A major nor'easter threatens to shut down travel due to heavy snow and strong winds from Washington, D.C., to New York City and Boston early next week as winter's revenge continues.

The snowstorm in the northeastern United States will follow a storm with snow and slippery travel in the South into Sunday and a storm set to bring snow and travel problems in the Midwest from Sunday night to Monday.

A storm will rapidly strengthen and track within a couple of hundred miles of the East coast of the U.S. spanning Monday night to Tuesday night. For many areas in the Northeast, this will likely be the biggest and most impactful storm of the winter.

"A widespread snowfall of 6 inches is likely with localized amounts over 12 inches in the Northeast," according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson.

At this time, it appears that areas from northwestern Virginia to northern Maryland, central and eastern Pennsylvania, northern New Jersey, central and southeastern New York state and a large part of New England stand an excellent chance of receiving 6 inches or more of snow from the storm.

For thousands of miles of roads in the region, this will be an unusually cold storm for the middle of March. Much of the snow that falls will accumulate on the roads.

Exactly where the storm tracks will determine the western extent of enough snow to shovel and plow, as well as where rain will fall along the coast and cut down on snowfall accumulation.

As the storm intensifies, winds will ramp up along the coast and expand inland.

Wind gusts can frequently top 40 mph at the height of the storm, which cannot only create blizzard conditions, but may break tree limbs and threaten sporadic power outages.