A blast of arctic air engulfed much of the central and eastern U.S. on Friday in sub-freezing temperatures well below normal for the time of year, setting records from Iowa and Michigan to New York.
According to meteorologist Marc Chenard of the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in Washington, the cold snap in the Arctic, dropping temperatures as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit below average, began Thursday and is expected to continue in waves for the next week or two, making it the most extensive and intense cooling of the season.
There are still more than two weeks until the official start of winter.
“Cold air is pouring into the central and eastern parts of the country, coming down from the Arctic,” he said.
Deep freezes extended from the northern plains through the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley to the mid-Atlantic and New England.
Below normal temperatures were expected in the Southeast, though still above freezing, according to Chenard.
Local weather forecasts in Indiana and Oklahoma called for the possibility of freezing fog, tiny droplets of super-cooled water suspended in the air that can freeze on exposed surfaces and cause a dangerous road condition known as icing.
On Thursday, temperatures dropped to new reference lows in more than a dozen locations across Iowa and parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota, Chenard said.
Iowa, where temperatures have been tracked since 1895, accounted for most of the record cold, including Thursday’s record low of minus 19 degrees in the prairie town of Spencer, a full 10 degrees cooler than its previous record of minus-9 degrees in 2005.
Detroit appears to have set a record low of 5 degrees on Friday morning, 1 degree cooler than the previous record, while John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in the New York area both posted lows in the 20s, setting or tying their previous records, according to Chenard.
In upstate New York, the temperature plunged to an apparent new bone-chilling record of -22 degrees, beating the previous record low of -20 degrees.
The National Weather Service said in addition to the unseasonably cold weather, snow was expected in parts of the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Rockies through Saturday. A storm system that will cross the Northern Plains and Midwest on Saturday is forecast to bring occasional heavy snowfall.
What could have led to a cold?
Meteorologist Marc Chenard said the frigid weather stemmed from a clockwise fluctuation in the polar air circulation, also known as the polar vortex, which was drawing icy air from Canada into the northern layer of the US.
(With inputs from Reuters)
