A strong snow and ice storm followed by brutally cold conditions will soon impact the eastern two-thirds of the USA, as frigid air escapes the Arctic, plunging as far south as Florida, meteorologists reported.
Starting Saturday, millions of residents across the USA are expected to experience moderate to heavy snowfall from Kansas City to Washington, with a high likelihood of at least 8 inches of snow between central Kansas and Indiana, according to the National Weather Service’s warning.
Dangerous ice, particularly hazardous to power lines — described by private meteorologist Ryan Maue as “so heavy like paste, it’s hard to move” — is likely to accumulate just south of this area in southern Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and much of Kentucky and West Virginia.
“It’s going to be a mess, a potential disaster,” Maue stated. “This is something we haven’t seen in quite a while.” National Weather Service meteorologist Alex Lamers noted that the potential for blizzard conditions is increasing, particularly in Kansas and neighboring portions of the Central Plains, with wind gusts possibly reaching 50 mph at times.
As the storm moves away on Monday, hundreds of millions of people in the eastern two-thirds of the USA will face dangerous, bone-chilling air and wind chills throughout the week, according to government and private forecasters. Temperatures could drop 12 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (7 to 14 degrees Celsius) below normal due to the polar vortex extending from the high Arctic, bringing frigid weather.
“This could lead to the coldest January for the USA since 2011,” said Dan DePodwin, director of forecast operations for AccuWeather. “It’s not just one day of this. It’s going to be three to five days, and in some cases, a week or more of temperatures that are well below the historical average.”
Look out, Ohio Valley: The most significant drop in temperatures is likely to be centered over the Ohio Valley, but unusually cold conditions will extend southward all the way to the Gulf Coast, according to Danny Barandiaran, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center. Forecasts have moderated slightly from last week, when some computer models predicted the worst cold spell in decades. While it’s unlikely many cold records will be broken, the impact on the country will still be significant.
There should even be a hard freeze in Florida, while areas near the Canadian border will experience temperatures around zero, Barandiaran added. “It’s not going to thaw out for a while,” Maue warned.
Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Institute, mentioned that the initial gusty winds from the north may surprise those who have enjoyed relatively warm weather in recent years. “The wind chills are going to be brutal,” she stated. “There’ll be a lot of whining, but it is winter. … Just because the globe is warming doesn’t mean these cold snaps are going away.”
This severe weather may be partially triggered by a rapidly warming Arctic, serving as a reminder that climate change exacerbates weather extremes, even in winter, according to Francis and Judah Cohen, seasonal forecast director at the private firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research.
The polar vortex — ultra-cold air spinning like a top 15 to 30 miles high — typically remains above the North Pole. However, it sometimes escapes or stretches down to the USA, Europe, or Asia, resulting in large numbers of people experiencing intense cold. Cohen and colleagues have published several studies indicating an increase in the polar vortex stretching or wandering. In a recent study, Cohen, Francis, and others attributed these cold outbreaks in part to changes in an Arctic that’s warming four times faster than the rest of the globe.
The changes in temperature and the loss of Arctic sea ice cause the jet stream — the river of air that moves storm fronts — to become wavier, allowing cold air to plunge south and extreme weather to persist, Francis explained. “What’s about to hit is a really good example of these kinds of cases,” she concluded.
