Fall is getting off to a slow start this year. It gets cool for a couple of days, then it warms right back up (not that that’s a bad thing!). As the cool days outnumber the warm, though, you’ll begin to notice a lot more noise at night and in the morning, and it’s all thanks to the weather.
Lows plunged well below freezing last night. In October! And there’s snow. In October? Yes! That’s what happens in October. It gets cold and it starts snowing. We go through this every year, and each year the reaction just gets worse. Our relatively new connection to the world outside of our bubbles is giving us weather amnesia.
Much of the eastern U.S. is about to plunge into the coldest wave of Arctic air we've seen this winter, and for many, it could feature more sustained cold temperatures than we saw during the Great Polar Vortex Panic of 2014. If that isn't bad enough, the east could see a couple of disruptive winter storms next week.
After more than a week of warning, a frigid Arctic airmass is finally sweeping across the eastern half of the United States. Tonight and tomorrow, dangerously cold temperatures will encase the country from the Plains to the Atlantic and down to the Gulf of Mexico. This will probably—hopefully—be the coldest air we'll see this winter.
An intense outbreak of cold weather will descend on the eastern two-thirds of the country next week, with widespread low temperatures in the single digits and below zero for a couple of days. Lows in the teens are even possible as far south as Alabama and Mississippi.
Today is a pretty nice day across much of the country, with mild to warm temperatures in most spots from coast to coast. Enjoy it while it lasts, though, because cold Arctic air is likely to spill down from Canada next week, plunging temperatures 10 to 20 degrees below normal.
Stop relying on long-range seasonal forecasts to tell you if it's going to be cold this winter. Those forecasts suck. Of course it's going to be cold this winter—that's why they call it winter.
So long, summer 2014; we hardly knew you. It looks like tomorrow might be the last day of thermometer summer for much of the eastern United States. A cold front marching eastward will bring with it a line of storms followed by a long stretch of blissful autumnal crispness. Hallelujah.
