It’s cold now, but the next time the arctic air blows, the level will rise even more. More than 200 million people will wake up to subzero temperatures as recent winter storms sweep across the country, sending the coldest air of the season across the Plains, Midwest and Great Lakes into the Northeast. Dozens of daily records are affected by this widespread plunge.
After several snowfalls over the past week, the Midwest is now bracing for the coldest temperatures of the season.
A bitter cold wave from Canada made landfall across the northern plains and upper Midwest on Wednesday. High temperatures will be 15 to 25 degrees below normal, with parts of the Dakotas unlikely to reach 10 degrees. More than a dozen cities in the Upper Midwest could set new coldest single-day records.
Thursday morning will be the coldest, with temperatures expected to dip into double digits as far south as Iowa and Nebraska. Wind chills of -10 to -25 will be common.
Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, are expected to set new daily low temperature records on Thursday, with temperatures dropping to -11 degrees and -7 degrees, respectively. Cedar Rapids will only reach single digits below zero Thursday afternoon, setting a new record for the lowest temperature that day.
Afternoon temperatures are expected to hover in the teens across much of the Midwest, 20 to 30 degrees below normal for early December.
Records could fall as early as Friday morning from Illinois to the East Coast. Chicago could fall below the daily record low of 4 degrees, and Indianapolis could approach the 1886 record of 8 degrees. Low temperatures will be in the 10s across Pennsylvania, with daily low temperature records set in several cities.
Friday morning will be the coldest in New York City since early March, with lows expected to be around 20 degrees. Records could be broken at the city’s JFK and LaGuardia airports. The wind is cold and biting.
The winter storms hitting the United States this week (and predicted to occur over the coming weeks) may be primarily related to the shifting polar vortex that began in late November, researchers told CNN.
A polar vortex is a strong circular current of wind over the North Pole that can trap cold air in the region. However, it has recently weakened and moved south toward mid-latitudes, allowing cold arctic air to flow into populated areas.
Andrea López-Lang, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said colder air from the north will collide with warmer air, potentially creating more stormy conditions.
And a weak polar vortex also means that the jet stream is wavy. These are wind currents that flow from west to east across the Northern Hemisphere. MIT meteorologist Judah Cohen said the wavy jet stream could cause whiplash in people.
The remainder of December is expected to see frequent swings between milder-than-normal weather and frigid temperatures as the storm moves through.
However, López-Lang warned that the polar vortex event is not the only driver of future temperature changes. “It definitely contributes, but it’s not the whole story,” she says.
Will this be the end of the severe cold? NOAA research meteorologist Amy Butler warned that another cold shock wave is expected by mid-December. “It looks like the polar vortex will spread further over North America in about seven to 10 days,” she noted.
There’s still about three weeks until the official start of winter, but Mother Nature is off to a pretty early start.
