Another Weekend Winter Storm? Forecast Details and Updates.

Less than a week after a historic winter storm pummeled large parts of the central and Eastern United States with heavy snow and ice, forecasters are warning that another significant system could move into the East Coast this weekend.

Here are the key things to know:

• What will happen?: The forecast could change, and change again, before the weekend. While forecasters are fairly confident that a storm will develop, key details — including its strength, where it will go and how much snow or ice it will deliver — remained uncertain on Wednesday.

• Timing: The storm is expected to form on Saturday off the southeastern coast and then move north into the Mid-Atlantic and New England on Sunday.

• It will not warm up: Cold air will continue across much of the central and Eastern United States through next week. Some places as far south as Florida could see their coldest temperatures in several years.

What meteorologists are watching:

“We’re pretty confident that a strong area of low pressure is going to develop along the East Coast sometime this weekend and then move to the north and produce widespread gusty winds,” said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist at the Weather Prediction Center on Tuesday. “Depending on where it develops and where it tracks will determine how much precipitation spreads inland, and what the precipitation type is.”

That uncertainty is not unusual at this early stage. Forecasters rely on a blend of weather models — computer simulations used to predict future conditions — and they are more confident in a forecast when most of those models are consistent with one another. The closer the storm is, the more confident forecasters become.

On Tuesday, the Weather Prediction Center said several of the major forecast models they rely on were in agreement that a powerful storm was likely to form along the East Coast this weekend.

More recent model runs, have trended toward a stronger system, increasing the potential for snow, damaging winds and dangerous ocean conditions. Newer forecast models that incorporate artificial intelligence have also supported this stronger storm scenario.