adding that contaminated drinking water is estimated to cause 502,000 diarrheal deaths around the world each year.
America’s public drinking water is among the safest in the world, according to the CDC, thanks in part to a multi-step purification process that includes filtration, sedimentation (a process by which heavy particles of dirt are separated out) and disinfection.
"There are many sources of water contamination, and some of those sources are naturally occurring," Hill told Live Science.
For this reason, the agency recommends that all backcountry water (sourced from a spring or otherwise) be properly filtered, disinfected or boiled before consumption.
That’s why we talk about treating water, filtering water, disinfecting water to make it safer — the data we do have is more about the disease-causing effects of microbes in our water."

Producers at war with mother nature during the drought.
RAPID CITY, S.D.
(KOTA TV) – Producers across KOTA Territory are at war again with mother nature.
Embarking on the summer months, many ranches are already facing a D3 level of dryness which is considered extreme drought according to the United States Drought Monitor.
During a drought many producers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, should they sell or keep their livestock.
"We have to put a pencil and paper and figure out what is the best option for our ranch, the thing is what we do on our ranch is not going to be what the neighbor next door on his ranch does because even though we are similar there are a lot of differences," said rancher Josh Geigle.
Producers are being forced with many tough decisions during this drought but ultimately they are at the mercy of mother nature.
"We just need rain, I mean you got to hope and pray that we get some rain and with the glory of God, we can get through this," said rancher J.T.
Moon