This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Mariel Segarra.

Hey, it's Mariel.

There's a big winter storm moving across the country this weekend,

expected to bring heavy snow, freezing rain, and very cold temperatures across the U.S. this weekend,

even down south in states like Georgia and Texas.

LifeCat reporter Andy Tagle has been covering this. And on this episode, we're going to talk

about how to prep for a winter storm because there's a lot you can do ahead of time to set

yourself up. So when you hear on the news, for instance, that a winter storm is coming, how do you know when to get really serious about it?

Right? Because I feel like there are all these different words, storm watch, storm advisory, storm warning.

Yeah, it can be confusing. So a watch, a storm watch means a heads up. Bad weather is likely headed your way in the next few days.

Conditions are favorable for this thing to occur. So it just means be on alert. Now, for advisories

and warnings, both of these things mean that bad weather is now expected to come your way. So if you

receive either of those, you need to start preparing. The only difference there is

the scale. So different regions have different criteria for weather warnings. So maybe in New

England, for example, you might need six inches of snow in order to trigger a snow warning,

whereas in Mississippi, you might only need an inch of snow to trigger a warning. So if the

incoming weather falls below that certain marker, you'd receive a weather advisory,

not a warning.

Okay.

So a storm watch is like, it could happen, whereas an advisory or a warning is we expect it to happen.

Right.

Imminent, basically.

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