It’s been a while coming but a real New England snowstorm is expected this weekend, with between 6 inches and a foot likely to fall in much of the state before things wind up Sunday evening.

Although the storm is moving up the East Coast in typical Nor’eastern fashion, it has proved difficult to forecast exactly where the strongest part of the storm will go and how quickly it will travel through the area for complicated meteorological reasons.

It appears likely that southern and eastern parts of the state – roughly below a line running from Keene through Manchester to Rochester – will see the most accumulation, with as much as a foot of wet snow. The Concord region is likely to see less snow and of a lighter, fluffier kind.

The storm is likely to arrive starting mid-Saturday and be at its worst from early Sunday morning through Sunday evening. The Monday morning commute could be messy.

The state’s electric utilities have all prepared for outages from downed power lines. Emergency officials recommend that people should be prepared to be without electricity for at least a few hours,  just in case.

This is the first major storm to hit the state this winter and will be welcome news to fans of snow sports and people who don’t want to worry about ticks when they go hiking.

The system is expected to reach North Carolina by Saturday morning and then track along the northeastern coastline throughout the weekend. Winter storm warnings and watches were in effect throughout much of the Northeast.

Chris Stachelski of the National Weather Service said localized accumulations of snowfall could exceed one foot in areas of higher elevation.

Regional temperatures have been warmer than normal this winter, making it hard for precipitation to fall as snow. Some storms that recently tracked through the Northeast were carrying warm air from the South and moisture that fell as rain, Stachelski said.

Most of the United States has seen record or near-record lack of snowfall so far this winter. That’s a reflection of both climate change – 2023 was the warmest year on record in Concord, according to National Weather Service data – and the arrival of El Nino, the pattern of water temperatures in the southeast Pacific that has a big effect on the continent’s weather.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.