Chicago faces dangerous lake-effect snowfall Sunday night into Monday morning. Narrow but highly intense bands can dump snow at a rate of more than 3 inches per hour, a rate that overwhelms the ability to keep roads clear. If band activity changes direction and stalls, the city could see double-digit snowfall by noon Monday.
Temperatures will plummet into the mid-20s Sunday night into Monday morning, and heavy snow could create “dangerous or near-impossible travel conditions,” according to the National Weather Service. During this period, the narrow, intense lake-effect snow band, only about 10 miles wide, can produce thunderstorms, wind gusts near 35 mph, and near-zero visibility at its peak. Accumulation can vary widely from block to block. The precise placement of that narrow band determines who can see a few inches and who can see more than a foot.
Chicago hasn’t had 10 inches of snow since January 2021. You have to go back to 2015 to find 10 inches of snow in November. Additionally, the highest November snowfall ever recorded in the city was 12 inches, dating back to 1895.
This brutal situation in Chicago is being driven by the same arctic air mass that is crashing into the eastern two-thirds of the country. This is not just a “cold front.” This is a full-fledged polar plunge.
Monday morning will be the coldest since spring for tens of millions of people east of the Rocky Mountains, and it will get even colder into Tuesday. Temperatures at or below freezing are possible as far south as Texas and Florida and as far east as the Appalachians.
Atlanta undergoes one of the most dramatic temperature changes. Sunday’s high temperature was near 70 degrees. It will be difficult to reach the low 30s on Monday. Temperatures could drop into the low 20s by Tuesday morning, making it the coldest morning in Atlanta since February. We expect these temperatures to be in mid-January, not early November.
Daily record lows could be threatened in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, southeastern Louisiana and even parts of Florida by Tuesday morning. This includes places like Birmingham and Huntsville in Alabama, Baton Rouge in Louisiana, Savannah in Georgia, and Tampa and Fort Myers in Florida.
Washington, D.C. and New York City could also record their coldest morning of the period Tuesday morning. Washington DC could wake up to temperatures near 30 degrees. High temperatures in New York will only reach the mid-40s Tuesday afternoon. Morning wind chills can remain in the low to mid 20s in either city, but Chicago’s environment is uniquely unstable due to how arctic air interacts with warm lakes.
Snow will fall in other areas as well. It won’t be a concentrated heavy snowfall like Chicago. Lake effect snow continues downwind of the Great Lakes. The western slopes of the central Appalachians could rise several inches on Monday. Accumulating snow is expected in high-elevation areas from West Virginia to the North Carolina-Tennessee border.
Good news: The cold snap won’t last long. Temperatures across the central United States will recover quickly on Tuesday, and much of the East will warm up again on Wednesday.
