Hoard your milk and hoard your supplies, DC. If it's winter, tis the season for snowpocalypses.

Check out these scare words weather.com is using for tonight's ice storm:

"Historic"...."Record-breaking"...."Crippling"....."Paralyzing" 

You may have heard or read these words being applied to this upcoming major storm ready to rake the eastern 2/3 of the nation. 

As you can see from the maps below, almost 1/3 of the U.S. population, over 100 million people may be impacted in over half the states. 

Look out for snow volume and duration for this storm:

Winter storms laying down a "cross-country footprint" of snow across the nation are typical, not unusual.  

What is rather unusual is the areal coverage of snow that may see at least 12" of snow, a2100-mile long swath from the Southern Plains to coastal New England.  This long stretch of foot-plus snow potential tracking from near the Red River in Texas/Oklahoma to Maine is something you don't see every day.  

And it's not just snow!  The ice potential swath is equally impressive, a 1500-mile long swath that may see at least 1/4" of ice accumulation from the Ozarks to Boston. 

That weather.com makes readers open new windows after nearly every sentence suggests that this "weather event" has as much to do with click-boosting sensationalism as it does with truly wicked weather. Still, grab your shovels and salt your stairs, because the street-clearing branch of our local government has quite the sketchy track record for keeping snowy days smooth.