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© AP Photo/The Victor Valley Daily Press, James Quig
As the season's first major snowstorm barrels into the Western North Carolina mountains, weather watchers are keeping an eye on the system through Internet tools and weather balloons launched into the air.

This storm is shaping up as the first substantial snowfall in more than two years. Last year, the Asheville Regional Airport set a record with the only winter without a measurable snowfall since the airport opened in the 1960s.

"This isn't our typical system where a cold front comes through," explained Pamela McCown of the Institute for Climate Education at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College.

A low pressure system tracking across the Southeast this afternoon will pull more moisture out of the Gulf of Mexico, dumping rain and then snow over the mountains. "These are the systems we look for to give us our heaviest snows," McCown said. "Where we have been seeing fairly small snow crystals, these are going to be big, wet flakes."

The National Weather Service has issued a winter weather warning with 2-4 inches of snow forecast this evening for Buncombe County, but a UNC Asheville expert says more snow could fall in central areas of the state.

"The low center has a strange track that coming right through north Georgia into South Carolina, just a little south of us," said Doug Miller, associate professor of atmospheric sciences at UNC Asheville,.

Miller and his students will start launching weather balloons, starting at 4 p.m. today at the lower parking lot of the Reuter's Center at UNCA.

The system is fairly small and not well organized, Miller said. "So this storm is not going to be anything close to the Blizzard of March 1993, but it's going to bring a good bit of snow to places that don't usually see that much."

The central Piedmont and counties east of the mountains could see more snow than the Asheville area.

"Some people expecting a lot of snow are going to be pleasantly surprised, and some are going to be unpleasantly surprised," he said.

The Weather Channel has dubbed the winter storm "Iago," starting to name large winter storms in the same way that tropical storms and hurricanes get nicknames.

The system is expected to head over the spine of the Appalachians into Friday and affect Richmond and the Washington area along with Mid-Atlantic states.