The eastern United States expects temperatures of 7 to 14 degrees Celsius colder than normal this weekend, in a polar vortex that extends from the high parts of the Arctic.
A severe snow and ice storm, followed by brutally cold conditions, will soon impact the eastern two-thirds of the United States as frigid air flows from the Arctic all the way to Florida, forecasters predict.
Starting Saturday, millions of people will be affected by moderate to heavy snow from Kansas City to Washington, D.C., including a high chance of at least 8 inches of snow between central Kansas and Indiana, it warned Friday. the National Meteorological Service.
Dangerous ice, especially lethal to power lines — “as heavy as glue, and difficult to remove,” said private meteorologist Ryan Maue — is likely to form just south of the area in southern Kansas, Missouri. , Illinois, Indiana and much of Kentucky and West Virginia.
“It's going to be chaos, and it could turn into a disaster,” Maue said. “It's something we haven't seen in quite some time.”
National Weather Service meteorologist Alex Lamers said Friday that the potential for blizzard conditions is increasing, particularly in Kansas and neighboring parts of the Central Great Plains, and that wind gusts could reach 50 miles per hour. h.
As the storm dissipates on Monday, hundreds of millions of people in the eastern two-thirds of the nation will be plunged into dangerously cold air and wind chills all week, government and private forecasters said.
Temperatures could be 7 to 14 degrees Celsius colder than normal, as the feared polar vortex spreads from the high Arctic, causing cold weather, they said.
“This could make this the coldest January in the United States since 2011,” Dan DePodwin, AccuWeather's director of forecast operations, said Friday. “It's not just one day. “There will be three to five, and in some cases a week or more, of temperatures that are well below the historical average.”