Obama Headed For Possible Happy Valley Ice Storm
President Obama is scheduled to tour laboratories and speak to an invitation-only crowd Wednesday at Penn State University, but for the second time in as many weeks, his travel plans may be adversely affected by a significant winter-weather event.
The National Weather Service in State College, Pa., has issued a Winter Storm Watch from late Monday through Wednesday afternoon for a combination of snow, sleet and freezing rain, with the heaviest ice accumulation expected late Tuesday into Wednesday morning. This is all part of a massive storm expected to bring crippling snow and ice from New Mexico north and east, all the way to Maine.
According to Penn State's student newspaper, the Daily Collegian, Obama is expected to tour laboratories and an on-campus energy hub devoted to energy-efficient building solutions. He is also scheduled to speak at 12:15 p.m. in Recreation Hall about clean energy issues. While the speech is open only by invitation, the Daily Collegian reported that Obama's remarks will be aired nationwide on the Big Ten Network, a cable network usually devoted to Big Ten Conference sports.
A White House spokesman said that there has not been a change to the president's schedule. Obama last visited Penn State in the weeks leading up to the 2008 Pennsylvania primary.
Closer to home, the storm is expected to be strictly a rain event in Washington by Wednesday, when temperatures are expected to surge into the upper 40s.
This week's storm is also expected to bring more than a foot of snow to Chicago -- a city that, as Obama is fond of telling D.C. residents, is supposedly more used to dealing with heavy snowfalls. The last time Chicago received in excess of a foot of snow from a single storm was Jan. 1-3, 1999.
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