Providence can expect two to four inches of snow to accumulate by midday today, the National Weather Service reported last night.
The service has put a winter weather advisory in effect for the city until midnight tonight.
The snow was expected to begin after midnight last night, with the heaviest snowfall - one to two inches an hour - occurring early this morning. The snow should give way to sleet and freezing rain this morning, reports said.
Mixed precipitation is expected to continue throughout the day, with some brief snow flurries potentially returning before the storm ends tonight.
If the storm lives up to predictions, Providence will see the first significant snowfall of what to date has been a tame winter, but it is unlikely that Rhode Islanders will long remember a Valentine's Day Blizzard of 2007.
Most notably, the legendary Blizzard of 1978 ravaged the Northeast in early February of that year, dropping over two feet of snow on Providence. That storm led President Jimmy Carter to declare Rhode Island a disaster area, canceled four days of classes at the University and forced The Herald to stop publication for two days.
Today's storm has already hit Chicago and other parts of the Midwest and was expected to affect areas of the northeast from Washington, D.C., to Boston last night and today.
