Silke Jasso
Several forecasters are warning people who are traveling for the holidays after life-threatening cold weather is expected to be damaging. This as arctic air mass flows beginning in the Southern United States. According to Zach Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service they are “looking at much below normal temperatures, potentially record low temperatures leading up to the Christmas holidays.”
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The polar air arrives just as an earlier storm system lines down in the northeastern United States after covering several parts of the region under two feet of snow. More than eighty thousand customers located in New England were still without power yesterday morning, according to poweroutage.us.
Through a special weather statement, the National Weather Service stated that the incoming Arctic front will bring “extreme and prolonged freezing conditions for Southern Mississippi in Southeast Louisiana.”
Polar Plunge on The Way
Temperatures are set to plunge as low as 13 degrees by Thursday night in Jackson Mississippi, and around 5 degrees in Nashville Tennessee. The National Weather Service predicts that for much of the United States, the weather will get worse before it gets better.
This coming week there’s potential for “the coldest air of the season.” A strong arctic front is marching across the Eastern two-thirds of the United States in days before Christmas. This is according to the latest forecast from the federal weather prediction center. The center warrants massive expanse of frigid temperatures from the northern Rocky / Northern Plains to the Midwest in the middle of the week, and then reaching the Gulf Coast and much of the eastern US by Friday and Into The Weeknd.”
In Atlanta, temperatures are set to drop below freezing early this morning, but forecasters predict even colder air by the end of the week. By Friday, Orlando will be around 13 degrees running into Saturday with a below-freezing mark at 29 degrees. Although Florida will not see any snow this Christmas, forecasters do predict the weekend will be unusually cold all throughout the State. Northern Florida is expected to be in the low 20s on Christmas with a high of 40.
Temperature Outlook
From Minnesota to Idaho, temperatures are expected to drop between 10 to 30 degrees below. the cold will then spread from Wisconsin to Chicago and down to Texas becoming more extreme with several areas reaching 45 degrees below its normal weather. “Highs will only reach into the single digits throughout the northern Plains, while lows fall into subzero territory and minus teens closer to the Canadian border,” the Weather Prediction Center stated. “Gusty winds will make it feel even colder throughout northern Montana, where wind chill advisories are in effect due to the potential for wind chills to dip as low as 30 to 45 degrees below zero.” According to CNN, over the next few weeks, more than 260 million people will see temperatures below freezing all across the United States, which is over 80% of the population.
“As cold as it will likely be, it will be difficult to challenge daily record lows/cold highs due to this event overlapping with portions of the historic 1983 and 1989 cold waves. At the very least portions of the East may end up seeing the coldest temperatures for any December since 2017.”
