It's early to be making predictions about snowfall amounts, but as a general rule any storm that drafts moisture from the Gulf of Mexico has the potential to drop a lot of precipitation on wherever it hits.
The storm formed over the southwestern desert when a narrow-focused blast of cold air from Canada to SoCal set off a spin, a whirlpool in the air.
Whenever air or water forms a whirlpool it starts to draft from around itself. That means it reaches out and pulls air in from points afar.
If it has access to both a moisture source and a cold air source it throws the moisture into the cold air which causes condensation (no different from what happens on your bathroom mirror during a hot shower) and when the condensation is too much for the air to hold, the excess falls out. The colder air is, the less moisture it can hold.
There is plenty of similarity between the whirlpools your canoe paddle makes in flat water, and storms in the atmosphere. Instead of your paddle passing through the water, we're dealing with a south-reaching bulge of polar air moving through the lighter-weight air to its south. A whirlpool will form just as it does when you paddle the flatwater of the lake.
This whirlpool got started spinning over the desert southwest and will drift towards the Great Lakes where it will spin itself out and fill in.
Spinning whirls in the air can spin off "children" of themselves - or even jump from one location to the other. Play with a canoe paddle in flat water often enough and you'll see such behavior eventually. It's pretty cool. Air and water behave very much the same -- the only difference being we can't see air so we have to draw weathermaps of it.
When this storm gets over the Great Lakes it is expected to spin off a child of itself, or just jump to the coast and reform (both predictions are out there.) Regardless of your opinion on The Weather Channel's naming of winter storms, it's kind of spooky they named this storm "Q" because the Star Trek character of that name was known for similar behavior. There is no way they could have known when they came up with the list of names.
What happens after the transfer of the storm to the northeast coast is subject to speculation until it actually starts to happen. the only thing that is known until then is the fact that it's drafting lots of Gulf moisture into itself today, so it will have no problem producing precip of one type or another. We just have to watch for how much cold air is available, and where.
This will be a typical northeastern winter storm, with a rain/snow line somewhere near the coast, and an exact track that's capable of changing the amounts a lot just by shifting a little.
As a general rule, most winter storms that draft from the Gulf's moisture before heading our way are capable of producing a foot of snow. The only thing we have to figure out (each time) is "Will it do what it's capable of?" That means tracking the supply of cold air, figuring out the ratio of moisture to cold air, and taking a best-guess about the exact track.
One thing to watch for, with this storm, is the fact that temps will be warmer than they were a couple weekends ago. That means the snow will have more water content and will therefore be more slippery as well as more difficult to shovel or plow. It may also lead to more tree damage than we get with the light fluffy stuff that falls at colder temps.
There's a bunch of information on the BlackCatNH WeatherCenter site at
www.blackcatnh.com/weather. I'm still working on finishing it so you may find a few things changing around a bit as I play with it behind the scenes, but the meat if it is there for your storm-tracking.