As if heavy snow and rain weren’t enough to try and dampen the holiday spirit, some of the coldest air of the season will begin to infiltrate the country starting on Thanksgiving and will likely stick around into at the least the start of next month.
As if heavy snow and rain from potent storm systems sweeping across the U.S. wasn’t enough to cause travel delays and dampen the holiday spirit, the coldest air of the season will start to infiltrate the country starting on Thanksgiving and could last into at least the start of December.
Some of the coldest temperatures of the season are getting set to infiltrate the U.S., putting millions of people at risk as temperatures nosedive after Thanksgiving.
We’ve reached the time of year when temperatures begin to take a nosedive and the threat of lake-effect snow increases. As the Thanksgiving Day winter storm exits the Northeast, it will begin to pull in arctic air from Canada, and it will extend to the south, potentially as far as the Southeast.
“This isn’t just the Northeast,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Marissa Torres said. “This is the northern tier, the northern Plains and into the Southeast.”
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(FOX Weather)
“I mean, you have a big chunk of people by Saturday, 226 million below average,” Torres continued. “And in some cases, we’re not just talking about maybe 10-15 below (average). We could be 25 degrees below average.”
It’s certainly been a slow start to the colder temperatures in some parts of the Midwest. St. Louis recorded a morning low temperature of 29 degrees on Tuesday, missing its record for the latest below-freezing temperature by one day.
That record was set on Nov. 27, 2009.
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On Thanksgiving Day, temperatures will struggle to make it into the teens across portions of the northern Plains. The forecast high temperature in Bismarck, North Dakota, for example, is only 13 degrees.
Minneapolis should also stay below freezing with a forecast high temperature of 26 degrees.
The arctic air will expand in coverage by Friday, with major cities like Chicago and Indianapolis staying in the upper 20s.
Columbus, Ohio, likely won’t make it out of the upper 20s on Saturday as more cities in the East experience the cold weather.
New York City, for example, is expected to remain in the upper 30s on Sunday.